Activity Analysis: Sand Art Craft

A new company called Special Needs Essentials asked me to collaborate with them by sharing my opinion of their website and offerings. Recently, they sent me a product so I could write an article for their blog about the importance of Arts and Crafts for child develoment. Below is the post that was featured on their blog:


"When I was a little girl, I used to spend a big part of my free time doing crafts. My grandmother and aunt loved them, so they will always include me and my little sister in their projects. For Christmas, my parents and other family members used to get us all kinds of craft kits. Back then they were just fun activities, but now than I’m an Occupational Therapist, I realize how many important life skills I was learning through those projects.

Crafts help kids develop fine-motor and eye-hand coordination skills as well as tolerance, problem solving and learning to follow instructions. They are also a good opportunity to bond with your child and to work on communication and social skills (such as sharing).  Even though today kids seem more interested in electronic devices, I’ve noticed in my practice that most kids still love arts and crafts. It’s up to us to provide them with opportunities to participate in such activities.

A couple of weeks ago I received this Sand Art craft kit from Special Need Essentials to try it out with my kids. It’s a fun craft that can be adapted to kids with different skills. 

I used this kit with patients from 4-18 years old. It consists of gradually peeling small pieces of paper from a sticky surface and then applying colored sand to fill the space and form the picture.  While doing this activity, we worked on fine-motor skills such as pinch grasp for peeling the papers (a task that was difficult to most of my patients). You can adapt it by starting to peel one corner and letting the kids do the rest.  

 Cutting the tubes (or similar things such as straws) is a great way to introduce scissors skills to little ones. That’s because they are easier to manage than paper and also help to strengthen the small hand muscles.

We also worked on developing a tripod grasp (like the one used in writing) while holding the sand tubes. The following little fella had trouble at first, but with some OT help he did much better.

 Applying the sand in the right place works on eye-hand coordination skills. If you put the sand in a bigger container, it requires more motor coordination to be able to pour it without dumping the whole amount at once.

 The sand also provides an extra sensory input to this activity. It's important that children get the opportunity to play with different textures to help them develop tactile sensory modulation and discrimination. The boy in the picture below doesn’t like the feel of sand or other similar textures, but because the activity is engaging to him, he is able to compromise so he will be able to see the end product.  This is one of the big reasons why crafts are so effective; they provide a great motivation that helps kids work in skills they usually don’t want to.

This activity requires to be done one spot at a time, which is great for working on tolerance and following instructions. It's important that the kids are also responsible for the cleanup, which is an independent living skill.

Below two of the end products:

You can make the activity easier by peeling the paper yourself and letting the child just fill the spaces with sand or by peeling larger amounts of paper at once to decrease the steps and time in finishing the task. Let me know if you have done something similar with your kids. You can also share crafts ideas in the comments below!"

Sneak Peak

Today I recieved something in the mail! New post coming soon! 

Needlepoint Monster Bookmark for visual-perceptual and visual-motor skills

When I started working as a school based OT in August, I had many students between 9 to13 years old. I didn't know what to do with them in therapy since they were pretty functional. So I found this cute project in knitsforlife.com and decided to give it a try:

This is my version of the bookmark:

 

After working with this with my bigger kids for about a month, these were some of the results:

It is incredible how difficult it is for most kids to thread a needle or follow a simple stich pattern. These little monsters requiere visual-perceptual skills such as visual discrimination, spatial relations and visual memory. It also requieres visual-motor coordination and fine motor skills. As you may see, I adapted the activity for some of the kids by having them do longer stiches. With this task you can also work on frustration tolerance,  problem solving (example: when they put the needle in the wrong place, how do they fix it?) and so on. 

If you decide to try it, let me know how it goes!

If you need a more specific tutorial than the one offered in Knits for Life, please let me know in the comment section. 

Update

After months of thinking about it, I have decided to continue posting here instead of Tumblr for the moment. I'm just taking advantage that this page gets more traffic since the AOTA pinned one of my posts on their pinterest page. I’m also trying to start a blog for parents and professionals in Spanish, since there are very few blogs about Occupational Therapy topics in my native language, and I would love to make a contribution to that. Even though it's easier for me to blog in Spanish, it has been difficult to get readers to my blog. I don't know if it’s cultural, but I just happen to get more comments with the English version, which I love and keeps me motivated to continue writing. This Tuesday I start work again, so wish me a good semester, I'm also supposed to start a new job this month, so I'll try to keep you updated. 

