TSBVI Coffee Hour: Active Learning - Equipment ĘCharlotte Cushman and Kate Hurst 11/19/2020 >> Kate Borg: Good morning, everyone. You should see a poll when you join us. There are a few choices. If you would just answer the poll, we'll get started in just a minute. Also, before we get started, if you want to make sure in your chat box that the drop down says all panelists and attendees, that way everybody can see your comments or questions. Make sure it says all panelists and attendees. It's good to see everyone. (Greeting attendees) Lowell has put the link to the handout in the chat to make sure you have that as well. You're going to want this information. All right. We'll go ahead and get started because I know we've got a lot of good things to go through. So again, just as I'm giving opening announcements, if you guys will please fill out the poll that you should see when you enter the room. Also, please make sure that your chat box drop down menu says all panel ICHTS and attendees. Your microphones and cameras are automatically muted so don't worry about that. Please put any comments or questions That you have in the chat. One more time make sure your chat box says all panelists and attendees. There is no opening code. At the end of the session well give you a closing code. You want to write that down and keep it because we will send out an evaluation to you. It will come to you through our registration website. You'll enter that code. Again, it will come at the end of the session, just a closing code, and the CEU certificate will automatically generate upon completion of that evaluation. The handout of today's session has been shared in the chat. We'll share it several more times throughout the hour for immediate viewing. Later you'll be able to access resources for this session and all previous Coffee Hour sessions at TSBVI.EDU/Coffee Hour. You can find all of the information there. Okay. We are so excited to introduce our presenters today. We have Patty Obrzut, Charlotte Cushman and Kate Hurst. I'm going to turn the time over to them. >> Kate Borg: This is Kate Hurst and I'm going to ask one more time for you to take 30 seconds to put a vote in our poll about which piece of equipment you would like us to think about focusing on in an additional Coffee Hour down the way. If you'll do that now, then we'll give you just a few seconds to do that and, Lowell, if you'll take that poll down, I will share my screen. Lowell, can you take the poll down? >>: I think you can do that. >> Kate Borg: Okay. There we go. All right. Well, I am excited. Position boards, that's a big one. Y'all just want to know about all of them. So we'll take it from there and see what up with. As Kate mentioned this is our Coffee Hour and we're going to be focusing on the Little Room, but before we do -- hang on a minute. I'm having a hard time grabbing things. I wanted to mention to you there is some new content up on our website about how to align the goals or skills that you're working on in Active Learning and how to do an Active Learning approach to provide instruction in the general education. These links are in your website -- I mean in your handouts, so you can use those. But I wanted to point out there is a sample goal alignment and lesson plan that Scott and I created just to give you an idea about that. We always get questions about this. We always have people saying I can't use Active Learning because I have to teach the standard or general curriculum. Yes, you can. Active Learning is an approaching. You can use it to teach any content and Patty is going to give you more to think about on that. Then I wanted to say that as we mentioned at the beginning, we always are getting questions about the Little Room because that's one piece of equipment a lot of people know about. So we came up with a list of questions and we said, Patty, we want you to answer all of these in our short time frame. She's going to do the best she can, but feel free to put your personal questions in the chat. Charlotte and I will monitor those and we will try to fit those in as time allows. Right now I'm going to stop this thing and we're going to shift to Patty and let her introduce herself and then we'll get started. >> Patty: Hey, everyone. I'm Patty Obrzut, the assistant director at PRNG Center for Blind Children. I'm also a occupational therapist. I have been working for several years and pretty much an expert on all types of learning. Today we're going to focus on the Little Room and remind you of some of the pointers. There is the book space and self if you have time to read, I read it all the time, we're going to go over some of the basic principles on using a Little Room. Just a reminder this is a piece of equipment that can be used for a child either sitting or laying down on their back and the whole purpose is to try to teach children with multiple disabilities or adults how to learn to move their body to understand where they are in space and relation to other objects so that they can independently learn to move and manipulate objects. One of the first questions we usually get is what design of Little Room should I be putting a child in. I know Kate has a handout we're going to put up on Active Learning space.org to help you out. She is going to hopefully share that for me. We're going to look at some of the pictures and I'll explain. These are three Little Rooms that we've configured here at Penrickton and they are the most basic ones we used often. In the middle is for someone needing to use it in a lying