#246 - What Are Preparatory Activities and Why Does Everyone Need to be Doing Them?

Preparatory activities are the “warm ups” you incorporate into a treatment session. These activities should stimulate different sensory systems, wake up different muscle groups, and help the child prepare for functional, occupation-based activities.

We dive into WHY we love preparatory activities and we give you our top 10 favorites that you need to include daily!

This isn’t just for therapists - parents and teachers can use these preparatory activities to help children prepare for daily activities at home and in the classroom!

Make sure to check out all of our links below!

Learn 30 fun ways to use a metronome - 30 Day Multi Sensory Processing Challenge

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Brought To You By Harkla

This podcast is brought to you by Harkla.  Our mission at Harkla is to help those with special needs live happy and healthy lives. We accomplish this through high-quality sensory products & child development courses.

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Links

All Things Sensory Podcast Instagram
Harkla YouTube Channel
Harkla Website - Shop Sensory Products!
Harkla Instagram
Ep. 139: Easy Ways to Incorporate Speech into Play
Ep. 173: What is Overflow?
Ep. 223: Implementing Sensory Strategies with Pre-Verbal Children
Build an Obstacle Course in 5 Easy Steps (YouTube)
5 Ways to Use a Sensory Bin (YouTube)
10 Visual Motor Activities (YouTube)
Astronaut Training - Vital Links
Benefits of the Brushing Protocol (Blog)
Borax Slime Recipe
TalkTools - Horn (whistle) Kit

Transcript

Rachel: 0:00

If you are an occupational therapist or an occupational therapy assistant, you definitely want to make sure that you are incorporating these preparatory activities into your sessions.

Jessica: 0:13

I'm Rachel. And I'm Jessica. And this is all things sensory by Harkla.

Rachel: 0:17

We are both certified occupational therapy assistants and together with Harkla, we are on a mission to empower parents, therapists and educators to help raise confident and strong children of all abilities.

Jessica: 0:28

On this podcast, we chat about all things sensory, diving into special needs occupational therapy, parenting, self care, overall health and wellness, and so much more.

Rachel: 0:39

We are here to provide raw, honest and fun strategies, ideas and information for parents, therapists and educators as well as other professionals to implement into daily life.

Jessica: 0:50

Thank you so much for joining us.

Rachel: 0:56

Welcome back, everybody. Thank you for joining us today, we have a fun episode on preparatory activities, what they are, why they're important, if you are an occupational therapist or an occupational therapy assistant, you definitely want to make sure that you are incorporating these preparatory activities into your sessions.

Jessica: 1:15

If you're a parent listening, these preparatory activities can be helpful for you to include into your child's sensory diet into play time, because a lot of what we're going to talk about are great activities to include before mealtime, or dressing skills, or you know, just getting dressed. So this is really great for everyone, even teachers, educators could probably benefit from this, and just get an idea of some different preparatory activities to do before a handwriting task or learning a new math problem, that kind of thing.

Rachel: 1:50

So what are preparatory activities. They're basically warm up activities, they are activities you do before a functional occupation based activity, like we mentioned, specifically in an OT session. So they warm up the body, they worship the brain, the body, the muscles, everything in order to prepare for... prepare, preparatory... preopare for that function based tasks, because in OT, our goal is occupation. What does what is the occupation of a child play is a main occupation. So how can we prepare them to play as optimally as possible?

Jessica: 2:31

I think a good comparison is when you go to the gym, if you are going to the gym, whether or if you're going for a run, you don't just jump right into it, right, you don't just walk out your door and immediately start sprinting, you typically do some type of warmup to get your muscles ready. Same with lifting weights, you do some stretching and some warm up mobility to get your muscles and your joints all ready to lift heavy weights. So this is kind of the same thing. It's a good comparison, I think.

Rachel: 3:04

So these activities are important because they wake up the brain and the body if it's too low of an arousal level. So if someone's feeling tired, it calms the brain and the body down if it's too high of an arousal level. So for kiddos who are you know, bouncing off the walls, these activities can help bring the body down to a more appropriate adaptive level. You can activate certain muscle groups like the hands to prepare for handwriting, which we'll talk about. There's a lot of reasons why these are important and beneficial. But today, we're going to focus on 10 preparatory activities, we're going to give you examples of when we would complete these activities and like what they would be preparing you for, what they would be preparing the child for. So we're going to break it down, go through these 10 activities. If you have questions at all after we go through these send us a message on Instagram at all things sensory podcast, and we can help you out there.

