Educational Resources for You

Today on the blog I have the privilege of sharing some great educational resources with you. I have some guest information and a new free printable from Education.com where you can find online games, printable worksheets and lesson plans. Be sure to check out the info on the FREE winter themed printable below!

From Education.com

A friendly snowman is here with some winter words. Education.com is full of more reading and spelling practice skills like this to help your writing!

FREE PRINTABLE – JUST CLICK BELOW

word_tracer_snowman.pdf

How would I use a worksheet like this? You can include picture matching with the words, copying from near and far point, motor actions, fine motor control for maintaining tracing lines, practice of letter formation while adhering to tracing lines, or even an added sensory task of making 2 copies of the worksheet and cutting on copy into strips for kids to find in a sensory bin before writing them.

I hope you enjoyed this brief posting sharing a great educational resource option! Enjoy the free winter themed printable!

Ready to Grow – Casey

Out of the Box Strategies to Advance Clinical Expertise as an Occupational Therapist: Guest Post from The OT Toolbox

Today on the blog we welcome Colleen Beck from The OT Toolbox which provides ideas and tools for therapists, teachers and parents. Colleen fills her blog with tons of brilliant ideas to help her readers build necessary skills for development. Her ideas have not just stopped at her site. Today I am thrilled to share with you Colleen’s newest idea: The OT Toolbox Community. This is a FREE community for occupational therapists to come together from all over the world and electronically collaborate as we build our skills as practitioners. There are so many cool aspects of this community, you simply must check it out for yourself! In the mean time, today Colleen has prepared some awesome content right here at OTandGrowWithMe for OTs about how to creatively advance our skills in practice through using the OT Toolbox Community. Enjoy!

As clinicians, we strive to advance professionally throughout our occupational therapy careers. We learn as much as we can about the setting and apply educational experiences to the job. We continue to learn throughout our careers, applying research and intervention strategies to client values. This is the advancement of clinical experience.

It can be a struggle for many occupational therapists to advance as in clinical experience. There may be issues such as time, cost, affordability, geographical limitations, availability of educational experiences, lack of information related to specific needs, frustration with finding online information, limited feedback from advance clinicians, increased effort and energy that goes into advancing as a professional, or restriction to access of research and evidence-based practices.

There are however, ways to advanced clinical experience and expertise as an occupational therapist in out-of-the-box manners.

Try some of these strategies to continue learning using traditional ways:

Community learning– Being part of a group of therapists can have a big impact on advancing as a clinical professional. When therapists connect in a small group, the ability to pass on clinical reasoning can be source for learning and passing on evidence-based practices. A community for learning can occur in various ways: an online setting, through the job, through local networking, or through other means.

Professional journal- Taking time out of each day or week to reflect on clinical experiences can have a big impact on advancing clinical expertise. Using that reflection time as a period to collect information either online or through other therapists can be one way to advance as a clinician. Creating short term and long term professional goals for oneself and creating a strategy to achieve those goals can help.

Roundtable meetups- Regular occupational therapist meetups can occur in a nontraditional manner. Consider a local meetup at a coffee shop or area college. Flyers can be distributed through local colleges and areas of workplace, added to social media, and shared among clinicians. Therapists can then meet for a set discussion in a laid-back setting such a coffee shop.

Collection of online resources- Having a collection of online resources related to specific job settings can be one way to store information. While there are many tools that can be used to store resources, imagine the possibility of connecting in collaborating with other therapists on the topic of expanding clinical expertise.

Each of these strategies are methods to develop and enhance the profession as occupational therapists. Advancing clinical practice as an occupational therapist is the reason The OT Toolbox Community was developed.

The OT Toolbox Community

As an integral part of The OT Toolbox website, The OT Toolbox Community promotes clinicians as a valuable “tool” for clients. By connecting and collaborating with other therapists, it is possible to exponentially enhance and promote the profession.

The OT Toolbox Community can be a means of networking with other therapists while allowing clinicians to bounce ideas off of one another. In the OT Toolbox Community, therapists can communicate and network with one another while asking and answering questions.

The OT Toolbox Community is a free resource for occupational therapy practitioners who struggle to find valuable resources in a timely and efficient manner. Seeking out and have answers to clinical questions can be a huge limit when it comes to time, energy, cost, and other issues.

