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Embracing Transitions and Growth: A Year of Learning and Achievement

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EMBRACING TRANSITIONS AND GROWTH:
A YEAR OF LEARNING AND ACHIEVEMENT

Embracing Transitions and Growth Fuels Our Success!

As we approach the end of the year, it’s the perfect time to reflect on the incredible journey we’ve shared. All I can say is, “What a year it has been!”

It was a year of exploring ways that we transition throughout our lives. From significant life changes such as transitioning into adulthood, moving homes, transitioning into a new school year (especially Kindergarten or year 7), starting new careers, trying a new sport, or managing health conditions to the everyday transitions we experience, like transitioning from home to school, catching the bus, transitioning from playtime to dinner, or switching off technology devices. The list is endless.

Every transition, big or small, contributes to our growth and learning.

By embracing transitions and growth, we develop new skills and gain valuable experiences at each stage of life.

Celebrating Success in Life Transitions

At Explore and Soar, we understand that embracing transitions is essential for both children and their families. Each step forward is a sign of progress.

What truly stands out this year is the unwavering support from parents and caregivers. Your dedication, love, and hard work in helping your children navigate these transitions have been truly inspiring. The effort, persistence, and love you pour into supporting your children as they reach their goals is a beautiful sight. We’ve witnessed the joy and pride on their faces as they master new skills – a testament to your hard work. We also recognise the challenges you face, and in those tough moments, please remember – we see you, we hear you, and we are here to help!

For more on managing life transitions, check out our previous blog to learn more about transitions in therapy.

Explore and Soar: Growing Together

This year, Explore and Soar has expanded its horizons! We introduced a fresh new look and broadened our age range to better support clients transitioning from school to university, work, or community life. We were also thrilled to open our new space in the Kurri Kurri clinic for therapy sessions when home or community settings aren’t ideal.

These transitions wouldn’t have been possible without the collaboration and commitment of our families and, most importantly, the continuous work of our dedicated team, who tirelessly support these transitions and consistently assist our families in new and evolving ways.

End-of-Year Celebrations & Transition Ahead

As we wrap up the year, the Explore and Soar team celebrated with a joyful Christmas party, creating beautiful macrame pieces and enjoying a delicious dinner. We had so much fun!

We also held our Annual Reflections and Projections Day, where we identified our achievements and worked toward an actionable plan for the new year. It was a wonderful opportunity to connect, share ideas, and commit to growing together as a team while continuing to support each other, our families, and our communities.

Important Dates: Holiday Closure & Upcoming January School Holiday Programs

At the end of each year, our team takes a well-deserved break to rest, recharge, and spend quality time with our families and friends!

This year, our Christmas closure will begin at the end of business on Friday, December 20th. We will return with our January School Holiday group programs starting Monday, January 13th, 2025!

If you’d like to join our January programs, be sure to secure your spot today! These fun and engaging programs will run from January 13th to 17th and again from January 20th to 24th, 2025. We cannot wait to see you there. Click here to see more about the programs and secure your spot!

Looking ahead to the new year, embracing transitions and growth will remain a central focus at Explore and Soar.

Until next time, we wish all of our Explore and Soar family a joyful Christmas break filled with quality time with loved ones, sunshine, and relaxation. Look after yourselves, and we can’t wait to reconnect in the New Year and continue this journey together!

Wishing You a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Until next time, 
Jess and the Explore and Soar Team

PUBLISHED DECEMBER 2024

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Nurturing Imagination and Social Skills in Today’s Digital World

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NURTURING IMAGINATION AND SOCIAL SKILLS IN TODAY’S DIGITAL WORLD

In our fast-paced digital era, fostering social skills in children is more crucial than ever. These skills are the cornerstone of effective communication, relationship-building, and navigating social situations.

As children grow, their social development equips them with tools to handle conflicts, understand emotions, understand social roles, solve problems, and adapt to changes. However, in a world dominated by technology, the landscape of social interaction is evolving.

