Gabs in therapy

Let's take a moment to celebrate my little one and how much she's been learning this summer.  She's in OT, PT, and Speech Therapy, each now only twice a week. 

This is her OT, Miss Patchez.  She has already worked wonders with my girl.  Patchez works will all kinds of issues in OT, and call it mother's intuition, but I am fairly sure Gabbi would have issues with learning and reading if we weren't being very proactive with all of this.  They are practicing basic letter recognition in these pictures, but Gabbi learns best when her whole body is involved. 

Typical learning is with the eyes and ears.  You see the teacher write something or see what's on your paper, make sense of it in your brain, activate the parts of your brain that need to organize the output and put the answer, or letter in this case, on the paper.  The same would be true of your ears.

You hear the letter and the teacher telling you the beginning sounds, and can translate that into letters, phonics, and ultimately reading. 

That's not so easy for Gabbi.  And YES, before I get a critique, I AM AWARE that she is just barely 4 years old.  But I am also aware of the time and attention I invest in her learning.  And that Miss Donna has invested in her.  As well as...

Gabbi struggles with whole body organization.  For those of you who have followed me on Facebook, you are probably aware of how long it took for her to figure out how to simply put her hands on her hips.  That didn't come "natural" to her.  It is something that if you think back, you probably didn't have to "teach" your own kid.  Well, I had to TEACH Gabbi!  Many of her photos were taken with her looking at Ellie to use a different system, vision, to emulate the pose, when her own proprioceptive system (knowing where your body parts are in relation to each other and to the environment... for instance, without looking, is your right ankle pointed down or flexed up right now? I'll bet you knew!!  Thank your proprioceptive system!) was not strong enough.

So, here, Patchez is getting Gabbi's eyes, ears, and body all geared up to recognize her letters.  She has many, many ways she uses the tactile system to reinforce the letters of her name.  She only started this approach about three weeks ago, and Gabbi is now recognizing and naming "A-I", with fair consistency!
She's also learning to jump with both feet together and apart, while keeping her hands on her hips, and how to do things with her right arm/leg at the same time and her left arm/ leg simultaneously.  We'll progress on up to opposite arm and leg activities. 

An organized body makes for an organized brain.  And vice versa!

and this is Jenna.  She was my student doing her internship from St. Augustine University in Florida, but who is originally from Ohio.  She was a fun student.  But what really, really cracked me up was when she had to pull up a bench for her lunch.  Talk about "excessive"!  One day we counted and she had 14 baggies or jars!  Cracked me up. 

I've actuallly noticed that healthy people eat like that.  Chunks like myself just get one thing.  Like, a burrito.  Jenna had hummus, green peppers, red peppers, sliced turkey, blueberries, pita bread, etc.  It was a total smorgasboard. 

So there's a little peek into MMPT to get your weekend off to a great start.  Have a good one.

MO