Playdough

Having spent the entire morning at the hospital today, there wasn't that much time left for other activities after his lunch, nap, snack time, toilet training etc.


Brought out the playdough as we havent played with that for a while & I needed to work towards improving his pre-writing skills. In the past, he would not play with playdough. Based on recipes from internet, I made some in the past but he didnt like them. Too sticky or too oily. He hated the bits that stuck to his hands. He couldn't manipulate it like his peers. Showed him what he could do & make with it, but that would have only caught his attention for a very short while.

Earlier this year, bought some commercially sold ones at Jusco (half price). Smells yummy & came with a few moulds. Doesn't stick to the hands. Not too oily. Thankfully, he begun to take an interest to it. Slowly. Later, bought other colours from Tesco which are cheaper. I got some different coloured Play-Doh brand ones which were offer. All of them state "non-toxic" but who knows.


Started off by asking him what object he'd want made. To gain his interest, I suggested police car, ambulance, fire engine...not that I know how to make them! He wanted helicopter. And he wanted it "flat like a pancake" (as opposed to 3 dimensional) - it's one of his current favourite sayings!


I let him choose the colour. Restricted the choice to just 2 colours otherwise based on past experience, he'll merely want to remove the wrapper from all the coloured playdoughs. This time, he wanted both pink & orange. So much for "or".


He's not at the stage to be able to create his own models. He's not even at the stage of being able to roll it into a sausage shape or ball. So, I place my hands over his & show him how. At least he now allows me to do that. In the past, he'd pull his hands away & I'd show him how using my own hands.

Fine Motor

This activity is good for developing his fine motor. It works those hand muscles. Important for a lot of daily life skills like writing. So we rolled it into a ball, flattened it (body of helicopter). Rolled into a sausage & curled it (tail of helicopter). Pinched it, rolled it into smaller cylinderical shapes for the rotor blades.


He's still not good at pinching larger pieces. He pinches tiny pieces smaller than the size of his little fingernail. When flattening it, instead of using the palm, he still uses the fingers part of the hand. Slowly. Just need more practice.

Drawing/poking

I wanted to take this activity further by getting him to "draw" the pilot using a toothpick. He decided to poke his finger into it. I had in the past showed him how to poke. But instead of using the finger pad part of his finger, he uses his fingernail to dig into it. That's just like the way he controls the cursor on the touchpad of my laptop (it's like scratching). Will need to work on that (I think it impacts the way he holds the pen).


Photo shows what it looks like with the digging marks & that's him starting to poke with the toothpick.

I took the activity further by flipping the piece over for a smooth surface & showed him I could write the alphabets using the toothpick. He was not keen to try it. I wasn't going to force him if he's not ready. So I let him take the lead. Worked the dough into a smooth surface again & let him play.

Inscribing a face

He "drew" a smiley face. The eyes aren't aligned horizontally & nose wrong positioning cos he still has a problem controlling his hand muscles. He tends to jab at it from a distance rather than slowly approach it to ensure correct placement. Same technique when using marker pen on whiteboard.

The 2 eyes & nose are those 3 dots placed close together in the middle of the dough. The 2 lines at the top are the eyebrows. The ears are those lines on the left (horizontal line) & right (not so clear in the photo). The 2 dots nearer his toothpick - one's the chin, the other I dont know cos I didnt understand what he was trying to say.

Oral Motor (Blowing candles)

Decided to take it further again. This time, as an oral motor activity. Got this idea from speech therapy, but modified, and from a manual on oral motor exercises. He wasn't keen on blowing the paper butterflies on a stand, so had to think of new activity to achieve the same objective.

Started off with just one candle on a "birthday cake". Lighted it & sang a bit of "happy birthday" song. My objective is for him to blow. I remembered that he couldnt blow the candles of papa's birthday cake in June. Therefore, I was surprised that he blew it off in just a single blow!