Embracing Technology for Social Growth

While children increasingly engage in online activities like online gaming, it’s essential to recognise the potential for social skill development in digital spaces. Online platforms offer unprecedented opportunities for connection, creativity, and sensory input, enriching social experiences in new ways.

Challenges in the Digital World

Despite the benefits, parents’ concerns about online safety and screen time persist. By fostering open communication, setting boundaries, educating on privacy, and serving as positive role models, parents can guide their children through the digital landscape with confidence and resilience. The skills they learn while playing virtual games can also translate into real-world social connections.

Exploring Social Thinking Concepts

Our children may encounter difficulties in participating in imaginative play and sustaining conversations. Sharing what someone else is imagining involves complex processing! It requires focusing your attention on what the other person is doing, interpreting the person’s words and actions, and then placing those ideas in the context of what you already know about the person and the environment.

Incorporating Social Thinking Concepts 

Incorporating social thinking concepts helps promote self-regulation in social contexts. 

Social executive functioning is important for classroom learning, playing, joining in activities, and online social interactions. It can be divided into four categories: Hidden Rules, Smart Guesses, Flexible and Stuck Thinking, and Size of the Problem.

Hidden Rules, Expected and Unexpected Behaviours –

Understanding the unspoken rules of social interactions, known as ‘Hidden Rules,’ is crucial for navigating various situations. It involves aligning our behaviours (what we say and do) with social expectations through skills like interpreting non-verbal cues, social cues, negotiation, collaboration, problem-solving, compromise and empathy. 

Various events, such as turn-taking or winning, may occur during activities like gaming. While adhering to expectations may not always be enjoyable, it ensures smooth progression. Unexpected actions can lead to discomfort among peers, highlighting the importance of social cohesion.

This concept can be challenging for many children, especially when games hold significant meaning. Collaborative efforts with families, including sensory diet activities, help foster self-regulation and engagement during challenging situations.

Smart Guesses –

Making informed guesses, known as ‘Smart Guesses,’ is foundational for social and academic problem-solving. It involves observing cues from peers and anticipating the outcomes of social interactions. In contrast, ‘Wacky Guesses’ are often inaccurate and stem from a lack of information.

To make a Smart Guess in social interaction, we need to figure out what people mean by what they say, and we try to figure out what someone’s facial expression or gesture means and what will happen next. 

This is something that can be a challenge for our children. Here are some strategies to support Smart Guess development:

  • Observation: Encourage children to notice everyday clues in their surroundings, aiding in making informed guesses about others’ thoughts and plans.
  • Guided Narration: Provide guidance during games or activities, helping children interpret and plan for potential outcomes.
  • Interactive Games: Engage in games like “Guess Who,” prompting children to observe, listen, and think critically about their environment.

By implementing these strategies, children can enhance their social insight and navigate interactions confidently and accurately.

Flexible and Stuck Thinking –

A high level of flexibility is needed to consider and adapt within social interaction.  In any given situation, we are expected to consider where we are, who is there, what is happening, what people are saying and doing around us, how they are feeling, and what they might be thinking, and adjust our plans and behaviour accordingly. 

A challenge in any of these areas can lead to getting “stuck” in Stuck Thinking.

Flexible Thinking means we can change our plan, try a different solution to a problem, change our thinking, or give up what we want based on the larger plan of the group.

Stuck thinking is the inability to change what we are doing or thinking based on what is happening around us. If we are Stuck Thinkers, we might see a problem or situation in only one way or follow one rule all the time, no matter where we are or what is happening around us.

Teaching flexibility begins with understanding that there are multiple ways to approach a situation, fostering problem-solving skills and a sense of control. Empowering children to recognise choices and alternatives makes them more comfortable with change, reducing frustrations and promoting active participation.

Incorporating “Flexible Thinking” and “Stuck Thinking” vocabulary in daily activities reinforces these concepts, facilitating smoother adaptation and enhancing social interactions.

