It is beneficial to develop your child’s vocabulary from an early age because children with strong vocabularies do better in school. There is a strong connection between vocabulary and reading comprehension. However, children will not learn vocabulary effectively by drilling words with flashcards. Plus, flashcards are boring.

Strategies to Develop Stronger Vocabulary

• Introduce only one word at a time and use it frequently. It may be helpful to choose a word that is of interest to your toddler, such as butterfly, or a word from the school curriculum for your elementary school aged child, such as merchant.  
• Describe the word by talking about its physical characteristics, where you might find it, or what you think about it. For example, while watching a butterfly, describe its color, how it moves and the plants on which it lands. For a word such as merchant, define the word and identify merchants in your community and reference them each time you shop. Provide multiple exposures to the word in many different settings for effective learning.
• Define the word. Have your child define the word using their own words. Help them keep the definition simple and easy to remember.
• Choose words from a variety of word categories. It is easy to focus on nouns (things), but also try to include verbs (actions), adjectives (describes a noun) and adverbs (modifies a verb or another adverb).
• Play word games. Fill down time with word games such as Twenty Questions. One person chooses a word and then all players take turns asking questions to figure out the word. Parents can choose newly learned words.
• Relate a new word to known words. Ask your child what other words go with the new word.  For butterfly, it could be insect, flower, flying, etc. For merchant it could be storekeeper, store, money, etc.
• Illustrate with pictures. Ask your child to draw a picture of the word. For an older child, practice spelling the word by having them write the word to go with the picture, or just spell the word out loud.
• Use the word. Encourage your child to also use the word several times in the day.
• Encourage interest in new words. Teach your child to recognize words that they have not heard before, and use the above strategies to make the identified word part of their vocabulary.
• Talk at dinnertime. Enriching conversation with adults not only exposes children to more words, it increases their world knowledge.
• Read to or with your child. Even older children benefit from shared reading, especially if reading is hard.

And don’t forget to keep up with your summer reading to prevent your child from losing skills they have already learned!

If you’re one of the millions who suffer from chronic headaches or migraines, you know how debilitating they can be. The throbbing pain, light sensitivity, and nausea from a headache can bring your life to a standstill. While medication can provide temporary relief, physical therapy offers a drug-free approach to treating headaches by addressing the underlying causes.

During treatment sessions, physical therapists perform comprehensive evaluations to identify which factors are contributing to your headaches. Some common causes they might uncover include:

Common Causes of Headaches

• Muscle Tightness and Trigger Points – Chronic tension in the muscles of the neck, shoulders, and upper back can refer pain to the head. Trigger points (muscle knots) are often involved.
• Poor Posture – Forward head and rounded shoulder postures can overstretch the muscles and put increased strain on the joints, leading to headaches. Our modern lifestyle of sitting hunched over computers or devices exacerbates these postural issues. 
• Jaw Dysfunction – Jaw clenching/grinding habits and TMJ disorders can cause referred pain, often felt in the temples. Strength imbalances in jaw muscles can also contribute to postural issues in the neck. 
• Nerve Impingement – Compression or irritation of nerves in the neck can manifest as headache pain. Nerve impingement can also cause numbness, tingling, and muscle weakness in addition to headaches.  
• Injury – Whiplash, concussion or other head/neck injuries can lead to ongoing headaches if not properly rehabilitated. Lingering muscle tension often occurs following these injuries. 

How Physical Therapy Treats Headaches

Once the source is pinpointed, your physical therapist can create a specialized treatment plan to address the root causes. Depending on the factors involved, this may include manual therapy, therapeutic exercise, dry needling, and posture retraining. 

If chronic headaches are disrupting your life, don’t just mask the symptoms with medication. Try physical therapy to get to the root cause and provide lasting headache relief through a personalized treatment program.

Hippotherapy is a therapeutic approach that utilizes the movement of the horse. It is gaining recognition as a valuable component of occupational therapy interventions. This approach involves using the natural, rhythmic movement of horses to address a wide range of physical, emotional, and cognitive challenges faced by individuals with disabilities. Why hippotherapy though? Hippotherapy can be a valuable tool for addressing a wide range of challenges and promoting overall functional independence for clients.  

Benefits of Hippotherapy

From a physical standpoint, the three-dimensional movement of the horse’s gait provides sensory input. This input can be particularly beneficial for individuals with sensory processing difficulties. The horse provides a dynamic base of support making it an excellent tool to address gross motor skills. The gentle and rhythmic motion promotes postural control, balance, and coordination, making it an effective tool for addressing motor challenges.

In addition, the emotional and psychological benefits of engaging with horses are significant. Many clients experience a sense of empowerment and increased self-confidence through their interactions with these gentle animals. This leads to improvements in mood and overall well-being.

As well, the human-animal bond that forms during hippotherapy sessions can foster trust and emotional connections. These are integral to the therapeutic process. From a social perspective, hippotherapy presents opportunities for individuals to engage in meaningful interactions with the therapy team, volunteers, and peers. These interactions can support the development of social skills, enhance communication abilities, and provide opportunities for social participation in a unique and motivating environment.

In summary, the incorporation of hippotherapy into occupational therapy interventions offers a holistic and dynamic approach to addressing the diverse needs of clients. By capitalizing on the basic qualities of horses, occupational therapists can help their clients achieve therapeutic goals in a unique and engaging way. This ultimately enhances their quality of life and functional independence. Programs, such as Eagle Mount, offer opportunities for horsemanship programs. If this is something you think could benefit your child, talk to your OT. Check out this video to learn more about hippotherapy.

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a condition in which people experience deteriorating memory, language, and cognitive function more than expected for their age, health and education. The symptoms are not as severe as a person diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease or another form of dementia. Individuals with MCI can usually complete everyday activities and hobbies without help. Unlike many types of dementia, an individual with MCI is often aware of their memory problems. There is a possibility that MCI can lead to more severe forms of dementia, and thus it is of concern. Not everyone who has a diagnosis of MCI goes on to develop severe dementia.