down position. I want to make sure that you understand if you have an individual who cannot sit up independently, they should not be using the Little Room on the left or right. They should always be using the Little Room that's in a lying down position. The reason for that is we want the individual using it to learn to move and in the beginning most of our children or adults, if they have cerebral palsy or mobility limitations, if they don't know how to roll over, being in a Little Room with multiple objects they have to reach for helps them learn to move. Eventually they will gain skills where they can eventually sit up. But we're going to use the one in the middle for individuals who cannot sit up. The Little Room configured on the left is for a person who can sit up and typically it's going to reach a child about age 6 or 7 and it just depends on how tall they are. The one on the right is for people, either shorter or need to stand. Those are the three sizes we used and they can be configured to other designs I'll show you later. I do want to point out they are on residence boards. -- resonance boards. Most of the time the noises and sounds of their activity will be reflected back through the resonating board and being in a Little Room kind of keeps the sounds out that are happening. These three Little Rooms are in a very large play room and the kids typically are listening to the sounds they're making because it sorts out the sounds in the rest of the room. One more thing before we move on, I want to point out the different panels I'm going to show you later but there are multiple panels and they have multiple uses. The important part is when a child is in a Little Room, the panels that are on the sides or in the back should always reflect the child's ability level. And I think sometimes people just put up a panel because they don't really realize there's a reason behind each panel. So if I have multiple children going in these Little Rooms, I should be changing the panels around to meet the needs of the child that's about to go inside of it. We also have lids on all three of them. If you'll notice the objects are hanging at different levels depending on the child that's going to be in there. And when possible, each child should have their own lid because what each child is working on is going to be different than the child that uses it next. If they have their own lid, you don't have to memorize what objects should go in a Little Room every time, you can just put the lid on. In our room we buy extra lids we have made out of LEXAN MREKS glass. It's harder to break. We use the extra lids instead of having to buy extra lids as a way of making it more cost effective. Those are three sizes. Kate, if you can scroll down a little bit. Again, this is -- as you get to be 8 or 9 years old, if you're getting bigger you start to have more depth to your chest area, so we created a small adapter that bumps up a Little Room just by 6 inches. A typical Little Room laying down is about 13 inches, sitting up is about 26 inches, and if you go for the adult sitting up it's a little over 3 feet. So sometimes I just want to make it 6 inches taller, not the full 12 inches taller. So we made this riser out of wood and we'll slip it underneath the Little Room. So the one on the right we use for adult children, children who are getting to their teen age years, about 12, or if I was going to lay down inside of it. It just raises a little bit higher so the person can reach the objects more appropriately. Kate, if you can scroll down a little bit more. These two pictures I did side by side so you could see. This is Michael. He's actually 12 now. He doesn't use a Little Room right now. I asked him if he would sit inside to show you sizes. When he was younger he used it. He's on the left in the blue one and that's a sitting up Little Room for a child who's about 6 or 7 years old, but it's on the riser. If you notice, it's 6 inches higher, so that gives him a little bit of height, but his head is now with the riser starting to hit the lid. When your head hits the lid, it's time to go to the next size Little Room. On the right he's in the adult size Little Room. If you'll notice, see how the length of the objects needs to be extended so that the objects are hanging down to where your hands are typically positioned when you manipulate objects. Sometimes people make the mistake of hanging everything up way up in the air. You do not play with objects fine motor wise above your head. You should be playing with them at your chest level. So those objects have to be hung at a very long elastic or string so Michael is manipulating them where they should. The problem I see is people try to put children in this size Little Room when they can't sit up and in doing so they have to make those objects on long strings. Then when a child backs or hits the objects, the objects becomes scary which actually encourages a child not to move and does the opposite of what you want to have happen. That's why it's very important you're not using sizes on children or adults who can't sit up. With Michael, he's manipulating the objects. He can actually grab objects independently and he can manipulate object on the side panels as well. These just two sizes of a child sitting up. If you scroll down, Paxton is on the next one. This is Paxton on the left. He's 8 years old now and you can see his head is hitting the lid. When his head hits the lid he scrunches over and when I put it on the riser, you see he's sitting up more. If I put him