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This episode is for you if you work with children that have limited interest in toys. Perhaps they're interested in puzzles, or cause-effect toys, or sound-making toys, piggy banks, ball chutes, or maybe they're just interested in dinosaurs, or they're just interested in trains, or they're just interested in vehicles or animals and little else.
These are children where we really wanna expand the repertoire of play activities. We wanna expand the repertoires of toys that they're going to explore. And the reason for that is the research indicates that children that have a greater variety of toys and a greater variety of play experiences have better outcomes later on.
So we really do want to encourage novelty, new experiences, diversity, because we know that novelty is the spice of new neuronal connections.
So how are we going to do that? I am going to give you a look behind the scenes. We're going BTS this summer. We're really going behind the scenes, and I'm showing you what I do behind the scenes to encourage an, a greater variety of play skills and more complex play skills to develop greater joint attention, greater communication skills, greater executive function skills, greater language skills, greater motor skills.
How we can treat the whole child by moving away from that cause-effect stage, moving away from that sensory toy stage, moving away from that limited repertoire of highest interest activities only, and expanding upon that through task-oriented movement activities. I'm gonna show you how I bridge today to move from those limited interest, highest interest toys to a higher level of more complex play that is going to treat the whole child.
So this is a very important episode. I've been stuck- In the past, when I first started out as a speech language therapist, in that cause effect bin, in that highest interest activity bin, in the sensory toy bin, and I've been unable to move out. And what I've seen is, is when you get stuck in that bin, not only are you stuck with the same toys, you're limiting the child's learning experience overall.
There's a cascade in which because their exploration is always the same, it's the same activity, it's the same toy, it's going to be very difficult to build new language experiences, new cognitive experiences, new social experiences, new play experiences, executive function experiences. So there's a lot that is very limiting if you're staying in that box Of highest interest activities, sensory toys, cause-effect toys.
It's really important as a speech language pathologist or, uh, or any other type of professional teacher that you expand their repertoire of play activities and the complexity of play. So I'm really excited for today's episode. I am going to give you a three-step process. Now, don't worry, step one is not gonna be get rid of those cause-effect toys, get rid of those highest interest activities.
We are going to take those, and we are going to use those as a bridge in developing task-oriented movement activities, the next step of play.
So the first thing I'm gonna encourage you to do, and school is starting for some of you very soon, is to go ahead and use those highest interest activities, go ahead and use those sensory toys, go ahead and use that cause-effect toys.
What you wanna do is you wanna build rapport at this time. I have a parent input form that you could download. I, I'll put the link in my show notes. That parent input form, when you first meet the child, you are going to find out what the child's interests are. This is very important. What are the child's favorite activities, favorite books, favorite songs?
You want those toys when you meet the child on day one. You want those go-to toys that all children love that are going to be in that box. I have it in a a little bin, and I have it covered by a quilt, so it's in reach at all times, right?
So if I need to pull out my ace in the, in the pack when I'm losing the child or I'm trying to develop rapport with the child, I know these are go-to toys that are super high interest for many kiddos, and I know what the child's high interests are. I always have those on hand.
There's times where I might need to pull out my ace. So you have that on hand, but you have it covered with a quilt. It's out of sight, so the child can explore new toys and new activities. Now, in the beginning, we are gonna meet the child where they are. If they are in a sensory cause-effect highest interest toys, that's what they know, that's their comfort zone.
Use those toys and build rapport. And you know what? Give the child time. You might spend the first month Using the highest interest toys and building rapport. That's going to pay off. We are going to front load relationship first. Don't worry, we're gonna have plenty of time to build the complexity of their play, to build the complexity of their experiences, to build executive function.
We're gonna have plenty of time for that. Right now, it's all about relationship building. So step one is go ahead and look at the parent input form that you can download from my show notes. Look at, I have a wonderful parent input form. That is gonna be key. The most important information on that parent info- input form is what are the child's favorite toys, what are the child's favorite activities, child's favorite TV shows, child's favorite characters.
You are gonna bring that out on day one. That is going to be your flowers. That is going to be what you use to make a good first impression, and first impressions matter. That is what you're gonna rely on that first month when you're building a rapport with the child. It's all about the interaction. Now we're going to go into step two.
