Simple Tips for Daily Tasks

Our lives are busy! It is hard to find time to fit in extra exercises and activities to help stimulate and support our children. Here are some simple changes, tips, activities that are easy to implement at home.

Routines and Organisation

Try using a visual schedule or timetable to help your child with areas of routine they are battling to complete independently, such as getting ready in the mornings, packing their bags, unpacking after school, starting homework, and at bedtime. These can be useful during the school day too for the child that battles and becomes disorganised with transitions.

Free Printable Visual Schedule Cards from Be a Fun Mum

Dressing Tricks

• Buy jackets that have a different colour lining to the outside so that your child can easily identify if it is inside out.
• Buy underwear that has a ribbon or label on the front to help your child identify the front
• Buy socks that have coloured 'soles' or heels, or a line of stitching on the toes, to help your child orientate the sock correctly
• Buy anklet socks, as they are easier for the child to manipulate onto his/ her foot.
• Draw a face on the underneath of the tongue to remind your child to lift the tongue up enough to see the whole face including the mouth before putting their foot in.
• Choosing shoes that have a detail/ badge on the inside of the shoe can help to get shoes on the correct foot, just match the badges up first. Alternatively, draw a design across the soles of both shoes that must be matched correctly e.g. a butterfly.
• Try a child-sized chair in the room to sit on while dressing the lower half of the body if your child battles with balance.
• Lay clothes out on the bed for your child and teach them to find the label/ picture on the shirt to help orientate front and back.

These ideas (and more) are from Miss Jamie OT

Homework Help
If your child is battling getting though homework these may help:

• Sitting on a therapy ball (right size for your child)
• Sitting on a therapy cushion (Disc 'o Sit or Movin' Sit)
• Use a trampoline for movement breaks, get creative with star jumps, scissor jumps, cross-crawl (tap each elbow to opposite knee as you jump), donkey kicks (hands on a chair alongside the trampoline, while you jump and kick legs into the air)

Helping with Cooking

If you are cooking and your child is interested and developmentally able to help you in the kitchen, it can be a great sensory activity (touch input, shoulder, wrist and hand strengthening, bilateral coordination, plenty of heavy muscle work that we need to stay regulated), while keeping them occupied and away from the TV.

Here are my favourite child-friendly utensils. Clockwise from top left: Grater, Apple corer (use to cut any soft fruit or vegetable), Potato Masher, Egg Slicer (use to cut eggs, strawberries, mushrooms), Mini Whisk, Joei Wavy Vegetable Knife (available from Westpack, use your discretion in deciding whether your child has the motor control to use this knife), Lemon Squeezer. Always supervise your child using these. 

Bath Time

Choose these sort of bath/ water toys and you will be giving your child opportunity to develop the muscles of the forearm and hand (important for cutting and writing), as well as the muscles of their mouths which is vital for sound production during speech. The blowing activities will also help regulate your child's nervous system before bedtime.

Pictured here from left to right: Bubble bath for use with blowing toys, bird whistle (add water and then blow - the whistle makes a chirping bird sound), squirty toys, fancy straws, and Alex Water Flutes.

Other similar toys to include: squirt bottles and water guns.

Include bath crayons and coloured shave foam (Instructions on making easy bath paints) so that you can practice letter formations on the sides of the bath.