When homework is tricky

Sensory integration

﻿In today's lesson, we are going to look at homework, and some helpful tips to make it easier for our movement sense. We as therapists have tried to think of the best way to continue to support children, young people and their families. We will be exploring topic areas that we regularly provide advice and support on across all ages and abilities. Each lesson will have ideas and activities that can be carried out at home or in school. This information is to be used alongside any specific strategies or resources which have been given by your child's school or therapist. If you have any questions or would like help tailoring this to your child's needs, then please contact your local therapy service. When homework is tricky, it can be really difficult for us especially when our body feels really tired or when we have so much energy that we would rather do something different. So what are we going to do for this lesson Is you going to need to have some papers, some coloured felt tip pens and some coloured paper. And so I want you to pause this video now and get everything ready and then we're going to press play again. Great! So ,let's just remind ourselves what our movement sense does and how it can make us feel. So movement can be scary when we have something called Gravitational Insecurity and that means when our feet lift up from the floor, it can be hard for us. So there's all sorts of things that can be difficult When we do homework, it may be when you are sitting on a chair and your feet are dangling that may make you feel a little bit worried. And when you get dizzy and carsick, that's something that can happen when your movement sense is not quite registering and processing information and that can be really uncomfortable especially if you have to go to afterschool clubs or do some extra, you know, just driving home from school, may be times when you feel carsick. And it could also be that you just don't get dizzy at all. And what that means is that you can keep on spinning and you'd never get dizzy or you keep on doing lots of movements and you just never get enough. That may be something else that happens that can make homework difficult especially when you have to focus on what you are doing. And then in the last final fourth place, it could be that, you know, you can be always on the go and that means that you may not register movement very quickly and you need a lot of movement. So it may be that before you do any homework tasks especially if you have to sit still that you may want to do a little exercise regime beforehand, because that will help your body to be alert and calm when you have to sit down for long periods of times. So let's have a look and find out what your movement preference is. You going to need to ask your parents to do this activity with you, And this activity is called Favourite position. So what are you going to do is I'm going to ask you to pause the video here to complete the task. So what I want you to do is you going to just to draw some pictures on a piece of paper and you can colour that in. So you can do that by sitting, you can stand up, you can stay in one place, you can have different pieces of papers all over the room and maybe go do one bit here and then when you finish you go to another bits of this, a little bit of movement in between, you may also want to have a movement break and what that is, is when you stop your activity, you move away from the table and you maybe do three different movement things. So that could be doing some jumping jacks. Maybe you want to do some wall pushups. Maybe you want to do a quick catching and throwing game if that works for you, or maybe you just quickly want to run outside the garden to the end of the garden and run back and then you carry on with whatever you doing. So in this case it will be drawing a picture. And I want you to really have a chat with your parents or carer and just have a chat about what works well for you. So once you're finished with this activity, press play and we will carry on with this lesson. Great! So here's a few tips that you may want to keep in mind. So these are for both when you are over responsive to movement and when you are under responsive to movement. So I think by now you may have figured out a little bit, in terms of movement, what your preference is. So you may want to find a quiet space with a clear wall in front of you. You may want to use a chair with legs and arms and the back to keep you in one position and help your posture. You may want to sit with your feet on the floor or on a footstool which will also make it a little bit more stable. On the other hand, you may want to play the popcorn seat game and before you start your homework or you want to maybe sit on a gym ball if you someone who is looking for more movement, while you have to do sitting down tasks. Sitting on a stool without a back also challenges your movement system to keep on moving and thinking about what it's doing. So that may help, especially if you're under responsive. Maybe sitting on a swivel office chair, you know, one of those chairs where you can kind of spin around and maybe what you need to do is after you've done a picture, you may want to do two or three spins on the chair and then do a head press. Do you remember that one where you kind of put both hands on your head and you press down? You may want to do that before you carry on to the next activity, or you may just want to have a lot of movement breaks in between. It's up to you. This is for you to help you find the best way to do your homework after school. Well done! You have done great and I hope that you can try some of these ideas and that you and your parents and carer have had a good chat about what works best for you. Have a great day.

When homework is tricky

When homework is tricky

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