Step two is where we're going to use these highest interest toys, these highest interest activities, We're going to use that as a bridge into task-oriented movement activities, and I'm gonna share with you three ways that I've used it effectively to bridge children into the next step of task-oriented movement activities.
Now, when we talk about task-oriented movement activities, we're gonna talk about, for instance, what I use in my SIS membership. So this was this last week, we did the Little Blue Truck book. You don't need the book, of course. And here we have the animals, and here, if you see this on YouTube, we have vehicles from the Little Blue Truck.
So I'm gonna show you in the Little Blue Truck how I would, the... I'll use this as an example. This is what we used this week, how I would use this activity, and I would blend it in with the sensory activity. Okay? So instead, I'm really taking you behind the scenes. This is what my caseload is like. I work with, I specialize in working with children with autism, children who are minimally speaking, children who have regulation and sensory issues, and this is their first school experience.
So I'm going to, to bridge it, and it's really nice having these SIS task-oriented movement activities that I set up every week because I have the next step. I have the more complex plus one where I'm gonna see them. If you don't have that readily available, a lot of times both the therapist and the child can get stuck in the bin of sensory toys, cause-effect toys, highest interest activities.
They can get stuck there. So it's really nice to have right on hand, this is the next step task that we're going to go into. Now I'm going to show you right now how I would take this task, like the Little Blue Truck with the animals and the vehicles and those characters. You don't need the book. And I would blend .
So the first, this is one strategy that you can use here, is I can use the sensory as the check, the sensory toy, right? So here in the little blue truck, I'm gonna have, oh, no, we have the dump truck stuck in the dirt, and I can take a little toy dump trucks, and we can stick it in the bin of beans, and we're playing with the beans, right?
A lot of times when I'll do something like this, I might use a song like Hi Ho the Dairy-O. So I might say something like, the truck is stuck in the beans, the truck is stuck in the beans. Hi, Ho the Dairy-O, the truck is stuck in the beans. Who can help him? Now, I might have a blue truck, and now I'm taking the blue truck, right?
And I'm using that blue truck that we're gonna put in the beans, is now we're gonna take the blue truck stuck in the beans. The blue truck stuck in, truck in the beans. So here I have this task-oriented movement activity. I have, if you're not seeing this because you're listening to the podcast, I have on Velcro the picture of all that are gonna help the dump truck, right?
And the child's just going to, after they get the blue truck, they're just gonna go ahead and stick that sticker on as a check. They did that one. So what we're really taking advantage of is the visual processing skills and the visual scanning skills. And many of our children with autism, which is why we teach tasks that are so popular, they like matching.
They're gonna match on that blue truck after they put it in the beans, and I'm gonna go ahead and make up a tune. I'm gonna sing the song, Hi-ho, the dairy-o. The blue truck helps the dump truck, right? So now they're both stuck in the beans. And then I'll go ahead and grab out the next one. So it's gonna be the cow.
The cow's gonna help the truck so then we're gonna say the cow's gonna help the truck. Now you're getting it. So I'm singing the Hi-ho, the dairy-o tune. We have the beans, which is that sensory activity, and the child is gonna take the cow in the beans. The cow helps the truck, right? So then they're gonna go ahead and stick the cow sticker on.
So what I'm doing is we have a task in which we have all of these animals help get the dump truck, out of the mud, right? We can say instead of the beans, in the mud. I'm sorry. We're pretending it's mud instead of beans. So I'm gonna go through all the animals. The child gets to put each of the animals in the bean, and here we have this task-oriented movement activity in which they're gonna go ahead and stick on, on this little blue truck all of the animals that are gonna help.
And then at the end, they pull, and they pull. They all help the dump truck, and now the dump truck gets unstuck and you're just singing a song as you go. So what I'm showing you here is how I'm using the task-oriented movement activity as a checklist. We're putting the stickers on to check that, okay, this helped, now this animal helped, now this animal helped, and this animal helped.