in the adult sitting up size the objects are just a little bit too tall for him and dangling. Scroll down a little. This is Madison in the sit up Little Room. She's about 4 years old. See how far her head is from the lid, so that's an appropriate size. And then our helper is adjusting the hide for Rylan. That's the perfect height for him at 6 and he does not know how to sit up independently. If you can keep scrolling, Kate. Then just some aDAPGSs that we also do. On the left-hand side here is RJ. He's fed with a feeding pump and he tends to need to do that throughout the day. We have some kids that are on 24-hour feeds. The problem is we want him to be elevated or sitting upright while he's having a feeding. Also, while a kid is attached to a G-tube pump, sometimes the kids are just sitting in their wheel chairs not doing anything and we want them to be active. This is a way to adapt for the kids to do an activity while they're eating. RJ is on a wedge, a resonance board is put on top of the wedge so it won't slide down. We put material, that long black slip under him, so he won't slide on the board. Then we put the resonance board on top of that. He's actually having his G-tube feeding while he's in the Little Room for a good 30, 45 minutes. On the right-hand side I want you to get some perspective on how tall that one is. That's Paxton standing up. I just wanted to remind you we don't have one set up for standing, but a Little Room can be designed so a child can stand and go into a Little Room and activate it in a standing position. It would be extending out those black bars to make it taller. I have one here after we get out of this handout. I think that's the last picture. Before I start showing you some other items that I have here personally I just want to check for questions. >>: There are two things that come to mind from looking at those pictures. One is you didn't really mention much about the resonance board. Do you recommend having a resonance board when sun is in a Little Room? How important is that? >> Patty: We always put a resonance board under a child in a Little Room, especially for a child who is not aware of their movements and doesn't under standard that their movement is going to cause something to happen. The resonance board, if you're laying on it is going to vibrate a little and reflect the sound spec, so you're going to be able to hear better and feel vibrations if you're a child with any kind of hearing impairment or vision impairment, it just reinforces what you're doing. I think everyone's gut reaction is to put a blanket down. I guarantee you don't need it. But the kids respond much better with a resonance board. Every once in a while there's going to be an exception to every rule, but for the most part you do not need to have anything soft or squishY. You want noises and sounds to be echoed. You don't want to # MU fell things. I do notice people hang things like la VA lamps and lights and switches. The things in there should be able to activate based on their learning level. If you have something that can be activated with a push of the hand or a small opening and closing of the fingers. So you're looking at things that can be pushed, scratched or things -- for example, if I hang the C pod rattle, if the kids move their hand, it makes a sound just by pushing it. If you have someone with a hearing impairment, then you're not looking for sound response, you're looking for tactile response. So if I hang these, these all have tech TURS on them. Also if a child is batting and open their finger just a little, they get their hand stuck and then they can grasp an object and let go. You do want to use a resonance board when possible. >>: Someone is requesting a side picture showing the wedge. I don't think we have that where the child's getting the G-tube feeding. We don't have that right now, but maybe we can try and get that. >> Patty: If somebody else is talking at some point I might have a side picture on my computer I can share. I'll just need a minute to look for it. I can trying at the end. >>: We can add it to the website also. >> Patty: We do on occasion adapt, I just didn't show you a picture, we have had children sit in a tumble form feeder, special tomato sitting in a room. The reason why I don't put that online is people think that's what they're supposed to do. I do not want a child in a chair unless they have to be and the only time I've ever put children in is somebody who has severe respiratory problems who has to be in a full upright position all the time and can't tolerate lying down, then I'll put them i The problem with that is you don't ask them to move their trunk at all because you've restrained it and I want the kids to learn to wiggle while they're -- you want them to scoot their body and get to something that's 2 inches next to the other object. If you keep them in a seat they're restrained and can't move their body. >>: Patty, this is Kate. >>: Thanks, Patty, as long as you're on the topic I was just going to say if you could just mention, have you ever had a student in a wheelchair? I think you kind of just answered that, but that's a specific question that's come in. >> Patty: You can, but again I would be using the large adult size Little Room and I would have them sit up independently in that if they can sit. If they can't sit, I would have them in the laying down Little Room without their wheelchair. Again, if it's a full adult, if there was an absolute reason to be in a chair, it's not that you can't do it, you just have