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To the Currys, Goukers, and Crevers for teaching me how much love and
persistence can change a child’s life. Thank you.
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
The How of Engagement
Sensory Development
Gross Motor Skills
Fine Motor Skills
Communication
Social Sense
School Ready
Home Activities
Outdoor Activities
Adapting Brand-Name Games
GLOSSARY OF COMMON TERMS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
JOHN, MY EDITOR at McGraw-Hill, for implicitly understanding that we can teach more through
play than any other way. Your passion has energized this project.
I owe a deep thanks to June Clark of Fine Print Literary Agency for her extraordinary ability
to connect people and ideas. I will always be grateful for your friendship and professional
insight.
I am incredibly grateful and humbled by the team at Steps Therapy, Inc. Your expertise and
drive are only surpassed by your passion to truly make a difference in the lives of the children
we serve. A special thanks goes to those therapists who assisted with editing and suggestions.
Your input was invaluable. To Mary Hamrick, director of Speech Therapy and cocreator of the
Social Sense TM program. Thank you for hearing me out on all my ideas, embracing those that
make sense, shaking your head at those that do not, and always listening.
To the educators, therapists, and administrators in the following school districts: Lago Vista,
Texas; Marble Falls, Texas; Nevada County (California) Office of Education; Rocklin,
California; Wheatland, California; Woodland, California; and Yuba County (California) Office
of Education for your continuous commitment to improving the education of children through
conventional and creative avenues. My sincere appreciation goes to Elaine Leeds, Pat Muniz,
Melissa Orcutt, and Kristen Nottle-Powell. I have learned so much by being part of the team for
so many years.
Barbara McPhillips, principal at The New York Institute of Special Education, your belief in
the value of each child’s life serves as an example to us all.
A huge thanks to Dr. Lucy Jane Miller and the SPD Foundation for the diligence to expand
research into sensory processing disorder as well as autism.
To my dad for saying, “You should do that, Tara†when his six-year-old daughter said, â
€œSomeday I’m going help kids†and for never questioning dreams only challenging them
to come true. To my mom who thinks I know more than I really do. Thanks for setting the bar
high, I’ll keep jumping.
To Maggie and Liam, my precious babies, who teach me things everyday through play. To
my husband, Bill, whose intellect and passion keep making my dreams come true. Thank you
for showing me that life is best lived believing you can.
INTRODUCTION
I WAS FIVE, almost six years old, when I first understood the power of play. My mother had just
passed away, and I felt lost. My father found an older couple to babysit my sister and me after
school so he could work. One of the other children they babysat was a little girl about my age.
She had developmental disabilities and did not speak very much. She was standing and waiting
in the driveway almost every day when the school bus dropped me off at the babysitter’s
house. I remember not knowing what to say to her or even how to act, but looking forward to
seeing her there waiting.
One day when I got off the bus, she was holding a ball. She threw the ball toward me, and it
dropped to the ground. I did not know what to say to her, but I knew what to do with a ball. I
put my books on the grass, picked up the ball, and threw it back to her. She laughed and then
moved her arms forward to try to catch it. The ball landed on the grass again. She picked it up
and threw it back at me. I caught the ball and returned her laugh. Her willingness to engage me
in a game of catch started a connection that was a childhood lifeline for me.
Many years later when I became an occupational therapist, I thought of Sheila and how
powerful the act of participating in a simple game of catch was to my life. It wasn’t until I
began my career that I could reflect on how powerful it was to her life also.
In my early career, I returned to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin where I
participated in a leadership training program at the Waisman Center in Madison. As part of that
program, I was assigned to a family who had a little boy with neurological difficulties. I was
assigned to the family not as a therapist but rather as another family member. I ate dinner with
them from time to time, went to the park with them, was there at bedtime, and even babysat on
some occasions. By being with this little boy and his family during everyday activities, I could
see how sensory processing and communication difficulties impacted his daily life and how
things that were enticing and fun for other children were a reason for fear and avoidance to him.
But I also saw firsthand how his parents used sensory strategies, in the form of play, to help him
engage with the people in his life. With both of these memories, the big “Aha†for me is the
power that play has to teach, develop, and connect children to their world.
I cannot say enough about interactive, physical play as a basis for teaching children skills
that are fundamental to their physical and social world and to their cognitive capabilities. The
dynamic nature of play spurs nervous system development by connecting the brain and the
body. In addition to my own experience, research has shown that there is no substitute for play
for promoting learning at the nervous system level, as well as for teaching more refined
language, social, and cognitive concepts. During play, children are provided the opportunity to
use their bodies to manipulate objects in their physical world, which is the only way to truly
understand the physical and spatial properties of their world. Because of play’s interactive
nature, it sets the perfect stage for teaching language concepts and reinforcing an intuitive
understanding of others.
As a pediatric occupational therapist, I have spent the last two decades working with
children who have neurological difficulties. When working with these children, the primary
goal of my therapy is the acquisition of new skills (sensory, motor, social, and academic). I
realized many years ago that a child’s motivation to participate in an activity is one of the
most important factors in determining successful engagement. Successful engagement is the
first step to learning. It is with this idea in mind that I created games or adapted activities that
focus on particular skills and are highly enjoyable to children. I have been compiling dozens of
games and activities over the years, many of which are in this book.
The activities and games in this book are organized to reflect a model of child development
called the Brain Library TM. I developed this model as a way to explain to parents and educators
how important our early experiences are for future academic and social success. The
experiences that we engage in during our early years of life introduce, develop, and refine skills
that our brains and bodies will need to access throughout our lives. Books are metaphors for
experiences. Each of our experiences, beginning in utero, in a sense writes books into our Brain
Library.
In the early years, the majority of our experiences are sensorimotor. These experiences write
books that build the foundation of our Brain Library. The books of the Brain Library are
organized into three main sections: the foundation section, the integrated skills section, and the
capabilities section. The foundation section houses our basic senses: vestibular (balance and
motion), proprioceptive (body position), tactile (touch), visual (seeing), auditory (hearing),
gustatory (taste), and olfactory (smell). The integrated skills section contains the skills that
allow us to interact and thrive as human beings: praxis (ability to plan movement), which takes
up an entire shelf; daily living skills; behavior; and communication. The capabilities category
includes the key factors to success in our modern world: social intelligence and cognitive
intelligence. Please note that you’ll find more detailed definitions of these and other terms
in the glossary at the end of the book.
â„¢
The Brain Library
