It's Finally Here

We made it!  Time for summer fun and work--catching up on the horribly-maintained perennial gardens, brushing Stewey and Coco until their fur shines, actually preparing some home-cooked meals and traipsing around town with girlfriends.  It'll be a blast.

Where's Stewey?

There he is.

Cleome (Spider Plant) ala Betsy

Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens

One thing I won't be doing is blogging about fun at school.  We'll have to wait until late August for that.  My home blog is out of date for now, but check it out toward the end of June to see how things are progressing at home:  What OTs Do In the Summer

Celebrate!  We made it!

Keeping Those Pencils Sharpened

This teacher has really thought long and hard about the status of sharpened pencils in her room:

Elementary School Pencil Management

Tight Spaces

Our "natural environments" group of 2 year olds celebrated the end of school at Chick Fil A this morning.  After practicing self feeding they colored their little aquariums and put on their sea life critter stickers, then headed for the indoor "gym" in a separate part of the building.

Lowly Occupational Therapist Stuck in the "Maze"

We had our little integrated therapy session with the students, early childhood teacher, speech-language pathologist and lowly occupational therapist climbing through the tight spaces and going higher, higher and higher to reach the entrance to the tunnel slide.  The parents stood close by and cheered us onward and upward.  My target student was initially fearful of going into the maze but he ended up climbing up about three levels.  Success!

Almost at the End

Two more days until summer vacation!

Hello Kitty is a Great Motivator

This little girl worked hard all year with me to earn her Hello Kitty stickers.  At the end of our last session this week, she got to take them all home.

This is the second year she's been putting her reward stickers in little Hello Kitty notebooks.  Over the summer I'll be scrounging through my favorite thrift stores for one to use with her next year.

Deep Blue Sea

It was supposed to be really cool.  Baking soda, cornstarch, washable paint and a little water.   Just mix it up together, it directed on the website.  It'll look really cool, they said. Well, I fell for it. 

 

It mixed up like "gak."  That was okay, but the color looked a little weak.  So, I added a little more paint.  That made it look marbleized, but once I stirred it there was that weak, pasty color again.  And, it was clumpy.  Sigh.  All the staff said nice things, "Oh, what a pretty light blue..."  I knew better, sigh.  We hurriedly used magic markers to add whimsical sea creatures, to make the non-deep blue sea look better.  Ugh.

 Clearly, not my finest hour.  If you're working with students who have visual impairments or limited attention to task, like the four students in this elementary classroom for students with significant intellectual disabilities, pastels are not the way to go.  Sigh.

Virtual Practice with Self Help Tasks and More

This site looks very promising:

LearnFree.org Everyday Life