Leave It To An OT

Who can stay out of the school supply aisles at this time of year?  We can find lots of good ideas for helping students, which we can often duplicate with other materials at a much lower cost than what we see in the store.

At Wal-Mart yesterday I spotted this lined paper series produced by Mead and developed by Toni M. Schulken, MS, OTR/L.  Only allowed myself to purchase one item--RediSpace transitional notebook paper.  Although I don't train students in handwriting on a regular basis, I think this paper will help me suggest ideas to teachers and parents for how to aid students in more functional handwriting.

RediSpace Notebook Paper

School Bells are Almost Ringing

School starts up in about 2 1/2 weeks here in Virginia.  Looking forward to sharing more great ideas from teachers, therapists and families.

In the meantime, invest a little time this summer getting ready for a busy year at work.  If your home or office needs a little organizing, take a peek at my other blog:

LifeSpace

Frugal Medical Device

Power to student creativity!
Medical Device Cooked Up at Home

The Vast World of Educational Technology

Haven't read more than a few posts from this high school principal, but the ones I did read about using educational technology are interesting.
http://esheninger.blogspot.com/

I'm hardly familiar with more than a couple of the applications he discusses, and this makes me feel like a tech newbie.  There's so much more to technology in schools than the little I've gotten to know through working with assistive technology.

Baking Adaptation

Homemade sugar cookies make great gifts for family and friends, but beating the batter when you add the last cup or so of flour makes for quite an UE workout.
I often use my newer serving spoons for stirring the batter, but their cheap metal handles often bend with the force required to plow through the mixture.  My older spoons are untiring soldiers and never bend, but their handles are skinny and slip around in my hand when I'm working hard to mix the thick batter.

What to do?  Do what I use in schools to aid students in grasping their feeding utensils--wrap a paper towel or clean kitchen rag around the handle and secure the temporary aid with a rubber band.  You can see that I folded my paper towel too wide and needed to push it up away from the bowl of the spoon.  However, it worked great and made the stirring easy.
I did remove the contraption before I gave the leftovers on the spoon and in the bowl to dear hubby to enjoy.

What Do Restless OTs Do All Summer

Stewey can now find a spot to stand on the dog/cat grooming bench, since I de-cluttered part of the shed this week.  I think lots of school-system OTs reacquaint themselves with their homes, closets, kitchens, gardens and storage sheds in the summer.

If you're interested in de-cluttering and organizing, I invite you to read my other blog:

LifeSpace

Creative Juices Keep Flowing in the Summer

Just because we're not working 8 hrs a day in the schools during the summer doesn't mean our creative wheels aren't cranking.  We had a "meet the in-laws" dinner last night so I actually broke down and bought flowers to dress up the house.  Since I haven't been watering my own flowers there's nothing to pick in my gardens!

Here are some photos of the arrangements I made from $5 work of daisies purchased at Wal-Mart.  My friend, Joan, had given me a milk tote and bottles from her mom so that's what you see in the photo.  Made an accompanying arrangement by putting blue marbles in a blue-tinted Ball jar and also used my hot glue "machine" to attach strips of ribbon around candles.  Didn't like how the ribbon looked at first so I just peeled it off and tried it again at a different height on the candles.

When school starts up again in the fall maybe some of my teachers would like to create a new classroom "job" for students--arranging flowers in non-breakable containers.  It will be a great eye-hand coordination activity that is sure to elicit lots of compliments from classroom visitors.