Jessica: 4:08

Number one is vestibular input specifically with swinging and this is typically alerting you can make sure that it's alerting by how you do it right. So for some children, linear swinging is actually calming but if you're looking for the alerting, vestibular input, rotary is the most alerting and it can be overstimulating, so be cautious. Make sure you are doing it in a way that does not overstimulate the child. But swinging this vestibular input is perfect for those kiddos who have low arousal levels, who seem like they're in their own world, or who are just tired from a long day. Right so making sure you complete an activity with swinging, if you're just swinging the child with no other type of engagement, that's not therapeutic. So you want to incorporate something else with the swinging to make it a therapeutic preparatory activity. Side note, there are circumstances when the child needs vestibular input to feel calm and regulated if they're over stimulated, but that's different than using it as a preparatory activity. Yeah,

Rachel: 5:26

A preparatory activity in the swing could be like, having a basketball hoop and a basketball. And every time they're swinging close to the basketball hoop, they try to throw the basketball into the hoop. So they're working on some visual motor skills as well. Some projected action sequencing, some timing. So keep that in mind. I'm glad that you brought that up, Jess.

Jessica: 5:46

Yeah. So you can complete this alerting swinging vestibular activity before heavy work, we always recommend heavy work after vestibular input. Combining these two will help with overall sensory integration and arousal level. You can also complete this before a task that needs lots of focus and attention. And then before communication based tasks, we have episodes that talk about vestibular and communication and speech, we'll link them in the show notes, but they are episodes 139 and 223. So incorporate swinging into your preparatory activities.

Rachel: 6:30

Number two, obstacle courses. If you have listened to any of our podcasts, any of our YouTube videos, any of our content anywhere, you will know how obsessed we are with obstacle courses. And it's a great preparatory activity, but it can also be used as a functional tasks simultaneously. So the beauty of obstacle courses, they include a variety of senses. They include motor planning, and postural control, and vestibular and proprioceptive, and visual and auditory. There's tons of multi sensory processing that has to engage and to coordinate simultaneously. They include bilateral coordination, so things like crawling and jumping and climbing. They include visual tasks throwing and catching and matching. They are so helpful to include before you're sitting down for a fine motor task, or before homework, or even before self care tasks. If you're working on hair brushing or brushing the teeth or dressing skills in OT, completing an obstacle course beforehand is great. And they just, it's a great way to build rapport, and they're just fun. They wake the body up, they're just exciting. And the beautiful thing about in the clinic setting is you can include swings and rock walls and tunnels. And even if you're trying to do these activities at home, you can still include these vestibular based activities by going upside down over therapy balls or couch cushions and crawling through DIY tunnels and jumping onto crash pads of pillows and blankets and blankets swinging. And there's just there's so many fun ways to incorporate obstacle courses, but they are one of our all time favorite preparatory activities.

Jessica: 8:23

Also, I don't think I've ever met a kid who didn't like an obstacle course. They're motivating for every single child that I've ever worked with.

Rachel: 8:34

I would agree on that. Yeah.

Jessica: 8:38

All right, number three, astronaut training. This is a specific protocol from vital links, we'll link it in the show notes. And it works to improve the vestibular auditory visual triad. So definitely make sure to visit their website, you probably want to be trained in it have take one of their courses get trained by somebody that you work with. And then also try it on yourself first so that you have an idea of what it feels like because astronaut training includes rotary vestibular input, which can be overstimulating, like we already mentioned. So it's definitely a great idea to try it on you, try it on yourself, try it on your co workers, your friends, before you try it on your kids. So you understand and can have empathy if the child struggles with it. But ultimately, astronaut training is a great preparatory activity to complete before heavy work just like we talked about with swinging, but also a task that requires visual motor or visual perceptual coordination. So things like reading and writing, throwing and catching self care tasks, self feeding, so astronaut training can be great to include in every treatment session. For those kiddos who need need to work on that visual vestibular auditory processing and integration?

Rachel: 10:09

Number four is the brushing protocol. So similar to the astronaut training, we highly recommend getting trained in this protocol prior to providing it on clients. But there's a couple different names for it the deep pressure brushing protocol, the Wilbarger brushing protocol, the deep proprioceptive touch protocol. It's most often known as a Wilbarger brushing protocol. So it's a it's a tool designed to help with tactile over responsiveness or tactile sensitivity. It is it provides a lot of deep pressure, a lot of tactile input simultaneously. We've seen a lot of success using this protocol with kids who are over responsive to a lot of sensory input, as well as kids who are seekers because it provides so much sensory input. So again, we recommend being trained by a professional, don't go to YouTube and watch videos there because from what we have found, all of the YouTube videos are different. And so you want to make sure that you are doing this correctly in the right order because it can provide. It can be overstimulating if it's not done correctly. So hopefully I didn't scare you too much. But it is a great to complete before dressing tasks, especially for kiddos who don't like to get dressed or struggle with getting dressed, as well as brushing teeth, putting lotion on, eating a meal, or even like going out of the house or going into the community that is overstimulating. And it's it's also a great tool to just have in your toolbox for a kiddo to use on themselves as well. And the actual protocol doesn't allow the child to do the brushing on themselves. But I found it helpful for kids to hold on to the brush and brush their hands or their legs on their own is just a regulating technique. So it's a great way to prepare for those self care tasks.