The OT Toolbox Community provides a resource for therapist to connect with one another and collaborate on clinical questions. OTs and OTAs have the opportunity to ask questions related to specific their needs. Therapists can draw on clinical expertise to respond and answer other clinician’s questions. Imagine if many therapists joined together in sharing years of clinical expertise and resources and put them into one tool kit.

The OT Toolbox Community provides a one-stop location for navigating all of the information out there. It’s a place to access research. It’s a place to find best practice sources. It’s a place to promote collaborate, network, and mentor with one another as therapists.

The OT Toolbox Community is looking for you. Join hundreds of other occupational therapy professionals who have joined the community and are sharing questions, answers, resources, and valuable sources of clinical information.

A few facts about The OT Toolbox Community

Members are able to upload links to valuable resources that they have located online. These can be shared with other members and searched for by category. Check out the Resource Center and add one of your own.

Members are able to ask questions and answer questions. These are sorted by category to enable search queries in order to locate best practice answers in a timely manner. Stop over to the Question Forum and see if there is one that you can answer given your clinical expertise.

Members can upload their own documents and files to share with other therapists. This is a huge asset for data collection screenings and other sources of information for therapists.

Members can list job opportunities in the Job Area. Have a position open in your facility? Reach out to our large community of occupational therapy professionals and fill your positions fast!

Have an activity that you love using in treatment sessions? Snap a picture with your phone and share it as a Blog Post. It doesn’t have to be a fancy blog post…just share your idea with the community members.

Members can enhance the profession by sharing practice strategies that work!

In The OT Toolbox Community, all links, resources, questions, comments, and blog posts can be shared anonymously if you like.

Members can network and collaborate to enhance OT careers while building lasting relationships with colleagues.

There are more tools coming to The OT Toolbox Community very soon: an Evidence-Based Practice Library, mentor match ups, member badges, notification systems, and messaging options are just a few of the tools coming to the community!

As therapists, we know the value of self-reflection. Now, the ability to develop and grow in personal and clinical experience is right on your screen.

Stop by and join The OT Toolbox Community! It’s a thriving source of information for occupational therapist practitioners.

Thank you Colleen for sharing with our readers here at OTandGrowWithMe!

I am so excited to be a member of The OT Toolbox Community and reap all the awesome benefits as an OT advancing my skills and expertise!

Ready to Grow- Casey

Let’s Do It Write: Copying From the Board

I am so excited to be writing to you about a resource book of printables called Let’s Do It Write: Copying From the Board, by Gail Kushnir. This book is one I love and am implementing with my students. It is an AWESOME resource for visual activities. Let me tell you what I love! (And no – I am not being compensated for this..its just that good!)

1. It is easy to use and understand.
2. You can make COPIES to use endlessly!
3. There are lots of great activities and some of them have levels for grading the activity.
4. It is a building framework to help kids develop skills to be able to copy better from the board. It works on more than just visual skills, it also includes the working memory and processing, which is another struggle for lots of kids I see in the school setting.
5. It has great instructions to be shared and used with other staff or parents when giving ideas for how to help a child/student.

Some of my personal favorites!

   Lollipop spatial relations copying activity

Know any kids with b/d/p/q reversals? This activity is a great one for them. Have them work on this activity first and build up to do the same thing with those pesky letters that are so easy to reverse and confuse!

Alternating reading from near point and far point

This is great for building that working memory and making a child scan, converge the eyes up close and diverge the eyes to see something farther away. You start with using the pictures box and the student will read one picture from the board and the next from the paper. They continue this pattern until the end. Then you can progress to using the letter box. It works on LOTS of great skills.

Column Jumps

This activity is great for getting the eyes teaming together and moving back and forth across a page in a pattern called saccades. We have incorporated a balance beam with this task as well which provides increased challenge, but the kids enjoy it!

Visual Spatial Top Coloring

This activity is so fun! It works on on scanning and directionality of tops (another great activity to help with reversals). In addition you are getting skills built by putting pencil/crayon to paper for grip, fine motor, pressure and motor control.

This product is one that I would encourage any therapist to have in their tool box, especially if you are working in the school system. Parents with children who struggle with: reversals, copying information from the board, retaining visual information, skipping words when reading, losing their place when reading, visual tracking, hidden pictures, or other visual activities, this may be a great resource for you. The directions are easy to read and implement. Get yours by clicking here. No doubt this is a product you don’t want to miss out on!