Size of the Problem –

In daily life, a ‘problem’ is something that happens that is not part of the plan and makes people feel uncomfortable. Problems cause emotions and reactions of different sizes, and the size of the emotions and reactions are expected to match the size of the problem. 

Problems come in different sizes – 

Small problems can be resolved quickly, and children can handle them independently or with minimal help from others. Children can also aid each other in resolving minor problems, promoting collaboration and empathy.

Medium problems require more time and usually will need assistance from adults. 

Big problems take significant time to resolve and require extra help from others. When big problems happen, even adults may need help from other adults.

It’s crucial to acknowledge that everyone has the right to their own emotional reactions, shaped by their hardwiring (temperament) and life experiences. Encouraging children to understand the varying sizes of problems fosters emotional intelligence and resilience.

Parents can also model problem-solving behaviours and narrate their experiences to reinforce this understanding. This includes identifying the problem’s size, emotional reactions, and potential solutions. For example, what happened? What was the problem’s size? How did you feel about it? What did you do to solve it? How did you feel afterwards?

How Can Explore and Soar Help?

As Occupational Therapists, we target underlying regulation strategies to help children maintain and shift their attention and concentration to activities and navigate their thoughts, feelings, and actions. 

We implement ‘Social Thinking Concepts’ ideas within one-on-one sessions, peer sessions, group programs, and parent education to facilitate the transition into the home environment. You can learn more about our group programs on our website. 

Empowerment and Positive Behaviors

By encouraging children to share ideas and imaginations, we help them learn the skills that are crucial for more sophisticated social interactions and conversations with their peers. Implementing social thinking concepts can support and scaffold their social interactions, empowering them with confidence, resilience, and a foundation of positive social skills that endure throughout their lives.

During gameplay, it’s vital to acknowledge and reinforce positive social behaviours, such as good sportsmanship, cooperation, and empathy. By consistently praising these behaviours, we reinforce their importance and encourage their continuation.

Join us in nurturing our children’s social skills and imagination. Together, we can shape a brighter future filled with confident, resilient, and socially adept individuals. Give us a call today if you would like to find out more.

If you’d like to chat more, please don’t hesitate to contact us today! Call us on 0477 708 217 or email admin@exploreandsoar.com.au

Until Next Time,
Maddie

PUBLISHED APRIL 2024

References – We Thinkers! Volume 2 Social Problem Solvers

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Life Transitions and The New Year

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LIFE TRANSITIONS AND THE NEW YEAR

Happy New Year! We hope you have enjoyed the end-of-year celebrations with some yummy food, rest and spending time doing things that bring you joy. 

Annual Theme – Life Transitions

Progressing from a year of developing Safety for Vulnerability for ourselves, our team, clients, and their families and communities has shaped us into this next phase of ‘Life Transitions’. For myself, our team, and many of our families, they are all going through new life transitions. Life transitions are powerful and have the potential to shape who you were, who you are and who you are becoming.

What are life transitions?

Life Transitions can also be described as ‘Transitional stages of life’.

It is defined by significant changes in roles, responsibilities, and routines requiring you to adapt to new circumstances. It can also involve a constant flow from one temporary state to another, resulting in each of these changes being a transition or a “passage from one state, stage, subject, or place to another” (Transition, 2018).

Transitions in everyday life can be meaningful or a part of everyday life. Different types of transitions, for example;

Smaller everyday life transitions:

  • Engaging in an everyday conversation – transitioning in and out of a conversation with someone.
  • Commuting to school or work – leaving home, travelling, then entering the office or school grounds.
  • Transitioning from different classrooms or from the classroom to recess and back again.

Significant Life Stage Transition:

  • Transition to preschool, Kindergarten, Year 7 and transitioning out of school.
  • Experiencing puberty. 
  • Beginning a relationship. 
  • Moving home: moving from one home to another.
  • Moving Communities: moving from one town to another.
  • Changing sporting clubs or sports.
  • Changing careers, jobs or being promoted with different responsibilities.
  • Entering the workforce.
  • Commencement of University and a significant life transition for us adults is
  • Parenthood. 