Types of Mild Cognitive Impairment

There are two types of MCI; amnestic MCI and non-amnestic memory loss. With amnestic MCI, the primary symptom is loss of memory. So, an individual may forget conversations or misplace things. In non-amnestic MCI, the primary symptoms are difficulty with planning, organizing and judgement. Memory loss is a lesser symptom. Non-amnestic MCI may present as losing a train of thought, not staying on task or getting loss in a familiar place.

Dementia, on the other hand, is a severe progressive disease that interferes with the ability to perform everyday activities. Individuals with dementia often require help with daily care. The greater the severity of dementia, the more assistance they need. Memory and cognition are severely affected and become worse over time. Symptoms exhibited by dementia typically also include personality and behavior changes such as agitation or aggression. Behavior and personality changes are not evident in people with MCI.

Symptoms exhibited by MCI may be due to medication, but also to health conditions such as diminished blood supply to the brain. Unlike progressive forms of dementia, you can manage or even reverse symptoms of MCI. For this reason, accurate diagnosis is essential to treatment of the condition.

Dementia has many causes including brain injury, infection such as prion diseases, vascular problems and genetic mutations. Unlike MCI, the symptoms of dementia cannot be reversed. Physical therapy can help manage some of the physical symptoms. Medication may slow the progression of the disease or help manage associated behavioral changes. Medication will not treat the disease itself.

Being outside offers numerous benefits for children, not only to have fun, but ones crucial for their physical, cognitive, and social development. Engaging children in the outside world opens a unique and stimulating environment for them to explore, grow, and learn. There is an endless number of activities to provide your children to help them explore their interests, develop essential skills, and enjoy the wonders of the natural world.

What Outside Activities have Benefits for Development?

Here are a variety of outdoor activities to promote developmental skills while also ensuring your children have a wonderful time.

• One activity to promote emotional development is nature walks. Walks are a great way to introduce children to the natural world. This helps foster curiosity and emotional connections with the environment. These walks can be turned into scavenger hunts by creating a list of items to find. This also engages their critical thinking and visual scanning skills.
• One activity to develop fine motor skills is with outdoor crafts. Different materials to explore the outdoors could include: sidewalk chalk for drawing, painting with water on rocks/sticks, and leaves for stringing. These skills can all help develop hand-eye coordination, grasp patterns, and hand strength.
• The outdoors provides endless opportunities for cognitive development by engaging in sensory experiences. Outside is a great place to engage in sensory play because children can be messy without worrying about the mess to clean up after. Setting up a sensory bin outside with natural materials like water, sand, rocks, mud, leaves, grass can be a wonderful way to stimulate their senses. Engaging in messy play activities with various textured items help to develop sensory processing skills.
• Outdoor play can also be a great way to teach children self-regulation. Different activities to promote these skills include following the rules of simple outdoor game, taking turns on various play equipment (swing, slide, monkey bars, etc.), or managing emotions during a game of hide and seek.

More Outdoor Activity Ideas

Here is a list of more outdoor activities. These are simple, fun, and engaging that can be set up quickly with minimal equipment:

1. Leaf collecting: gather different leaves and talk about their shapes and colors.
2. Stick races: drop sticks in a stream or river and watch which one moves faster.
3. Garden helper: allow children to help with watering plants or digging in a small patch of soil.
4. Animal walks: encourage toddlers to imitate different animal walks like hopping like a frog or crawling like a bear.
5. Cloud watching: lie on your back and identify shapes or animals in the clouds.
6. Sandbox treasure hunt: hide toys in a sandbox for toddlers to find.
7. Color hunt: assign a color to children and have them find objects of that color outside.
8. Paper plane launch: make simple paper planes and see how far they can fly.
9. Follow the leader: lead children on a fun route around the yard or park.
10. Hopscotch: draw a simple hopscotch with chalk for jumping in with circles or squares.

The outside offers incredible benefits to assist children with their development that extends beyond just their physical health. These activities allow children to explore their interests, develop essential skills, and enjoy the beauty of the natural world. Whether its through sensory play, physical activities, or creative crafts, the great outdoors is a perfect place to bring joy to your children have a great time while also laying a solid foundation of their overall development. For more activity ideas and resources visit this website: 60 Summer Outdoor Activities for Kids.

It’s time to get ready for the trails again! Have you ever taken a step while hiking and suddenly felt your ankle roll? Maybe it was enough to cause injury, which puts you at risk for doing this again. Changes in terrain and uneven ground results in increased challenge to our ankles. But there are ways to improve your ankle health for hiking and get them ready for a safe experience. We have little receptors in our joints and tissues that help with proprioception or the awareness of where our joint is and what it is doing. This can be improved, but you have to practice. Here are some exercises you can do to help develop your proprioception and decrease risk of injury while out hiking. Start at the beginning and add challenges as you get better. Please stand next to a stable surface as needed to avoid falling!

Activities to Improve Ankle Health for Hiking

Here are some activities you can do to improve your ankle health and get them ready for hiking.

• Firstly, stand with your feet apart, together, one foot in front of the other or on one foot on even ground
• Turn your head back and forth, up and down or close your eyes while you maintain above positions
• Add something uneven under your foot like a piece of foam, couch cushion or an incline
• Step up/down from soft surface like foam
• Walk heel to toe on a flat line or on a balance beam

You should feel the muscles around your ankles working hard to keep you upright and maintain your position. If you experience pain, please see your physician or physical therapist for an appropriate course of action. A physical therapist can also help target any specific flexibility or strength deficits that could be contributing to ankle injuries. Happy hiking!