Feel free to check out some other great resources Gail Kushnir has put together by clicking here.

Ready to Grow – Casey

Bilateral Skills with the Very Hungry Caterpillar

On the blog today I am here to share some fun bilateral coordination activities and how you can do these along with The Very Hungry Caterpillar book! Before start, I wanted to clarify what I mean by bilateral coordination. This term means how both (right and left) sides of the brain are communicating and able to create coordinated movements together. Tasks that require the coordination from both right and left sides of the body include tasks such as shoe tying, buttoning, lacing, beading, threading a needle, zipping a jacket, applying tooth paste to a tooth brush, holding paper while drawing, cutting, throwing a ball, holding a bowl while stirring…you get the idea! There are TONS of things we do daily that require two hands or arm/leg movements from right and left sides of the body simultaneously! So let’s see how we can work on building those skills (with a very fun book)!

Throwing at a Target

In this task the students identified, located or labeled different foods and practiced stepping with opposite foot of their throwing hand. We used small feet targets to help the kids know where to put their feet. We used the cue “right on red” and “left on yellow” to encourage proper positioning and reciprocal arm/leg movements when throwing the food into the Hungry Caterpillars mouth to “eat” like in our story!

Pinching Caterpillar Clothes Poms

In this activity the students were required to work on their pencil grasp and hand strength to squeeze clothes pins with thumb, index and middle finger of their writing hand. They were responsible for holding their paint stick and clipping the clothes pin on the correct food to match the story or request of the therapist. The sticks were two sides which made students work on following directions to “turn over” their stick and visually scanning to locate the matching food item to clip with their clothes pin “Caterpillar”. (We loved this activity shared by Fine Motor Boot Camp).

Pool Noodle Lacing Food

During this activity, students were required to work on skills for sequencing the food items the caterpillar ate from the story. We worked on visual discrimination to match the appropriate pool noodle “food” with the one pictured in the book. Students the. Had to build hand strength and fine motor skills for pencil grip by threading a caterpillar clothes pin through the pool noodle. The clothes pin acted as a “needle” passing through each noodle and creating resistance to build strength in those small hands. The idea of passing through the pool noodle also matches well with the story to fortify language concepts! This task worked on two handed skills as students hand to hold the noodle in one hand and thread the caterpillar through with the opposite hand.

Hoping you found some fun ideas to work on bilateral skills, perhaps work on the letter Cc and encourage comprehension/language concepts of a great childhood story!

Ready to Grow – Casey

Learning and Moving: The ABC’s of Active Learning®

Today on the blog I am SUPER excited to share with you a new resource from an awesome guest blogger, Ms. Laurie Gombash. Laurie is a physical therapist who has dedicated many years of her profession to increasing knowledge, research and resources to share in the therapy community! She has some wonderful resources, one of which I am happy to share with my readers today! It is a book called the ABC’s of Active Learning® and I have no doubt, you all will be as excited as I am about this new, awesome resource to get kids moving and learning at the same time! 

Words from our guest:

Thanks Casey for the opportunity to guest post and introduce your readers to my new book, the ABC’s of Active Learning®.  As a school based physical therapist, I have taken my passion for helping young children and have created a book unlike anything else. The book can stand alone or be a supplement to The ABC’s of Movement® activity cards that I created a few years ago.

My whole focus is to get kids moving and then learning. Unfortunately, many kids do not get the movement they need in order to learn. Movement enhances every aspect of a young child’s growth and development.  Children especially learn best when they are engaged in a literacy based curriculum that is enriched with the arts and movement.

The ABC’s of Active Learning© offers a multisensory approach to recognizing the alphabet and learning letter sounds. Each of the twenty six ABC’s of Movement alphabet letters is accompanied by suggestions for pre-literacy activities, a story, a fine motor craft, multisensory pre-writing activities that can be used and graded for learners of all abilities, skywriting instructions, sensory activities for taste and smell, and a gross motor game.

It’s fun, engaging, and filled with fresh ideas for multi-step crafts and movement activities that are fun for both children and adults. School support staff will especially appreciate activities that can be adapted to meld academic and therapeutic goals. Teachers and parents will have a book that makes academics fun. Grandparents and childcare providers will find the stories, crafts and movement activities great entertainment. The activity cards and book download are available at www.ABCsofMovement.com and the book is available at Amazon Books.

