Just about all of our students have sensory integration difficulties. Some are sensory seekers, others are overly sensitive to noises, textures, and visual chaos. As we enter our third year at JRA, we have worked harder to enrich our environment, including many sensory activities that help students stay focused and calm during the day. We have gotten good advice from Katie Reily, our Speech and Language Pathologist, who is also a therapeutic educator in the Waldorf tradition. Linda King-Thomas of Developmental Therapy Associates of Durham provided a great inservice for us, and Claire Marsh, the occupational therapist from DTA who comes to work with students weekly individually and in class, has also been helpful.
We have tried to increase opportunities for movement in several ways. Every morning starts with a rousing kickball game. Students are very patient with those who are just learning, so everyone gets to play. After lunch, the whole school goes walking or running in nearby Nature Conservancy land, where opportunities to climb, jump, carry, and throw abound. We keep a mini-trampoline in the hall, ready for someone who needs to bounce. And all students participate in our Bal-a-vis-x program, where students bounce balls and pass beanbags rhythmically and often in unison.
In most of our rooms, we’ve worked hard at keeping visual clutter at a minimum. Eight foot windows and our high ceilings provide natural light and a feeling of spaciousness. The fish tanks and gecko cage provide calming and interesting things to watch. Boxes of fidgets of every kind are in each classroom. Here, chewing gum is not a cause for punishment, but a coping strategy that we encourage students to use. Some classes keep a cup of disposable drinking straws for kids to chew on. We make sure there are multiple textures and activities to captivate even the most sensory seeking child among us.
Sensory Processing Disorder or even just sensory integration difficulties: come check us out and see how we can help your child!