So this is one way we can take that simple sensory activity of playing in beans and making rain and making cups, and we're merging that sensory activity into a task-oriented m- movement activity in which all of these vehicles and all of these animals are helping the dump truck get out of the mud. I call it the beans, but I'll pretend it's the mud, right?
There's gonna be brown coffee beans that I'll be using. So this is a way that maybe the next child I work with, we're using the story of the little blue truck, and we're going ahead and doing a more traditional approach without the beans, but this is a way that I can bridge, that task-oriented movement activity into the sensory.
So let's look at another way we can bridge sensory to task-oriented movement activity, and that is using movement bangs, so movement breaks. So what I'm gonna do here is we can use movement throughout this activity, and the way that we can use movement is I can go ahead and have the beans over, the beans that we're gonna call the mud, we can have that be a few feet away, and the child's going to go up and walk over and put it in, and then come back to the table each time.
Interspersing movement into it is going to keep the child's attention so that they're not sitting this whole time and having to have that stamina of go through this whole activity that has, what is it, have nine or 10 different vehicles or animals helping out. So they can go over to the beans, and they can come back, so there's movement interspersed within the activity.
We can, we still have the sensory. We still have the beans. We still have the stickers. We still have the animals. It's all in there. We just have a movement piece to maintain their attention. So the research does indicate that when you add these movement breaks, you're going to increase the child's attention.
Our research has also shown that movement increases the vocalizations that come out of the mouth for children who are minimally speaking with autism So a third way we can bridge toward the task-oriented movement activity and moving away from that sensory and cause-effect things, is that we can swap the theme, but keep the structure.
So for instance, maybe we're looking at this theme, maybe the child is not interested in farm animals, and maybe the child is also not interested in vehicles. But maybe the d- the, the child is very interested in dinosaurs. So we're gonna take that high-interest activity of dinosaurs, and we're going to use that instead, and the task-oriented movement activity is still the same.
There's gonna be a dinosaur stuck in the mud. The dinosaur could be the Tyrannosaurus rex, right? So we could say, the T-rex is stuck in the mud, the T-rex is stuck in the mud. Hi-ho the derry-o, the T-rex is stuck in the mud, and we put him in the mud. Then we go and we get the next one. Who's gonna help the T-rex?
And then we can get the Pteranodon. The Pteranodon comes and helps. The Pteranodon comes and helps. Hi-ho the derry-o, the Pteranodon comes and helps. So what we're doing instead is we're not just doing the same activity we always do, in which the child has all of their dinosaurs and they line them neatly up, repetitively manner.
Instead, we're taking the dinosaurs and we're acting out that the dinosaurs are each stuck in the mud, and they, they need help, and they're digging, digging, digging. We can have them dig, dig, dig, to try to get the T-rex out. You can have them digging in the mud, digging in the mud, and then you suddenly have all the different dinosaurs digging in the mud.
It's the same activity, you just swapped out that highest interest for the theme of the week. So maybe everyone else's theme of the week is farm animals. That child's not there yet, but the child is engaging in the same activity. You're swapping out their high-interest dinosaurs instead of the farm animals.
Now, why are we using these high-interest activities, is because the research indicates for children with ADHD and for children with autism, if you incorporate their interest, they're going to learn more quickly, and they're gonna remember what they've learned.
So there's definitely a benefit to not throwing out the baby with the bathwater and saying, "Okay, this week we're doing a theme on farm animals. Come on and jump on in and do this activity that I set up." Instead, we're bridging. Once again, when I talk about bridging, we're talking about how we can, number one, there's three ways that I'd share with you that I like to bridge.
Number one, we can take the activity, and we can incorporate a sensory cause-effect element. So maybe for instance, if the child loves puzzles, we can use a farm animal puzzle, and we can put within the sensory bin, the child pulls out the Falls out from the sensory bin the cow, and the child puts the cow on the Melissa & Doug sound-making puzzle, and they hear that sound, bump, bump, blah, blah, blah.
So there's that, that integration of the cow, you know, helps push the truck. The cow helps push the truck, and then they take out the pig. The pig helps push the truck, and they get that reward because they get that sound-making puzzle they like, but you're introducing it within a task-oriented movement activity in which you have a goal, and in case, this case, the goal is to get the truck out of the mud, and you have all of these animals and another vehicle helping do it.