Do you have any new life transitions happening this year? Or What life transition are you experiencing or in at the moment?

This year, we have a few of our clients coming to the end of their schooling years, some making the big transition into Year 7 and others who are transitioning into Kindergarten. 

Personally, this year, I am making the new life transition into parenthood alongside my husband. A new life transition for us that you all are already on, and I am thrilled to be joining you. 

For the team, many of us are going through our own life transitions as well and have shaped many of our conversations together by sharing our experiences and different strategies that have helped us along the way.

Explore and Soar’s Life Transition

As Explore and Soar approach our sixth year with you all, we are thrilled to be growing alongside our clients and families! We are excited to be sharing with you an extension of our services and an ability to continue to support you as you continue to grow. 

For Explore and Soar, we, too, are in a new life transition; we have decided to share with you an extension of our service to continue to support our clients as they make the new step and life transition into adulthood. That transition from school to work. That transition to independence, living alone, being self-sufficient and living a meaningful and best life! We are so excited to continue to work with our clients now to the age of 24! This is an exciting opportunity for us to continue to build our occupational therapy team with therapists who are experienced in supporting our teenagers and young adults in these big life transitions!

To mark these life transitions for all of us, you will see our new Explore and Soar logos, socials and website updates, and a uniform change this coming month. We are loving these changes and are excited to share them with you. So keep an eye out, as they are coming soon!!

How Explore and Soar can help you?

Please know you are not alone; each person at different ages and stages in their lives go through different transitions based on their personal life experiences. Each of our clinicians is trained in providing strategies, interventions and support through any life transition, meaningful activity or everyday task. We love to problem solve and help no matter the question or concern. 

Each month this year, you will also have access to a different blog that will go through different life transitions, big or small and have a range of different strategies or ways to support you through those moments. 

We are always here to help in a range of different ways. If you’d like to chat more, please don’t hesitate to contact us today! 

0477 708 217 or admin@exploreandsoar.com.au

Articles:

Adler, A. B & Castro, C. A. (2019). Transitions: a Theoretical Model for Occupational Health & Wellbeing. Occupational Health Science. 3:105-123.

Until next time, 
Jess

PUBLISHED JANUARY 2024

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Eyes on the Prize: The Power of Hand-Eye Coordination for Mastering Fine Motor Skills

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EYES ON THE PRIZE
– THE POWER OF HAND-EYE COORDINATION FOR MASTERING FINE MOTOR SKILLS

From playing catch to mastering the art of drawing, hand-eye coordination is the superhero skill that enables children to develop their fine motor skills with ease. 

Have you noticed the stage within a child’s life where their messy scribbles become somewhat legible pictures? Or that they catch a ball much easier? Or that they stack the block tower higher before it falls? 

All of these changes can be partly due to the development of fine motor skills, but also other skills such as hand-eye coordination. 

So, when children are referred to occupational therapy for fine motor skills, it is important we look not only at the strength of the hand but other factors that may influence fine motor development.

Hand-eye coordination refers to the ability of the hands and eyes to work together to perform a task. It involves the visual system, providing visual information to the brain about the location of objects and the movements required to interact with them, as well as the motor system, which executes the movements needed to manipulate objects. 

 Children who have poor hand-eye coordination may:

  • Struggle catching or throwing a ball.
  • Have difficulty writing or drawing, or be resistant to do such tasks.
  • Prefer to use their hand rather than using utensils.
  • Be clumsy or awkward in movement, such as bumping into objects or knocking things over frequently.
  • Have poor posture or balance.
  • Have difficulty with visual tracking, such as following moving objects or tracking a line of text while reading.
  • Not be able to do up their shoelaces or button up clothes like other children their age.