Laurie Gombash, PT, MEd has been a physical therapist for over thirty years.  Throughout her professional life, she has written and published numerous articles, performed research, and written two books on physical therapy related topics. In addition to her physical therapy degree, she has a Master of Education degree. Laurie is an experienced physical therapist who has a knack for turning ordinary items into fun therapeutic tools. She is also the brains behind The ABC’s of Movement®, and the webinars, Pushing into the Classroom: Practical Strategies for Pediatric Therapists & Creative Pediatric Treatment Strategies Based on the Evidence available through www.theInspiredTreehouse.com.

Letter B for Body Awareness

This past week we completed activities themed about the body for letter B. Activities included many skills during our OT – Language group in ECSE that I am super excited to share with you!

1. Book time: Sesame Street Shake a Leg

During this book the kids worked on following directions, motor imitation and body awareness.

2. Building Mr. Potato Head

During this take students worked to identify and label different body parts and locate where they went on Mr. Potato Head’s body.

3. Drawing Mr. Potato Head

To give extra practice and talk about the body, we had students use stickers and markers to draw their own Mr. Potato Head to take home and share with parents! They practice pencil grip, pre writing strokes, visual perception for body parts and fine motor skills to peel stickers. The drawing part of this task was geared toward student goals (lines, circles, square). Our example here is for a child working on imitating lines.

4.Boo Boo Betty

During this task, students peeled band aids and placed them on correct body parts on all of Betty’s Boo Boos. This was great fun for the kids and encouraged two hand skills to peel band aids apart.

5. Twister

We tried out a simplified version incorporating simple movements and following 1-2 step directions when playing twister. This activity built motor skills, motor planning and encouraged students to be more aware of their body in space.

It was a great week filled with fun activities to learn about the Body and the letter Bb!

Ready to Grow – Casey

Letter A 🍎 Apple Theme

Who doesn’t love themed activities to help inspire fun treatment planning?!

This week in our OT-Language group in early childhood classrooms we did an apple theme for working on letter A. I just couldn’t pass up sharing this with you all! Here were the activities we did and the targeted skills.

Apple Tissue Craft

When making this fun craft we worked on so many skills including:

 

1. Drawing circles and lines

2. Coloring in small shapes like the leaf

3. Bilateral skills for tearing tissue paper

4. Fine motor skills and hand strength for tearing tissue paper

5. Hand strength and pressure grading for using glue

6. Visual skills for keeping paper within the boundary lines.

Apple Tree Beading

For this activity we had students bead small red pony beads onto a pipe cleaner “Apple tree”. This activity targeted bilateral coordination skills as well as fine motor grasping skills. For our older students we worked on picking up 2-3 beads one at a time and then holding them in the hand while threading each bead one at a time. This works on translation skills (moving items into and out of your hand using your fingers) and separation of sides of the hand (you hold the extra beads in hand while using thumb, index and even middle finger to pull bead out of hand and put on tree).

Apple Says and Apple Toss

This was our fun gross motor station. We targeted lots of skills with these games. First we had the students follow 1-2 step directions to place foam apples at different places on or around their body (ex behind your back, on top your head, etc). This worked on auditory processing and motor planning. Next we had the students through the apples into the basket one at a time. We emphasized opposite arm/leg movements (stepping with opposite foot of throwing arm) which is good for bilateral integration and eye hand coordination for throwing.

Applesauce Drawing

This activity was filled with great sensory opportunities! We included skills for opening apple sauce containers, pouring and spreading the applesauce on the plate. Next we worked on copying shapes or writing words in the applesauce on the plates. Several kids enjoyed writing with their fingers. We had students with tactile aversions do this with qtips or paint brushes. Several kids were interested in trying their apple sauce. You could use this task for Sensory play in food as you work to reduce anxiety and aversions kids have with trying new foods and textures.

Parts of Apple craft

For this activity we had students cut half circles, glue three Popsicle sticks together to make an apple core and color in small black seeds with pencils on the Popsicle sticks. This task worked on bilateral coordination, cutting control, hand strength and motor planning, as well as fine motor control with pencil for coloring. It was also great for talking about all the parts of an apple for building language and vocabulary skills!

Ten Apples Up on Top

This activity incorporated our book for the week. We had kids work on number recognition and counting to place Apple clips on paint sticks like the apples that went up, up, up on top the animal heads like in the book. The clips targeted hand strength, pencil grip, and fine motor control.