We're just doing it with a sensory component. We have the beans. You might have the sound-making puzzle. The second way we can bridge in to, to introduce task-oriented movement activities is have movement. So once again, with movement, if the child is not really interested, like I'll have this stuck across the room, and they go across an obstacle course, simple or more complex.
If this isn't fun, this kind of puzzle on the wall type of thing for them, I could easily just have the Melissa & Doug puzzle over five feet away, and they walk over, and they put in the animal, makes a sound. They come back to the table, they get a new animal, they put it over. You still have that task-oriented movement activity.
You're taking all the animals. They're all gonna come to help out to get the truck out of the mud, and everyone works together, and finally, the dump truck comes out of the mud, if you don't know the story of The Little Blue Truck. The third way we could do this is, once again, I said, by swapping the theme that you're using.
So as I mentioned before, okay, maybe the child is really interested in superheroes, so instead, we have one of the superheroes stuck in the mud, and y- then you have another superhero come and help him, another superhero come and help him, another superhero come and help him. So you use what the child loves, but you still have that same theme in which, oh, no, one of them's stuck in the mud, but we're all gonna work together and help him, and then they're gonna come out.
So this is a way that we're taking that simple cause-effect, simple sensory that lacks that imaginary play, that lacks that purposeful solving a problem, multiple step component that that task-oriented movement activities have. We're going to go ahead and bridge the sensory, the cause-effect, the highest interest to get to that next step.
And then over time, we can fade out these modifications that we make, and the child, after knowing this routine of how to do the task-oriented movement activities, after becoming familiar with them, enjoying them, we can go and expand to new, whatever this is the theme that we're introducing this week, and the child is ready to go and engage in that.
Instead of going from 0 to 100, where you have a child that is only engaging in their highest interest activities or the highest interest sensory activities or the highest interest cause-effect activities, and you're moving to them to, "This is our activity that I've set up this week. Come on, let's go.
Let's do it." Instead of going from 0 to 100, you're going from 0 to 50 to 100 over time, okay? When the child is ready, you're going to fade out those individualized modifications because the child won't need them anymore. But it's important to, A, meet the child where they are, B, provide those individualizations using their highest interest toys, and then, C, slowly fade them out over time.
The goal in all of this is always to provide a greater variety of complex experiences for the child. We've got to give them that plus one, but we can do it very slowly, and we can do it very gently. And always remembering of front-loading me. The best mistake you could make is spending too much time following the child's lead and building relationship in the beginning and not really challenging the child, but focusing on interacting with the child and focusing on engagement and enjoyable learning experiences.
So now we're going to go to step three. This is what's really neat about task-oriented movement activities. There's a very clear story. There's a beginning, there's a middle, there's an end. When you do a task-oriented movement activity, there's always gonna be there's a problem, then you make a plan, and then you take action, and then you're going to check it to completion.
So giving you an example using the little blue truck for the CIS membership for instance, we have a problem, and the, the problem is that the dump truck is stuck Then after that, this is executive function. We're gonna make a plan, and the plan is to get it out of the mud. So we're gonna take action, and the action is that we're going to help the dump truck by pushing it out of the mud.
And then after that, we're gonna go and check our checklist. So if you know children with executive function issues, they have problems in one or all of these areas. That is what's really neat about the task-oriented movement activities. You are addressing each of these areas and practicing each of these areas explicitly.
In addition to that, it builds the story narrative availability. Narratives are so powerful. So when we think about narratives, think that this is w- how you're going to have the greatest impact on the child's language development. I like to put all of my As in the narrative basket because it improves so many aspects of language.
It improves the vocabulary, it improves the grammar, it improves the syntax, it improves the social pragmatic piece of language. It improves the, very important, it improves the verbal, uh, verbal working memory. So which, verbal working memory is a hallmark deficit of children with developmental language disorders.
This is something that is an area that is challenging for children from preschool age throughout adulthood. So narratives are very, very special. It's time very, very well spent for children with developmental language disorder. And what we do w- in our SIS membership, for instance, is we have a script of how you do the activity.