Jessica: 12:16

Next up is a metronome activity. We love metronome activities, probably just as much as we love obstacle courses. They are an incredible way to get multiple senses working at once we like to call that multi sensory processing and pretty much anytime we talk about multi sensory processing, we're talking about a metronome. So this requires the child to listen to the beat of the metronome and simultaneously complete another task, usually in coordination with the beat. So this can include clapping and patting patterns, stomping and marching patterns, you can throw and catch to the beats, or bounce a ball and catch to the beats reading a visual chart to the beat of the metronome jumping and crashing on the beat. This is great for those kids who are super impulsive, maybe they have to jump five times on the beat of the metronome before they can crash. And with this, you want to start by just helping the child get the hang of it. So set the metronome to 60 beats per minute, and practice clapping on the beat. Once they can successfully clap on the beat for 30 seconds, then you can move to the more complex multi sensory processing activities to work on those processing skills processing speed, auditory processing. And these are great to complete before a school based or homework task, or even a self care task something that requires focus and attention because the metronome activity will help promote, facilitate organization attention, processing speed, all of those kind of higher level cognitive skills. And actually, you can also incorporate the metronome into these other functional tasks like a school based or homework task practicing math problems, or spelling words with the beat of the metronome. So so helpful.

Rachel: 14:28

All right, number six, oral motor heavy work. One of our favorites. I know we say like these are all of our favorites but seriously because they're also good. We love these activities so much. Can you tell we love our job? Okay, oral motor, heavy work activities. They are fantastic for providing calming proprioceptive input. They do provide heavy work to our oral structures. So things like blowing a cotton ball to a target using a straw or just using your own breath. Following a path like use painters tape and blow the cotton ball along the path. Bubble Mountain is a fantastic one where you throw some water in a bucket or a bowl, put some dish soap in there, grab a straw, grab one of those like silly shaped straws. I don't know what they're called, but they've got like, twirls and knots and curls in them and they have a little more resistance. Have your child blow with deep breaths to make a huge mountain. Slime bubbles get some borax type slime, it's not the cleanest but I have found that that recipe with borax makes the best slime bubbles, you make your slime. And then you stick a straw into it. You blow bubbles like bubble gum in your slime. Super fun, great heavy work. And then whistles are another great tool. The talk tools whistle kit has different receptive different resistances of whistles. Also different mouth positions. It's a great tool to have in your toolbox if you don't have it already, but talk tools will link that as well. So these oral motor activities are great to complete before self care tasks, especially like feeding, brushing the teeth. Anything that has to do with the mouth, as well as eating a meal. Even if you are going into an overstimulating situation or an activity that can be a little bit too much to process, these oral motor activities can be really regulating as well. So oral motor heavy work timeout. You'll thank us later.

Jessica: 16:54

Yeah, you will. Alright, what do we got number seven hand warm ups. These are activities to warm up the hand and finger muscles. And this one is really great for anyone in the school setting, but also at home or in the clinic. So anything that you can think of that is going to activate the muscles required for fine motor dexterity tasks. And we like to say that you also need to incorporate core and upper body into this because you need that core and upper body stability in order to have good fine motor control.

Rachel: 17:35

So proximal strength before distal control exactly what they like nailed in our brains in school.

Jessica: 17:46

So start with a full body heavy work activity, something weight bearing on the hands, like animal walks, or ball walkouts, just making sure that the child hands are flat on the floor, fingers are open, and you have good alignment throughout the shoulders and the elbows and the wrists. And then you can work on really focusing on the palmar arches and the fingers with crumpling paper, try crumpling a piece of paper with just one hand, don't use your other hand to help, don't use the table to help. This is actually really tricky, especially with your non dominant hand. So this is a really, really great one.

Rachel: 18:28

Watch for overflow as well. Yep, we do have an episode on overflow so you can learn more about that.