to understand you're restricting movement and you're not going to get as much independence as you could if you took them out of the equipment. >>: Other question is do you have any worry about choking with those long strings? >> Patty: When we're attaching objects for use in a Little Room, obviously I always am worried about anybody choking at any time on anything. So it's the adult's job to make sure that you're using is safe and that it's been tied on to whatever you're using safely. So the objects should always be secured. We use at least quarter inch elastic. We never used smaller because it can be bit through easily. We use tubing that prevents a child -- as they move their hand around, it prevents them from getting it caught around a finger and cut off circulation. The objects that go in the mouth have to be safe to go in the mouth and that will vary from child to child. You have some children who don't move at all and don't put things in their mouth and I might use different objects than I would for a child who bites down and has a reflex SIF bite. So you have to test the objects. Put them in your own mouth and if you can break it, I wouldn't use it. You have to watch the beads you use, stainless steel, you have to be careful about paint that's on objects. Because in a Little Room, I hate to say it, but I would like kids to put things in their mouth. These are usually students or identifies, like RJ, he's G-tube fed. If I ever want him to game oral skills to vocal eyes more, to ever feet himself if he's going to come off a G-tube, A lot of our kids have problems and they learn by rotating their tongue and bite down and have rotary and lateral movement of their tongues, too move their lips and close their lips on items. Students have to be given permission to do that in an appropriate environment to develop skills which will eventually help them chew. But it is the adult's responsibility to make sure everything is safe for use. >>: Thanks, Patty. Go ahead with other things you have prepared and we've got other questions we'll come back to but we want to make sure Patty has time to show us what she's got there. >> Patty: I'm on the big screen, so everybody can see me big, right? >>: That's right, Patty. >> Patty: This is one of the longer bars and this is a shorter one. When you're constructing a Little Room, you have these bars with sliders you're going to attach to each other. If I want to make a standing up Little Room, all I have to do is replace the short piece with two long pieces and I will make one that is 4 feet tall instead of 3 feet tall. Really the way you configure a Little Room is up to you. Typically the laying down ones are 1 by 2, they're a little bit bigger than that. The sitting up ones are 2 by 2 or 3 by 2, but you can go as big as 4 by 2. It is a pain to switch out the size, so we have 6 of them, one in every configuration, and that way the kids can always use the size they need. I wanted to show you that's how they go together. I want to go over some of the panels and why you switch them out. They're on the ground, so pardon me if I have to grab them. This is one of the panels. This would be a great panel for children who have a fisted hand because if I just move my hand on the board, what happens is this is just elastic with rings on it. I don't have to grab it. I just move my hand on the board and it makes a sound. So now you have a child doing that on purpose and maybe they get their finger hooked on it and now it snaps. Now I'm encouraging somebody to grasp and let go When they didn't even know how to open up their fingers before. Another panel that the kids really like, for a child in that same ability level with the hand is the astro turf panel. This is just a rough grass that encourages somebody if they're raking it like this with their hand, if they open up their finger it starts to have a scratching sound to it. Let's say you have a child who has one side of the body, one hand is open and the other more fisted. If you put the correct panels on each side, you're actually going to adapt the Little Room so that one hand is working on scratching while this one is working on actually grasping something. That's why you need to make sure which panels you use. This panel is for someone who is higher functioning. It's strips of Velcro. Now you can put objects onto the board when you grasp, they come off. A child can drop them or put them back on. There's different types of Velcro. They can take it from here and move it down. A Little Room should be adapted to meet each child's needs. Another panel, there's one with the hole in it. The reason is that an adult can actually hand a child something and you can interact with a child in a Little Room. That brings up the topic of should you interact with a child in a Little Room. A child who is laying down who doesn't understand that their movements are making something happen, you should be putting a child in a Little Room, adjusting the height of the objects in the first 5 minutes and then you should not be interacting with the child in the Little Room. You should just let them learn when they move there hand and bump into something, something happens. You have to let them Be quiet and understand a accidental movement becomes purposeful when they do something to make that sound or texture again. Usually you are not interacting with a child. This is a place for a child to independently interact without your help. But as they start to learn, maybe you're going to put the panel with the hole in it because you