It’s common for children who struggle with sensory processing difficulties to experience difficulties with hand-eye coordination and, therefore, fine motor skills. For example, children with sensory processing difficulties may find seeing things with their eyes hard, such as where the pencil is on the page, or where the ball is in relation to the bat. Without this visual feedback, they can have challenges getting their body ready to move so that they can hit the ball or draw the wheels on the car. This is how hand-eye coordination can impact their ability to develop their fine motor skills.   

How can we work on Hand-Eye coordination?

Providing sensory-rich environments through activities such as playing with playdough, finger painting, lego, and puzzles can help children develop their sensory processing skills and improve their hand-eye coordination. We also look for opportunities for movement and physical activity, as this can help children learn where their body, arms and legs are so they can move or adjust their bodies to be ready for what is to come. Once we know where our body, arms and legs are, we then know where our wrists, hands and fingers are. Combining that with our eyes telling our body what is coming means we can coordinate our hands and eyes to complete the task in front of us.   

Some ways your child can develop hand-eye coordination at home:

  • Stringing beads or threading pasta
  • Throwing and catching a ball, balloon, or frisbee
  • Jigsaw puzzles
  • Drawing and colouring
  • Using scissors, cutting out and then pasting onto a page
  • Playing with blocks or Legos (We would love to see the creations made!)
  • Playing with Play-Doh
  • Play with Play-Doh: Use their hands to manipulate the dough while looking at what they are making

We hope you have found this blog informative; if you need a ‘hand’ with developing your child’s Hand-Eye Coordination, please call us today; we would love to chat about what we can do to support your child’s development. 

Looking forward to hearing from you soon. Contact us on 0477 708 217 or admin@exploreandsoar.com.au

 Until next time,
Molly

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED JULY 5, 2023

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The Core of It All!

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THE CORE OF IT ALL!

How often have you heard your OT talk about the importance of core strength in a session with your child? It is something that we definitely speak about a lot in sessions as it is foundational to so many different skills that we all develop over our lifetime. In one of our previous blogs, we looked at Gross Motor Skills  and how we work on these skills as OT’s. We talk about Gross Motor skills involving all those activities that use big muscle groups. One of those big muscle groups is our core – from the bottom of the rib cage to the pelvic floor; That is our core! 

Being such a large section of our body, our core muscles help us to move in every way. From twisting and turning to bending and standing up straight. Without a strong core, many different skills, such as our coordination and the use of fine motor skills, can be more challenging than they should be.

Kids who generally have a weak core may:

  •  “W” sit on the floor
  • Slump or hunch over when sitting on the floor or in a chair
  • Constantly move or change position when sitting in a chair
  • Hold their head in their hand when writing or colouring in
  • May struggle with small items such as coins or doing up buttons on shirts
  • Need to lean against a wall or furniture to put shoes on
  • Struggle to keep up with their friends running around or complain that things are “too hard.”

So, is my child working on a six pack?

No – that is not the overall goal of improving your child’s core strength! Our core is made up of not only our abdominal muscles but also some of our back muscles as well as muscles that connect our legs to our hips and body. We are looking at strengthening those deep muscles within our body. We want to get those muscles to work for longer before they become fatigued (endurance), to work with all the other muscles of the body and to react to what is happening around us to help maintain our balance and stay upright.

How do we work on core strength?

We use three main concepts:

  1. Make it fun
  2. Work the whole body
  3. A little every day is best

Some of the ways your child can develop core strength include:

  • Pretend to be an animal and walk like them – bears, frogs, crabs, and worms are great
  • Laying on your tummy to play card games
  • Kneeling on the floor or on uneven surfaces, such as a pillow
  • Scooter board races
  • Obstacle courses that you have to commando crawl through
  • Using a gym ball while in a plank position to toss a bean bag at a target 

If this sounds like your child, or you would like to know more about how you can work on Core Strength at home, we would love to chat with you about your child and their goals.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon. Contact us on 0477 708 217 or admin@exploreandsoar.com.au

Until next time,
Lori

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED JUNE 7, 2023

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