Jessica: 18:34

Another one is sequential finger touching. When you do sequential finger touching, you want to make sure that you're touching the tip of your thumb to the tip of each finger. You're just gently tapping, you're not like pushing super hard, but you're getting a good touch. And then you also want to make sure that you're creating a circle with your fingers during the sequential finger touching. And that means that the thumb joints are flexed just slightly so that it creates that good circle. And this is really going to focus on the Palmer arches. And then another one would be using playdough and theraputty. So squeezing it, rolling it flattening it out using a rolling pin. Really any of these activities are great to just warm up all those hand muscles and you're going to want to complete these before handwriting tasks, or other fine motor coordination tasks like eating with a spoon and a fork. Brushing your teeth, brushing your hair, typing,. Any of those activities that require good coordination with your hands.

Rachel: 19:45

Number eight sensory bins, we love sensory bins and we are not going to ever give them up because they're so fun and functional to warm up the tactile system. So you can use dry tactile mediums like rice beans Koren sand. Things like digging for letters or puzzle pieces or beads with the eyes open her eyes closed, putting them in the puzzle board, putting them in order stringing the beads. Basically any fine motor tasks like blocks even just use it to incorporate with a sensory bin. And then you can use what tactile mediums like shaving cream, or Oobleck, which is cornstarch and water, or water beads as long as you're being safe with the water beads. And there's none being ingested. Scooping, pouring, drawing letters drawing shapes. It's a great multi sensory activity to work on things that you would work on, like on paper. If you have a goal to work on shapes or letters, using those with sensory activities like a sensory bin, it just builds the neural connection so much stronger when there is a multi sensory component. Even things like if you're working on feeding with a kiddo using sensory bins initially. Maybe if the child doesn't like cereal, I mean, what kid doesn't like cereal, that's a bad example. But let's say they have an aversion to cereal and you make a sensory bin out of cereal and they have to dig through it. It's a fun way to be engaged with the nonpreferred item, to incorporate preferred items to build exposure pressure free. So sensory bins, great before fine motor activities, dressing activities, feeding activities, and even visual activities like mazes, visual motor activities, handwriting, we have a YouTube video with tons of visual motor activities that you can check out as well. So sensory bins are still a fan favorite.

Jessica: 21:54

I think it's all about how you use them. Right?

Rachel: 21:57

Absolutely. I think the reason why we love them so much is because we use them. We make them so functional. It's not like, oh, here let's sit down for 10 minutes while I can chit chat with another therapist and do my notes from a previous session while the kid digs through the sensory bin finding the letters. That's not what we're saying.

Jessica: 22:15

Please don't do that. Next one is pretend play. Remember, a child's main occupation is play. So this is a great preparatory activity include pretend play as a fun way to engage the child in social activities. imaginative play to build those visualization and praxis skills. Try having the pretend kitchen set up and you cook a meal in the pretend kitchen, you can pretend to ride the school bus with some type of obstacle course with a swing, and you can pretend to be playing at the park with a slide and monkey bars at the clinic. So any type of pretend play, maybe have the child bring in some of their stuffed animals and have a pretend play activity with the stuffed animals to get them dressed and ready for the day. And these specifically are great to complete before those challenging self care activities. If the child is struggling to brush their teeth, do a pretend brushing teeth play activity with a stuffed animal or teeth drawn on a whiteboard. And they have to brush them clean. And then they go brush their own teeth as part of their session to you know, you do that pretend play and then you do it in a functional real way. And it helps translate those skills but also makes it way more fun.

Rachel: 23:48

I do want to share this quote about play since we're talking about play being the main occupation. I'm reading this book right now and I have a screenshot of this because it's just so good. "Play in the early formative years play is almost synonymous with life. It is second to only being nourished, protected and loved. It is a basic ingredient of physical, intellectual, social and emotional growth." That's by Ashley Montaug. Like it's almost synonymous with life.

Jessica: 24:18

It really is. Because that is how a child learns all of their things is through play. The more pretend play you can incorporate into the session. And I think it's important to note that this is definitely ideal for younger children. Maybe not a 12 year old. So make sure it's appropriate for your child's age, your clients age, but this can also be a great way to build rapport and follow the child's lead, especially if it's in the beginning and the child is struggling to follow your lead. Pretend play is a great way to engage them find out what they enjoy. So play with and incorporate that.

Rachel: 25:03

Number 10 is emotional awareness activities. And I'm again going to throw another fun quote that I found. But before I do that, just want to throw this out there that identifying emotions, practicing regulation skills in OT is a huge part of therapy. So some of our favorite activities, things like zones of regulation, we loved building stoplights together. So recognizing what the red zone the yellow zone, the green zone, the blue zone all mean, building a stoplight so that way during the session, you can you can have the child identify what zone they're in throughout the activities. And then you can practice regulation or sensory based strategies to help find that green zone.