With OT love,

Luna

I'm on Tumblr!

Hello!

I'm happy to announce that I have a new blog on Tumblr. It's called My OT life. There, I will continue to share my experiences, but now as an official OT. You can also get to know my real identity, see pictures of myself, and get to know me a little better. If you guys don't like Tumblr, and would prefer to stay tuned here, please let me know in the comment section and I will re-post everything that I post on Tumblr here. Since my native language is Spanish, my primary Tumblr blog is in Spanish, you can follow that one here.

Please let me know what you think and what you would like to read about in my new blog. Hope to hear from you soon!

How I studied for the NBCOT

As you may have read, I recently passed the NBCOT OTR certification test. I got the request from one of my readers to post about the books and strategies I used for studying for this test. I thought it was a great idea, but before I tell you, I want to clarify that everyone is different, so what worked for me will not necessarily work for everyone. We also come from different OT programs, and maybe some of us have more deficits in some areas than others. That being said,  here it goes:

I used two study books:

The "National Occupational Therapy Certification Exam, Review and Study Guide" by Rita Fleming-Castaldy published by Therapy Ed and the official NBCOT Study Guide.

In the Therapy Ed webpage I got the Rita Flemming book for around $90 and in the NBCOT webpage I got the official study guide for around $60. If you are on a budget and just want to buy one, I recommend you buy the Rita Flemming book. This one has sixteen chapters that review all topics related to OT, sometimes with more detail than is really needed, which can be overwhelming, but better more than less. I found this book really helpful because I think is more efficient to review all in one book than start looking in all the books that the NBCOT recommends you review. This book's chapters are done using the same books that the NBCOT recommends for taking the test, so I think it saves the time you would have spent organizing all your books and the chapters to study. It also has 3 computerized full practice tests (170 items + 3 clinical simulations) and the rationales for the correct answers, including the clinical simulations which is really helpful.

In the other hand, the NBCOT official study guide doesn't include the rationales for the correct answers of the clinical simulations, and the rationales for the rest of the items are less specific than in Rita's book. It was really disappointing, because what good it is to know which answers are correct if you don't have idea why. This book has no review chapters, it only has a 100 item multiple choice paper practice test, and 8 scenario samples with 5 items each. If you have the extra money, I'd recommend you get it because the questions in this book a little bit more similar to the ones in the real test. Rita's book questions, however, are generally more specific than in the real test.

I got a 74% in the NBCOT official study guide practice test and in the three practice tests of Rita's book I got 58%, 58% and 64% respectively. So getting that 74% helped me go into the test with a little more confidence.

I started studying the first week of March, and in five weeks I had finished reviewing all the chapters. I studied Monday through Friday from approximately 9:00am-4:00pm (of course with lots and lots of breaks). After that, I took the first practice test. Then on spring break, I went on vacation for two weeks to Mexico to visit my boyfriend (who studies medicine there). After I came back the last week of April, I just finished reviewing the rationales for that test, did the NBCOT official study guide tests, reviewed the rationales, then studied again just the topics of my deficits areas based on the tests I took. Then I took the second test from Rita's book, reviewed the rationales, took the third test, reviewed the rationales and then  reviewed again the rationales of the test from the NBCOT study guide. I took the real test on June 2, 2014.

I wanted to let you know that before I started studying (on November, 2013) our School forced us to take the $45 NBCOT practice test, which has 100 items, no clinical simulations, no rationales. It help me get an idea of what I needed to focus on for the real test. If you have the extra money, take it, if not, don't worry. I don't think it is so much help without rationales or even knowing which ones you got wrong. NBCOT's practice tests and study guide, in my opinion, are overpriced for what they are offering. 

Extra Tips:


When studying from  Rita's book, don't get overwhelmed trying to memorize all the information. Just finish early reviewing it, so you have plenty of time to do the practice tests. After the practice tests, you can decide what information you will need to memorize (which is not a lot). The most helpful thing is to read the rationales for every question, even the ones you got right, so don't skip that.

For the clinical simulations, my recommendation is less is more. You will get better results by just clicking  the ones that you are sure of, than by selecting a bunch of answers that you are not sure of (the latter could get you into a negative point situation).

Most of the questions require the clinical thinking skills that you already have gotten in all this years instead of a bunch of facts. So, go into the test with the confidence of the great OT you will become!

If you have any questions feel free to ask in the comment section!

Good luck!

I Passed!

I'm officially an OTR!!