Step one, st- first, step two, next, step three, then, and step four, lastly. We use those conjunctions repeatedly in the beginning so that they become automatic, so that children know how to scaffold their ideas in a logical, chronological order. They're able to use these billion-dollar words, these conjunctions, and they're able to take their ideas at a later time and plug them in so that when they encounter, which the research indicates they will, social obstacles, academic obstacles, emotional obstacles.
The research indicates children with developmental language disorder will encounter exponentially more of these issues than their neurotypical peers. They're going to be able to name it and frame it, as Peter Siegel says, to tell a story about it So te- narrative a- abilities are so important, and what we do within our SIS membership, for instance, I'm giving you a l- a lot of behind-the-scenes today, is we'll say, "First, you..."
And then we go through it. So what we're gonna do, you know, first, you're gonna pick the sticker. Next, you're gonna cross the bridge. Then, you're gonna put it on. Lastly, you're gonna check the checklist. And that's how we start. It's very springboard. It's very... It's written in print for you, and you're given all of the prompts, and then we fade the prompts away, and the child starts producing their own stories of how we're going to play the game.
But in the beginning, it's a maximum level of cueing. It's, uh, that is how we develop narratives. There's this maximum level of s- cueing. You're holding the baby, then you're holding out your fingers to help them walk, and then you're pulling the fingers back, and they're on their own. So it's very exciting how these activities lend themself naturally to improving executive function explicitly and acting out each of these steps of executive function, and also very, very importantly, to developing narrative skills early on when the neuroplasticity in the brain is highly malleable and really building that verbal working memory.
This is very, very powerful stuff that treats the whole child. But today, what I want you to take away from it is to no longer get stuck in the sensory bin, no longer get stuck in that bin of only the highest interest activities, no longer get stuck in that bin of the cause-effect toys, the piggy bank, the chute, even the bubbles, you know, these same activities over and over again.
Because a lot of times, these same activities are eliciting, is they're eliciting the same movements in the body, the same ideas in the brain, the same language forms and functions. So it's very limiting if you're going to stick with these very restricted, limited group of activities that you're gonna engage with the child throughout the school year.
You gotta have a plan. What's nice is having this plan, what I'm sharing with you today, is the bridge, but you also have to have these activities ready to go. You need to have them on hand, just like you need to have these lower level activities ready to go for when children are having a really rough day, and it's like, this is not the day to challenge the child.
This is the day where we take it down a level. And it's nice to have that bin with a quilt over it that the children don't see, but it's in your reach, not the child's, and you're able to pull it out as necessary. But it's also, more importantly, nice to have that next step. That next step is ready for when you can bridge the child to more complex play to, uh, to expand their interest, to expand the activities, to expand the v- vocabulary, expand the syntax, expand the grammar.
It's, so it's really important to have variety In the activities you provide, in variety in the toys you provide. In stories and songs are a great way to do that. So I want you to do what you do best, which is to roll up your sleeves and make the world a better place one child at a time. You are always gonna be first.
Now, before I end this episode, I want to remind you, if you haven't taken it already, make sure to take my AAC survey. It is in the show notes. I am, am so excited by so far what we have here. What I have have is I have, I've had the survey open for a week now, and we already have over 100 participants, and the neat thing is the completion rate is over 90%.
This survey is not very short. I'm gonna be honest with you. It's a comprehensive AAC survey. I wrote all of the items myself, and if I do say so myself, a lot of them you're gonna find to be quite thought-provoking. I used a grounded research study in asking people who are using high-tech AAC on the front lines, and I interviewed these people for very long interviews, and from that information, I think that I came up with some very good, deep survey questions that I would love for you to answer.
When you answer the survey questions, y- when you're finished with the survey, and I'm not gonna lie with you, this is a long survey. This is a commitment. It makes me happy that we have over 90% of people completing the survey. That's really important. I need you to complete the survey so I can use what you've said.
When you complete the survey, you are going to immediately receive in your inbox an AAC toolkit. So you're gonna have all of this at your fingertips when you go back to school in the fall. What are you gonna have at your fingertips? You are gonna have an AAC goal bank. This is 64 goals that yours truly had written, and it also has the objectives for each of the goals that you can modify for your own children.