Jessica: 25:51

And they can take the stoplight home for carryover.

Rachel: 25:54

Watch a clip from inside out that emotional regulation movie and identify the characters and their emotions, create an alert program book that talks about how fast their engine is going in certain situations. Use Brainworks cards to match feelings with a variety of situations. And these are great to do before the child has a meltdown. And before they complete challenging tasks or before you're working together to make a social story or a sensory story. And before you actually begin really teaching those self regulation skills and you're addressing those. So incorporating those activities into the preparatory tasks can be great.

Jessica: 26:39

Really quick before you do your quote. I was just thinking this is great to do during an obstacle course to help the child understand how different sensory activities affect their emotions. So they're swinging on the swing during the obstacle course and they're excited and silly. And you can ask them about how they feel. Or they are hanging upside down under the bolster swing and they're feeling a little bit anxious about dropping to the ground. You could talk about how that's making them feel and work on that emotional awareness during the obstacle course.

Rachel: 27:12

Since we're talking about emotions, here's the quote, "When we encourage people to express emotions even anger and sadness, we show respect for their feelings. Because the person feels valued. The emotional response is usually linked to reason. Children who are taught through example and allowed to naturally and responsibly express emotions are better able to constructively or creatively use them throughout life. Talking about feelings is of particular benefit as we engage thought and reasoning processes to comprehend and verbalize the emotional experience. This helps to strengthen the important emotion cognition link. On the other hand, when people are given no outlet for emotional expression, they may start to doubt their personal value, the suppressed emotions lose their links with conscious awareness. And the state of denial becomes linked with the survival centers. As a result, the emotion is then connected to fear and self doubt. When emotions are finally expressed, they can often emerge in a violent explosive outburst. And if they remain suppressed or denied. They precipitate a chronic release of adrenaline and depress learning memory and the immune system which could possibly lead to life threatening cancers and heart disease." There is a source linked here, but I can share that if anyone is curious. I just thought it's so much more than just self regulation. Like it goes so much deeper.

Jessica: 28:49

I think that's great. And it's yeah, it's important to remember that we all have these emotions and these feelings. And so teaching the kids that they also have all of these emotions and feelings and it's what they do with them. That's important. So incorporating those emotional awareness activities into the preparatory portion of the session is huge, definitely very important.

Rachel: 29:12

On that note, on that long, dramatic note, we're going to close out today. That is all we have for you. We hope hope hope this episode makes your practice better. We hope you learned something new. If you didn't learn anything new, hopefully it was a refresher because sometimes it is helpful to have just a little ping in the back of your brain.

Jessica: 29:37

If you liked this episode, make sure you share it with someone else- a friend, fellow therapist, a parent, whoever you want, grandma, just share it with grandma.

Rachel: 29:51

Leave us a review on iTunes or Spotify. We love listening to what you have to say about the podcast and we will chat with you next week. You normally say Okay, bye.

Jessica: 30:04

Okay, bye.

Rachel: 30:07

Thank you so much for listening to all things sensory by Harkla.

Jessica: 30:10

If you want more information on anything mentioned in the show, head over to harkla.co/podcast to get the show notes.

Rachel: 30:18

If you have any follow up questions, the best place to ask those is in the comments on the show notes or message us on our Instagram account, which is at Harkla underscore family or at all things sensory podcast, if you just search Harkla You'll find us there.

Jessica: 30:34

Like we mentioned before our podcast listeners get 10% off their first order at Harkla. Whether it's for one of our digital courses or one of our sensory swings, the discount code sensory, we'll get you 10% off.

Rachel: 30:49

That's s e n s o r y head to harkla.co/sensory to use that discount code right now,

Jessica: 30:58

We are so excited to work together to help create competent kids all over the world. While we make every effort to share correct information, we're still learning.

Rachel: 31:08

We will double check all of our facts but realize that medicine is a constantly changing science and art.

Jessica: 31:13

One doctor or therapist may have a different way of doing things from another.

Rachel: 31:17

We are simply presenting our views and opinions on how to address common sensory challenges health related difficulties, and what we have found to be beneficial that will be as evidence based as possible.

Jessica: 31:29

By listening to this podcast you agree not to use this podcast as medical advice to treat any medical condition in either yourself or your child.

Rachel: 31:37

Consult your child's pediatrician or therapist for any medical issues that he or she may be having.

Jessica: 31:43

This entire disclaimer also applies to any guests or contributors to the podcast.

Rachel: 31:48

Thanks so much for listening