Apple Worm Size Sorting

In this activity the students used their hand strength, fine motor and visual motor skills. Students worked to pull worms out of the apples and sort them by size. They then had to twist the worms back into the apple holes, which incorporated some great dexterity, 2 hand use, and hand strength.

 

Apple Tree Sorting

We used Apple stickers with upper case A and lower case A written on them. Some students sorted the stickers onto two trees to help with visual discrimination and fine motor skills. Other students used tongs and sorted red/green colored Apple erasers between two “Apple trees” made of paper and toilet paper rolls.

Apple Sensory Bag

In this activity the students moved red buttons around in a zip lock bag filled with green hair gel. The red buttons resembled apples and were used to build letters, shapes and pre-writing strokes while incorporating a fun tactile sensory task.

Hope these fun activities inspire some great letter A and fall apple theme activities!

Ready to Grow – Casey

Interactive Stories for Building Language and Motor Skills

Today on the blog I am sharing with you some ways to make your story and book time interactive to increase vocabulary skills, fine motor and bilateral skills, sensory processing, as well as increasing attention! These ideas can be implemented in your classroom, home or therapy groups!

Story Stones

These are a great way to let a child play and interact with “pieces” of the story. My example is with story stones I made for Ellie from The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I created stones to represent the caterpillar and all the fun things he eats. She works on scanning, counting and attending to the story when looking for the next stone with picture of what he eats next. You can do this lots of great stories such as The Three Little Pigs, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, or Ten Red Apples, just to name a few! If you don’t have stones you want to use, there lots of great options out there such as cut toilet paper rolls with pictures, pool noodles with pictures, bottle caps, or small magnet pictures to use on fridge or magnet board. (Check out my DIY magnet board for travel and home in this post: The Best Toys and Activities to Pack When Traveling with Kids !)

Sensory Books

This is a great way for kids to explore concepts from a book through touch sensation! It is a great strategy for hands on learners! You can be creative in what you use in your sensory bin to allow exploration, creation and great sensory input! Take this idea for example with using 5 Little Pumpkins! I have used candy pumpkins, pumpkin felt shapes or these soft Pom Pom pumpkins to have Ellie participate and play while we are reading the story! There are lots of great ideas for using sensory bins part of stories to have children digging to find parts of the story, lining up pieces of the story, putting pieces of the story into containers in the sensory bin, and much more!

Story Boxes

These are a favorite to use with my visually impaired students. You can place items that are part of the story in the box. As you read you present the items to the student so they can feel and explore the items you are taking about in the story. The story box I have created for Ellie this week is with Itsy Bitsy Spider! In this story he gets different items to try to get up to his spout. The spiders, goggles (glasses), umbrella and bouncy ball all represent things in the story that a child can feel as you are talking about how the spider used them! You could even add a spray bottle of water that you spray to represent rain! Another example would be placing a duck, feather, a small fan, mouse, or other items into a box to read the Silly Dilly Duckling book. You could also present small plastic animals for Old McDonald Had a Farm or 10 small bugs for Ten Busy Buzzy Bugs. The idea is to provide something for the child to feel to represent what they may not be able to see. This makes them use the tactile and auditory senses to create understanding of new vocabulary. You can also work on having the child reaching into the box to get the item and placing the item back in the box when finished to learn motor and cognitive concepts for “out” and “in”.

I hope these ideas give you some good inspiration and a great starting place for your own interactive book time! I would LOVE to hear your ideas so be sure to connect with me on my OT and Grow With Me social media (facebook, instagram, pinterest, twitter) by clicking the green heart icon above!

Ready to Grow – Casey

Fine Motor Stations: Ideas for Teachers and Parents

Opportunities for build necessary fine motor skills are everywhere! In this post I would like to share with you some ideas for fine motor stations you can do in your classroom or home to build those vital fine motor skills children are needing for writing, self help skills, and much more!