can transition why a child would want to come out of the Little Room and interact with you. You're handing them stuff to put on that Velcro handle. That's why there's one with a hole in it. In the beginning they used to be round but now it's square to make sure if a child put their head through it, they won't get hurt. >>: Before we leave the panels, how would you assess what panels you're using for a particular child? >> Patty: With us we're typically using the functional scheme, which is Lilli Nielsen's assessment tool. It breaks down the abilities in a levels. She included things like this in that assessment. It will say thing does a child open their hand or push an object on purpose. So that tells you what ability level the hand is at which then can tell you what panel to use. That's what we do here. >>: That's great. There are lots of other questions, but again we can come back to then if there are more things you want to show us. >> Patty: There's multiple panels. I know Kate's got a picture of all the panels on the website and each panel can have multiple uses. There's one panel that has a soft leather material and Lilli designed that for kids to actually kick against. So that panel was meant to be put by the feet so that the kids might push against that material, but they can push against it with their hand as well. Most of the time children are put in it with their head toward the objects and their feet toward the open end of the Little Room. Maybe there's a child who's very nervous about using their head or hands to explore, so there is an occasion where you might put objects over the feet. However, typically there's wood pieces that come with a Little Room, like they're just straight pieces with little hooks on them, and we will use these to hang objects over the feet. The reason why you're not using MREKS SI glass over their hand and feet, it's a small room and you don't want it closed off with no air flow because that will make a child tend to fall asleep. We'll use these and hang objects off the sliding brackets. I do want to show another part that most people don't pay attention to in a Little Room. It comes with a little block with magnets. As a child starts to learn to reach and grasp and hold an object and now maybe they're using 2 hands and taking it apart and manipulating an object, at some point you don't want a child to always think objects come in mid air. So Lilli created a wood bar with magnets so when a child reaches and starts to play with it, if they pull really hard it comes off and will fall and now a child has to search down here to find it and pick it back up. That way kids start to learning objects can be on the ground. Once a child is searching on the ground for objects and can pick things up and move objects from one hand to the other, then they have a lot of ability to move, then they may start moving out of a Little Room and manipulating all those objects without assistance of them needing to be tied to something. That's when kids start to not be in a Little Room anymore. That's usually a question, how do you know that they don't need to be in a Little Room anymore. For example, Michael who I showed you earlier, he can grasp objects, bring them to his mouth. If I set him on the floor, he moves and doesn't need a room where everything is tied down. But a child like Rylan lying down, their hands are fisted or at their body, they don't have the ability to roll over and they don't search for objects to find them in their environment, they tend to stay in one position. They really benefit from staying in a Little Room because they need to learn once they play with one object, because someone always asks how many objects should you have, where should they be positioned? Most objects are a couple inches apart from one another. If a child is playing with this one, they might repeat for 3 months with one object and then leave this object Now they go back and forth between the 2 comparing what this one is compared to this one. Then that might take 3 months. Now once they've learned about these now there's another object. Do you see how the hand is starting to search and learn what's in their environment. Once you have a child who's moving, when you take them out of a Little Room and putting objects around them, now we have a child who maybe starts to roll over and crawl and sit up. Then that turns out to be a child who doesn't need to be in a Little Room anymore because they learned to sit and crawl. I got on a long tangent there, Charlotte. >>: We actually have a question: A student is 12 and independently mobile by scooting and is able to sit. He has some hand use and isolated finger pointing. Should he be in a Little Room? >> Patty: We have kids that can sit and move around in the building. When you put objects around that child, if he can pick them up and grasp them and manipulate them, he doesn't necessarily need something tied down. But I have had kids who scoot and scoot right into a Little Room and play in there and then scoot out. There's nothing wrong with a child sitting in a Little Room and manipulating objects. It comes down to -- I would say Paxton, the kid I showed earlier, he tends to sit in one spot and he doesn't move anywhere. He can manipulate objects, sitting object. The objects stay put when he sits up. If he drops them, he doesn't have to search for them which makes him want to find the object because it's right there. It will depend on does that student or individual, do they search for things when they lose them or do they