Opening Up Cloth Rings

What a great day at Divinity Farm! Farm owner and riding instructor Maria Hurley had made a beautiful obstacle course with flowers in the cones.  I was pleased to find a mailbox attached to the fence, so I will think up some fun activities to use with it.

I made these sock rings by filling them with plastic bags and stitching the ends. I made sure that they were not to stuffed, so that I could attach them into a chain as shown in the video. This reminds me of the daisy chains made to decorate walls at parties. I thought that it would be a great motor planning skill to open each up before placing on the pole or a ring stack. This client actually did a few by himself,  not captured on video but you can see how he was interested in doing this.

A cute activity to motivate client to kneel. I like doing lots of transitions from sit to kneeling, kneeling to standing, squat to stand etc.

Lacing shapes during walk

I usually stop the horse to do a fine motor activity but this  little guy was able to do it while we continued walking. I was very pleased with how focused and motivated he was and how his coordination had improved since he struggled to do this six months ago when the horse was just standing still. I cut the donut shapes out of detergent bottles and the cord is tied to the bottom of a bag I knit.

Strenghtening legs-Using Whoopee cushion

This 2 year old must have posted (standing with feet in stirrups) about a hundred times. He did it while the horse walked up and down hills. I only stopped the horse while catching it on film. This is a great activity to strengthen legs, motor planning and having fun so that you can convince your client to do even  more challenging movements. My volunteers had a great time and I am happy when they are-since I want to keep them working with me for a long time....../

The client who  was resistant to prone positioning last week, asked to do so today! It was a challenge to teach her how to extend her head and arms like superman while I counted to 10, but she understood what I wanted and held the position briefly independently. Maybe next time we can add leg extension to fly!

 I printed these vehicle pictures off the internet and covered them with contact paper to make them sturdy. I had a 7 year old boy with autism in mind when making these, knowing that he likes trucks, tractors, airplanes, wagons etc. But actually these were great in getting the little girl to articulate some S and F sounds when inserting the fire truck and snow shovel pictures. I am also working on teaching them to fold them in half in order to make them fit through the opening.

It was a very good day for a client who gets easily agitated. I am working on gentle pats and rubs rather than slapping the pony and time spent squeezing a puff ball seemed to help too him to be nice to the pony, too. He enjoys being on his belly and when finished and sitting up again he followed directions to ask "give me the ball please".....one of the longest sentences I can recall hearing him use.

I usually put the clips on the mane so that children need to poast to reach them, but this little girl doesn't have the strength to do that, so instead she enjoyed removing them from the reins and inserting them into the blue and yellow bags that I made and clipped onto the tack.