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Handwriting Without Tears

Because our children are doing so well, we are at a place to really be diving into some pre-k skills. With that, are the skills necessary for writing and tracing. This presented us with a wonderful opportunity to learn from our OT about a great program called Handwriting Without Tears (HWT). I was somewhat familiar with from teaching in the public school, but I had never seen or tried the pre-k HWT. This program is designed to teach kids letters and is the precursor to writing.







Part of the pre-k program is these wooden pieces that can be manipulated to make every letter of the alphabet.

At first the child is given only the pieces necessary to make the letter and in the correct order that you would write.

The children then make the letters. This gets them ready for skills like tracing and writing.










All of the HWT manipulatives can be purchased to have your own set, but how's this for an easy AND inexpensive trick?!?

Card stock! The card stock is stronger than regular paper.

We are looking forward to more writing skills and posts on how our children are progressing! Thanks to our OT for taking the time to show us and the kids all about Handwriting Without Tears!

Team Teaching or Co-treating

For those of you in the educational world, you are familiar with team teaching; those of you in the therapy world are familiar with co-treating. Essentially what we are doing everyday in Bridges is exactly that! It's one big long day of team teaching and co-treating. Today was such a wonderful example of that! Currently, we are running summer camps- a little different than our school year Bridges program. We did this to accomodate the need for school age children to participate in our program. We run 2 week long mini units. This session is zoo animals (I'll be posting some resources we used later).

Our amazing speech pathologist knew what the unit was and together we were able to adapt an activity for the whole group. She was treating a boy who's speech goals include following directions, turn taking, giving directions, and asking questions. Today we played the game Uno Moo , which is the cuttest game! It fit into our animals theme, the whole group was able to participate, AND she addressed a wide variety of speech goals.

The open communication made the activity so easy and took little (if any really) planning to make it all work in our day. I have been lucky enough to see several examples of this from our PTs and OT, but I had it on my mind today that I wanted to write about this and it just appeared so perfectly today!

Working with others

Part of the transdisciplinary approach is working with others. I am working side by side with physical, occupational, and speech therapists. I need to know what my student's goals are in every domain of development. It's a lot to keep up on, but well worth it in the end. This is a video of one of my students. She and her family have taken full advantage of the Bridges program and what we offer at The Therapy Place.

Emma's Video

Keeping schedules straight about who sees who and when and for how long can be a crazy process! I'll be posting some organizational tips-- which have taken almost a full school year to evolve! But, bear in mind that it is for the children and not whatever it easiest for you as the teacher. This video speaks more on our approach than my words could ever do!

Happy 4th of July!!

Bridges is blogging

A small introduction:

My name is Erin and I am an early childhood special education teacher. I work at a wonderful place, called The Therapy Place, a pediatric therapeutic center! I run a program called Bridges. Bridges is a holistic transdisciplinary program for children with special needs. We use the skills, knowledge, and expertise of physical, occupational, and speech therapists, as well as special educators, parents, early interventionists, and any other professionals in the child's life. It's called transdisciplinary because we all work together as a team to decide the child's plan of care.

Here's basically how it works:

Research has shown that this is the best model for early intervention and education, however most people, places, and institutions can't achieve it. Why can we? Simple really, we have people working for the children that love their job and love these kids! It is truly a blessing to work with people who want every child to succeed in every aspect of their life.

I use a preschool curriculum called Play & Learn and I tailor activities from other educators, blogs, and I can't even begin to say how many activities I've gotten off of pinterest!

There are not many blogs out there dedicated to early childhood special education, and I hope to fill some that void. Many special educators do not get the luxury of working with therapists everyday the whole day, and I am so lucky I have that opportunity. I hope to share with you the knowledge I have gained and continue to gain from working with such wonderful people.

On a personal note, I am in my first year of this position and it's been more amazing than I could have ever imagined.  Thank you for sharing in this journey!!!!