The Children's Therapy & Learning Center

Happy Easter from The Children’s Therapy & Learning Center! 🐣

​Whether you’re hunting for eggs, enjoying a family brunch, or simply soaking up the spring sunshine, we hope your day is filled with joy and gentle moments. We love seeing our little learners hop into new milestones, and today we’re celebrating the growth and bright futures of every child in our community.

Happy World Down Syndrome Awareness Day!

3.21

Rock Your Socks to promote awareness, acceptance, inclusion, education, and advocacy for individuals with Down Syndrome. 🤩

March 21 is symbolic, as those with Down Syndrome have 3 copies of the 21st chromosome.

The 'Rock Your Socks' slogan was chosen due to the karotype of Down Syndrome chromosomes actually resembling mismatched socks!

Happy First Day of Spring!

Our kiddos (and therapists) spend so much time outdoors year-around. Although it has been a very mild winter, we are super excited for spring!

Sharing another fun St. Patrick's Day obstacle course we did this week!

This obstacle course was not only fun, but very easy to grade up and down depending on each kiddo's skill and strength level!

First, the kiddo stood on the color of the rainbow that matched the color ball they were throwing to knock the ball off the cone. This step addressed cognition, attention, shoulder strengthening, object manipulation, and force modulation.

Next, while holding a plank position, they worked on visual scanning, primitive reflex integration, shoulder and core strengthening to place all the balls back up on the cones.

Then, they walked heel to toe on the line for balance while emptying the ball to work on hand strengthening and fine motor skills.

Next, they crab walked up the ramp to build shoulder, core, and hand strength, as well as to get some good proprioceptive input.

At the top of the ramp, they worked on their pencil grasp, while working on a vertical surface to improve wrist extension, as well as strength. To create the rainbow of many strokes, they used their ocular motor skills, visual motor and visual spatial skills, and dynamic finger movements!

Lastly, they walked heel to toe again on the line to fill the hollow ball back up again to address bilateral integration skills, finger isolation, strengthening and overall fine motor coordination.

Would you ever guess that such a fun and simple obstacle course could address so many OT goals?

Have you ever tried a "Reversed Word Find"? If you haven't, don't worry - most people have not!

As OT's we are always looking for ways to keep therapy novel and fun! When we change things up, like by modifying our St. Patrick's Day word find, we not only improve the skills we are working on, i.e. visual perceptual, visual motor, and fine motor skills, but we also improve attention and the motivation to succeed by covering the entire worksheet!

This activity is also a bonus, as the kids don't have to know how to read or spell!

Snowball makers are one of our favorite OT tools to use in therapy, as they require and work on bilateral integration skills, hand strength, and using good mid-range control!

This "Making a Rainbow" activity is also a great way to work on speech and language, i.e. color identification and matching, articulation, color categories, etc.

🍀 🌈 🍀🌈 🍀🌈 🍀🌈 🍀 🌈 🍀 🌈 🍀 🌈

Here is one of our great St. Patrick's Day therapeutic activities this week.

Working on postural control, core and shoulder strengthening, balance, visual localization, reaching, vestibular activation for muscle tone and attention, primitive reflex integration, crossing midline, in-hand manipulation, visual perception, fine motor skills, and SO MUCH more!

Our goal is to always make therapy seem like play!

We found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!

This St. Patrick's Day, we are feeling extra LUCKY to work with a team this dedicated and talented.

No four-leaf clover required over here at The Children’s Therapy and Learning Center!

Happy St. Patrick's Day from The Children's Therapy & Learning Center!

How many Dr. Seuss books do you have?

What's your favorite Dr. Seuss book?

We are SO excited for our Dr. Seuss therapy theme this week!

We have some AMAZING activities to share with you all, so keep checking back!