This is written in English, Arabic, and Spanish so that you can share this with parents that are n- English language learners, and you can discuss the goals in advance. That's only one thing that you get in the AAC implementation toolkit. Another thing you get is an AAC storybook training. So this is how to use high-tech devices with storybooks, and this is a shareable link you can share with parents In English, it's in Spanish subtitles, and it's also in Arabic subtitles.
So I want you to be able to share it with your English language learning families for them to benefit. The third thing that you're gonna get, and this is very, very cool, it's a frequently asked questions about high-tech AAC devices, and this is in English, and this is also in Spanish and Arabic. So all of this is going to arrive at your inbox, in your inbox the minute you complete the survey.
Now, the important thing is you need to complete the survey. When you complete the survey, you're gonna receive the link to press on, then you go ahead and put in the email. Then this is an email for you to simply receive the survey. That's all you're doing. It's an email that you're gonna receive the survey.
That's it. That's all that's happening with this email. You're not added to any lists or anything like that. For you to immediately receive the AAC implementation toolkit with these three great things. What I... My hope for the AAC toolkit that I've put probably 1,000 hours of work into, right? Is that it makes your job easy.
This isn't about you doing more, it's about you sharing important information with parents, with your colleagues, for yourself to use, that makes this easier. It's not easy implementing high-tech AAC. I know. If anyone knows this, it's me. It's not easy. You have lots of different high-tech AAC programs that you're using.
You have a lot of different, what is it? Variables that impact how effective you're going to be at it that are outside of your control. But this is inside of your control. When we know better, we do better. This is about knowing better. This is about parents knowing it better. This is about us knowing better.
This is about having more communication when it comes to high-tech AAC and not using any of your time or resources, which I know are very limited. I am just here to do what I can to make high-tech AAC easier. So from the information from your surveys, I am going to be using this to help develop materials that I want to share with you, content that I want to share with you, that makes high-tech AAC easier to implement at school and in the home.
I need your opinions. I need your experiences. I need to know what you know in a look from your back porch. So this is a national survey. We're getting information in from all over the country. I've been so happy with how many people have completed the survey. It's a solid 15 to 20 minutes. It's a real commitment, but I actually think you're gonna enjoy taking the survey.
I think you're gonna find it very thought-provoking. I think the questions are going to make you pause for a minute and think about how you might want to DSD, do something different. Because I know for me, the survey questions did not come from me and my ideas. The survey questions came from me interviewing eight sp- speech pathologists and teachers from the field and having hour-and-a-half-long interviews with each of them.
So this, uh, these, these, these were very extensive, very in-depth interviews, and then what I did is, from these interviews, I took out the jewels. I took out the treasures from these interviews, and then I thought, "How can we tweak this? This is very thought-provoking, and how can we make this a survey question so I can learn, is this something that is valid?
Is this something that is happening around the US?" So I'm so excited to find out what's happening from your back porch, and I really need your help on this. So make sure in the show notes to click on that survey, and if you click on the survey, make sure to complete it to the end. It is a commitment.
This is a 15- to 20-minute-long survey. It's super comprehensive. But I think you're gonna enjoy taking the survey. If you're interested in AAC, yeah, I think you're gonna find it to be an actually fun experience. And the minute you're done, you're gonna put in your email, and you're going to go ahead and receive the AAC Implementation Toolkit.
And like I said about the AAC Implementation Toolkit, that's all you're gonna receive. Y- your email's not gonna be used for anything else. It's simply going to be used to get the goods. So- Please make sure to complete the survey. It's not gonna be open for long. I wanna make sure to get your opinion on AAC.
I think it's going to be very valuable for you if you work with children's AAC to consider when you take this survey different things that we could do differently when you take the survey and different aspects of AAC, and it's going to leave you with new thoughts for what you can do differently, I believe, in September.
So that said, go ahead, shine on, and make sure to take the AAC survey in your show notes. Thanks so much. I'll see you next week.
Yeah. She's Brian shell. She'll get, yeah, she's Brian. She.