sit there? If they sit there, maybe they would benefit from using one. But any child who doesn't want to stay in one doesn't have to stay in one. Hopefully that answers the question. We've talked national past about children -- in the past about children who don't want to go in a Little Room. We've had kids over the years who either love it or don't love it. The reason why they do or don't love it, it's not because they don't like the Little Room. It's typically children who don't like to be put down on their backs. Typically when they're put down on their backs if they start to cry someone has difficulty listening to them cry and usually an adult runs over and picks them up. So now I have kids who's learned every time I lay down if I cry they pick me up and they associate laying down with they don't like that position so they cry to get someone to pick them up. So when you have a child who does that and it's not related to being in a Little Room, then you have to it get a kid used to being on their backs How I would do that, I would first start with a child on my lap having them lie down and I would take individual objects that I have sitting here and I would just hold them above a child and let a child while they're on my lap in a more reCLIEND position hopefully start to reach out and push objects because they know I'm there. Then after they tolerate that, I'm going to try to have that child a resonance board lying next to me where I can pat their stomach telling them I'm here but with me hol >>: We've got lots of questions coming in. If you place a child in a Little Room and you observe no movement, when is an appropriate time to start looking at changing the objects that you're hanging? For example, do you change the objects that day, 3 days, weeks, etcetera? >> Patty: Great question and the other question that goes along with that is how many objects should you be putting in a Little Room. First question I'm going to answer is that one. So the Little Room has about 24 slots in it and I would say for our kids most of them have at least 16 objects, if not more. The goal is that if you have a child that doesn't move very much at all, you need enough objects that if they move their head, a body part, an elbow, anything, they should bump into an obje Now that you have a child who's moving and if they don't seem to respond to the objects, what you're going to want to do is look for what objects are they not responding to and you may change one or maybe two objects at a time. If you put a child in for a week or two and nothing seems to be happening, take out 1 or 2 objects and switch them. What you should know, you should do an assessment to see what they like or their abilities. If I have a child who's hands are fisted or they're stuck to their body and don't move very much, I need objects that make sound to the slightest movement. These are two napkin rings, if they're hanging over the arm, if the arm moves in the slightest way you can hear the clinicing sound. If I have a child that can hear, that might be a good object. But if I hung this brush and this spatula together, these don't give you a sound, they just have texture. So if I have a child who likes sound, these are stupid things to hand. But if I have a child who likes tactile things, they might be interested in the tactile brush. As you're looking at every object you need to look at the child reacting or not reacting to the object to make a decision about whether it should be changed. What you should never do is change all the objects. That's the biggest mistake you can make. Sometimes kids need the repetition of being in there on a daily basis for a week or month before they actually figure out they're the ones moving that makes something happen. That takes kids some processing time. And if you keep changing the objects every day, they don't understand why the objects are different all the time and they may not have enough time to repeat. Sometimes you need to repeat during the session you're in there, but from day to day before you actually figure out what you're doing. There's not a solid answer so when. I'm just going to say only pick 1 or 2 things to change. Change the things they're not interacting with at all and pay attention to the characteristics of the object you're putting in their place. Make sure they're positioned correctly. If I put these in, I have it an elastic for a reason so you can adjust the height. If my hand is down here and you have the object up here, of course you're asking a child to reach up to grab it. That's the wrong position. You need to lower it so it's touching a child's hand so as they move the hand something can happen. If it's up here, you're asking for a big movement. If they don't have that big movement, they can't be successful. Pay attention. It's Christmas. Put all Christmas items in there. However, if you're trying to tie it to curriculum and you're working on math, the good thing about Little Room, things should always be hung in multiples, so you should have 2 or 3 things so they can compare things. It's a great math tool because if you're hanging things in 1, 2 and 3, they start to understand basic principles. If you're trying to tie it to science, there's always various things in there made of metal, wood, plastic. So you can be talking about things that are -- different characteristics of scientific things, magnets, brushes, metal, wood, you can put science into it. Honestly if you're trying to put literacy into it, if you want to talk about a kid telling a story, after