1. Tongs/tweezers with sorting
2. Pom push into container (cut hole in lid)
3. Inserting buttons or coins into a bank (picking up one at a time and inserting one at a time)
4. Eye droppers with bath suction cup toys (can also use pom poms and tongs/tweezers)
5. Card sorting into piles (colors, shapes, words)
6. Cutting straws
7. Stringing noodles, beads or pieces of cut straws
8. Placing marbles on top golf tees that are stuck in half a pool noddle or foam
9. Stickers
10. Penny flips (flipping pennies over on paper while trying to keep them in designated circles to form a pattern)
11. Tracing around items (lids, coins, blocks, etc)
12. Cutting station
13. Dressing boards with buttons, snaps, zippers, tying
14. Twist tie crafts
15. Poke bin with golf tees, straws, skewers, tooth picks, pool noodles, etc
16. Digging heads out of putty and sorting
17. Sorting cereal (fruit loops) into cups or onto strings based on color
18. Tearing tape to make picture
19. Stuffing envelopes (letter on cards and letter on envelopes and you can make the task into a sorting, matching or letter identification task)
20. Playdoh, foam, putty, etc used to build letters
21. Scooping and transferring poms into correct color tube (using toilet paper rolls and small scooping spoons)
22. Stacking small dice
23. Tissue paper art with crumpling tissue paper
24. Hole punching paper, paper towel rolls, paper plates, etc
25. Lacing string through punched holes in paper plates, paper or paper towel rolls
26. Rolling dice
27. Color matching pieces of paper and fastening with paper clips
28. Sorting papers into matching folders based on colors, shapes, words, letters, etc
29. Alphabetizing words on index cards in filing box
30. Playing with tops
31. Twisting nuts and bolts together
32. Playdoh with uncooked spaghetti stuck in it for lacing cherrios/fruit loops on
33. Sorting colors of small items into ice trays, candy trays or muffin pans using tongs
34. Making tissue paper art with small pieces of tissue paper crumpled in digits
35. Rolling wiki sticks into balls and then unrolling
36. Rolling Playdoh into ball using only thumb, index and middle finger of same hand
37. Stamping activities with smaller stamps to facilitate tripod grasp
38. Drawing patterns, lines, shapes, letters on paper with marker and have child build the lines shapes (using proper directions of working left to right/top to bottom) with buttons or other small items
39. Building legos to match a model
40. Using clothes pins to match colors, letters, numbers or shapes.
41. Using clothes pins as tongs to pick up items
42. Building with toothpicks, marshmallows and gumdrops
43. Threading pipe cleaners into plastic golf balls (or other items with holes)
44. Q-tip painting, tracing or drawing using paint or stamp pads
45. Building numbers, shapes, letters or lines with pom poms, magnet discs, buttons, beads or other small items
46. Using Lima beans with letters on them to build words
47. Writing in Playdoh
48. Painting with water colors with goal to stay inside circles or other shape boundaries and match paint color to shape boundary color
49. Coloring tips of q-tips and threading them into straws – matching color of tips to color of straws
50. Placing small dots of glue on dots to build shapes, letters, numbers, lines, etc (you can put coloring in glue to make it colored and a fun art project).
51. Pushing paper clips into Playdoh (can include color sorting clips into matching Playdoh)
52. Yarn wrapping around shapes, sticks, cut outs of flowers or leaves
53. Clothes pin letter matching Station with laminated abc strip
54. Cutting Playdoh
55. Writing in sand or salt
56. Sorting money
57. Lacing letter beads on pipe cleaners to make words
58. Geoboard used to build figures or match items from right and left side (matching items might be shapes, letters, figures, numbers, etc)
59. Building a maze with Wikki sticks, pull and peel twirlers, qtips or uncooked spaghetti noodles
60. Threading small foam squares on squiggle straws (can incorporate color matching as well).
61. Passing coins through button holes (works on two hands used for pushing buttons through holes
62. Tying knots with string
63. Cutting toilet paper rolls
64. Matching twist lids with appropriate bottles
65. Painting with small sponge or pom pom

I hope you find these ideas easy to implement and perhaps they inspire you to look for simple ways to increase fine motor practice in your classroom  or home every day!

Ready to Grow – Casey

The Best Toys and Activities to Pack When Traveling with Kids

Hello Friends! So excited you are here to learn about some AWESOME travel toys and activities for kids! We all know it can be a challenge when taking a long (or even a short) ride with kiddos. That’s why myself and some amazing blogger friends have paired together some GREAT ideas for you! I hope you enjoy my ideas shared below, and then find your way to even more ideas on some new OT blog sites! Perhaps ones you can return to time and time again for great resources and info when loving and caring for your kids as they grow! Let’s get started!!