Challenged him more. Got another candle. Lighted both. He blew the 1st easily. Couldn't blow off the 2nd. He was repeatedly taking shallow breaths, so it wasn't strong enough to put it out. Had to tell him to stop giving small blows & take deep breath & blow hard. He succeed. Yeay!

Repeated it by upping the challenge to 3 candles. Same problem with shallow breaths after the 1st. But succeeded easily after reminding him to take a big breath in. I'm happy enough. Next time, will challenge him by increasing the distance between him & candles. I can also increase the number of lit candles & see how many he can put out in a single breath.

To the beach!

Packed everyone into the car & went off to Kelanang beach today! This would be our 3rd or 4th visit this year. Traffic was good, weather was good - no haze, clear blue skies!

*will upload photos from hubby's handphone when time permits.

Benefits:

(1) Walking on sand gives him good tactile input & requires good balance.

(2) Walking in water gives resistance & challenges his balance even more (he'll happily splash around in ankle deep water, but if it's almost to his knees, he'll want to hold our hand)

(3) Talk about/show him the surroundings e.g. how the mangrove trees were different in terms of their roots, compared to normal trees. Showed him what animals live in a mangrove habitat e.g. crabs, mudskippers, fishes (cognitive, biology lesson)

(5) Catching crabs requires fine motor skills, hand eye co-ordination, faster reflexes. He caught a lot of crabs with his bare hands (with his fingers actually) during the previous visit. This time round, there were much fewer crabs & he wasnt interested. Instead, he was stomping on the crabs! Not to worry, he didnt kill them. They are much faster in burrowing themselves than he was in stomping them. Stomping with one foot requires good balance.

(6) Picking sea shells requires fine motor, hand eye, squat to stand, bending down. Later at home, you can use the shells in various ways: counting, visual discrimination, biology lesson, decoration during sandplay.

(7) Receptive language (speech input) - you can expand his vocabulary e.g. waves, tide coming in, estuary, hermit crab

(8) Expressive language (speech output) - he has the chance to use what he's learnt e.g. he surprised me by describing the clouds as "fluffy clouds", a term that I used only once, several months ago during a trip to the neighbourhood park.

(9) Bringing back sand for sandplay at home! There are areas on that beach where the sand is very fine & white.

(10) Sandplay at the beach itself of course! E.g. build sand castles, scoop & pour activities etc.

(11) Catching fish using a net requires very fast reflexes, balance, gross motor. We forgot to bring a net, so it was papa who caught fish using his bare hands. Papa the hero caught 3! We tried to help but fish escaped instead! : )

(12) Flying a kite requires gross motor skills, balance, visual tracking. We didnt bring the kite cos we knew we wouldn't have time to fly it cos we left much later than normal.

(13) Drawing/writing in the sand - doesnt require a mature tripod grip, so it's good to do this to let his creativity flow, without being hindered by his disability. Also good as a fun alternative to writing with the usual pen, pencil, colour pencil, marker, crayon, chalk etc on paper, whiteboard, blackboard. Fine motor skill still needed.

(14) A lesson in caring for the environment. Unfortunately, there was trash washed up on certain parts of the estuary (apart from the usual plastic, I came across a bottle, hard hat & tyre!). Use this opportunity to teach him that things should be disposed in their proper place or else it gets washed up on the beach etc & dirties the homes of the crabs, fish etc.

Note:
(1) We have to check to make sure the moon cycle isn't at the full moon stage cos the waves comes right up & there's no beach left. He's fearful if the waves are close to him.
(2) Bring insect repellant or at least wear long pants that can be rolled up. I was badly bitten.
(3) There's decent hawker fare at the purpose built "food court" but lots of flies
(4) There's a children's play area with the usual slides, climbing equipment etc.
(5) There's proper toilet but its yucky (very wet, smelly, no soap, sandy/muddy floor - some mums were rinsing their kids in the toilet). Bring your own hand sanitiser & toilet paper.