they come out of a Little Room, you can say what object did you play with today? Tell me a story about it. What was the first thing you touched? They can answer a question and create a story about something they just did and participated in instead of someone reading them a story that they did not actively participate in. They're supposed to remember that John was the person in the story. They were the person in the story, they were in this activity and that would help them tell a story, hey, this is what I did. You always want to talk to a child about what they did after they come out of a Little Room, not before, because they've experienced it, they understand what they just did. It can't just be I saw you move your arms and legs and I saw you touch this and this. Maybe they don't know that they've touched them, but you've given an object a name. Maybe you gave them switches and ask them which switch did you touch. Then they create a story. This was a big tank gentleman. >>: All connected. I want to make sure we have time for all these questions, Patty. We have a student who loves to stand and explore, but when they attach objects to a standing board he gets frustrated and tries to pull them off. His objective then is pulling them off and destroying. Who should we do? >> Patty: If he wants to take apart because it sounds like that's the stage he's in, then we want him to take apart and put into something so you eventually build more constructive things. It might be having various size containers and a Velcro wall with objects that are Velcro so he can pull them off. When they pulls them off or drops them, they go into a container. So eventually maybe he'll want to take things out and put them back on the Velcro wall and build. You can do things with magnets as well. That might be a solution. It may not. But that's what I would try. >>: Here's a question, does the use of MREKS SI glass become a distraction for the lying down little room? (PLEXI glass) >> Patty: It can. You can always hang above a Little Room darker material or something from the ceiling so it doesn't reflect lights. Obviously we have students putting things in their mouth and they might have limited movement. I need to be able to see what they're doing to supervisor them while they're in there even though I'm not interacting. So you can hang something above it so there's no reflection. If it's solid, I'm not going to be able to see how they're progressing down the road. For some of the kids I'm working with who are totally blind I don't have to worry about it, but for the kids it's a distraction, there are solutions. >>: I think a related question there is children with visual impairment, is it always time to work on visual skills or motor skills? Can you talk a little about that? >> Patty: That's always a complicated answer for most people because I understand we want to work on vision skills as well, so it can be a tool for that, but typically the Little Room is meant to be a place where kids can understand where they are in relation to other objects and be independent manipulate tors of things in their environment. If I have a child who is visually impaired and they have hands that are fisted and crossing their legs and have no movement whatsoever, I want to encourage not only vision, but movement, hearing, everything. With that child, I want them to learn any movement, something will happen. I don't want to create a child who has to lay still or sit still and look at something and if they don't have the ability to reach to it that looking should go the only thing they're working on. We want looking and reaching. Sometimes a kid will move their body and reach and the eyes will then look at it as well. It's a complicated issue, but it's not necessarily that a kid should be -- I want a kid working on vision all the time, but I always want them to be working on learning to move. So you can hang a red object, a reflective object. There's a lot of things you can do for them. If you think a kid is overwhelmed by too many objects visually but they're able to move, then you would reduce the number of objects so it's encouraging them to use their vision in a Little Room. But it's not just an easy answer. What I see people do is they take everything out and they only hang one red object and they want tomorrow to look at it and reach. What I'm saying is sometimes we want the movements to happen and then the looking comes afterward. I don't know if Kate or Charlotte, if you have anything to add on that. >>: Patty, the one thing I was thinking on things is a whole lot of skills that we want to work on in a Little Room have to do with hand and feet and use of the mouth and things like that, but when you're thinking about expanding core curriculum kinds of skills, spatial orientation, development of tactile skills, important for orientation mobility. Thinking about that and choosing other environments to work on your vision stuff. There are many other places and ways to work on vision skills beyond the Little Room. >> Patty: I will say there's ways of adapting. The different panels, I know when Lilli was designing the panels, she put refleckive material on one, yellow on another. There's nothing saying you can't take a panel and paint it black so when you put a red plate on it, when they're together, as a child is moving their hand those plates are rubbing and making a sound on a black panel, maybe that child's vision would be drawn to that which would encourage vision. But I see people putting lights Certain things you don't do in a Little Room, you're not supposed to hang high pitched chimes or bells because it's a small enclosed other and sometimes the pitch of bells or chimes are too loud and will cause a child to put their hands over their ears and not listen. Why they don't put fire alarms in bathrooms because it reflects the sound so much it actually causes you to not want to listen. So typically you're not putting bells and chimes in there. The other mistake I see people make is they put in objects that are too big. Here's a big bowl. It could go in there because a child could grab onto the end of it or bat their hand on it, but people will put a big ball in there and they put huge objects that nobody can put in there mouth because they don't -- a child needs to be able to open up those fingers and get their hands in there. We're trying to develop hand and mouth skills. When you put big large discussed animals it's not necessarily attractive to encourage a child to explore. The other thing when we talk about changing objects, once a child has learned everything they can from an object, they're ready to move on. If you don't change anything, you're creating boredom because you're not changing the objects to a higher level skill. It is a real skill to know not to change the objects too soon, to change them when it's appropriate, to not change too many and to make sure developmentally you're always pushing a student to get to the next level which is where you need a good assessment. I think what's fun about doing all of this with a Little Room is hopefully you realize a Little Room is not something you throw a kid into to play for a half hour and you're not supposed to be paying attention. You're supposed to be paying attention. This is an environment to help them learn to do something else. So it's a useful tool to teach growth and independence and it can easily be tied to a curriculum. If you're supposed to be working on preBrailling skills, you have 6 objects hanging in a row, does the child move from one object to the next, it's a preBrailling tool. You can tie it to a ton of different curriculum ideas. >>: I'm really glad you said that because people forget that. I think people put random ideas and the idea that you can be thinking are we working on grasp and release, are we working on moving the legs? What are the real goals there? So I'm glad you said that. I think this has got to be our last question and someone wants to know for a child who has sensitive feet and can't take any pressure on them, what would you recommend about being positioned in the Little Room and how to manage that? >> Patty: I guess I want to know a little bit more. Is it pressure on the soles of the feet or heels? Typically when a child is laying down there's nothing on the sole of their feet because they're on their back side. If it's the back part of the heel, I might look for something creative, squishI, soft so when TH feet are on it it causes a sound that they react to. >>: How about a hot water bottle or something you attach stuff to? >> Patty: Yeah, that's a good idea. I have kids who like to move their feet and just putting a little doll on a board makes it a tipping board. If I lay sticks as the kids kick or stretch their legs that will roll things. You can do the same thing with squishY materials or cotton balls but it needs to be something that kid will enjoy. >>: Patty, time flew by. It's great. Sign up for the newsletter. It's active learning space.org. We always have great ideas from Patty in there, let you know about the latest thing. Thank you so much, Patty. And Kate Borg, you have some business. >>: I do, I don't know if you can see the chat, things like this is awesome and this is good information and lots of thank yous to you. Thank you, Patty, for spending this time with us. Let me give you the closing code and there are some important announcements you're going to want to know. Today's code is 111920. Okay. One more time. 111920. I'll also put that in the chat. Thank you, Kate Hurst for putting that in. Remember for next week because it's Thanksgiving week we will not have a Coffee Hour session. As we come back into December we're going to have special things happening which will mean different times. You can find all the information on the Coffee Hour website. I just put that in the chat as well. On November 30th, regular time, we will have the power of choice. On December 3rd, which is a Thursday, we will be meeting at 9:00 a.m. central time. The reason is because we have Dr. Andrew BlakeI and Helen St. Claire from CBI Scotland. And since they are in Scotland, we wanted to be able to accommodate the time difference. December 3rd will be at 9:00 a.m. December 7th will be a regular Coffee Hour session. That is a Monday. On the abacus. John rose. Then on December 10th will be the next session for the regional conference. That will start an hour early and run for two hours. We've had a lot of requests to have a session about screening and evaluations, especially using telehelp during this pandemic. That is our focus on December 10th. Register and join us for that. One more time, to obtain your CEU respond to the he goes evaluation that will be e-mailed to you. Put the code 111920. You'll get your certificate from. I'm going to put our website in one more time as well and make sure to get registered for the upcoming sessions. Thank you everyone and have a great Thanksgiving! And please, please, please, please stay safe and healthy. We'll see everybody. >> Patty: Goodbye everyone. Thank you.