Feelings Parking Lot

Wow, it's been a long time since I've posted on here! I think I might have discovered Pinterest about a year ago and it was an easier way to organize and find ideas, so I've been pinning away over there! I highly recommend using it as a GREAT resource for ideas for work with your clients!

I used to have one board for all therapeutic intervention ideas, but I have since organized them into various boards. You can see all of them at pinterest.com/carlycollins

Anyway...
Speaking of Pinterest, that's where the idea came from that I'm sharing today: I saw an idea for teaching children vocabulary words, and I modified it for feelings and coping strategies (adapted from this original idea from Juggling With Kids Blog.

I called my version the Feelings and Coping Parking Lot. 

Feelings Parking Lot. Photo Credit: Carly Collins

Materials needed:
Poster board (or tape 4 pieces of paper together)
Markers
Toy cars

Here's what you do:

-If you have it, a piece of poster board would probably work best (I only had lined paper taped together, you have to be flexible and creative as a field-based clinician!)

-Create 'parking spots' large enough for toy cars to fit in by drawing them on the board

-Have the child identify various difficult emotions they experience and write them in parking spaces on one side of the 'parking lot'

-write various coping strategies you would like to teach the child or review with the child in the other parking spaces on the opposite side

-give the child a scenario that they must identify an emotion. For example, "How would you feel if someone broke your favorite toy?"

-ask the child to "park" their car in the feeling they would experience (drawing feeling faces along with the words can help with smaller children)

-if you want, you can use this time to discuss this feeling, have them make a face to show the feeling, etc

-next have the child take that same car, or another car if you have more than one, and ask them to choose a coping skill they would use to manage that feeling, or one they would like to learn, and park their car there

-once they choose one by parking, practice that coping strategy

-continue until all emotions and skills have been identified

My kiddos love this activity, and it's a creative way to practice identifying emotions and coping skills! 

I'd love to hear if you try this and how it goes!


*apologies for any typos or weird words, I typed this using my phone and hopefully caught all of the autocorrects! ;)

Home-Made PlayDoh

I got inspired by Pinterest (pinterest.com/carlycollins)and decided to get a little crafty tonight.


**Check back over the next few days, as I'll be showing you a few different ideas I found and made at home. They were all super simple!!!**


First up:
Play-Doh!


At ToysRUs, it's $5 for a 15-pack of mini PlayDohs. I found a recipe through Pinterest, which led me to Michelle DuPuis' blog, Rust & Sunshine, and thought I'd try it out and see if it ended up being cheaper to make on my own. 


Recipe, courtesy of Michelle DuPuis from Rust & Sunshine. Click above to see full instructions for how to make it:
1 cup flour
1 cup warm water
2 tsp. cream of tartar
1 tsp. oil
1/4 cup salt
food coloring

Making the PlayDoh on the stove

I went to the DollarTree and found many of the ingredients I needed, including flour, oil, and salt ($1 each). I also found a 10-pack of small containers for my clients to keep their PlayDoh in (also $1). At my local grocery store, I purchased the cream of tartar ($5), and a 4-pack of neon food coloring ($3). Total cost: $12.

Mini containers from the Dollar Tree

I doubled the recipe, and it filled the 10 small containers to the brim. I would say I easily have enough ingredients to make at least 10 more batches (actually probably a lot more than that, I'm pretty terrible at estimating things). I think overall it might be more cost-effective than buying it at a store, and it's definitely fun to make, but if you're in a pinch, $5 for 15 containers at ToysRUS isn't a bad deal I don't think.


Background:

A lot of my clients love playing with PlayDoh and it's an excellent sensory motor activity which promotes self-regulation when clients are feeling angry, anxious, etc. I learned this from an incredible colleague, Ken Schwartzenberger, LCSW, RPT-S. You can read an article in which he discusses neurosensory play here. 


I thought it might be fun to include my clients in the process of making PlayDoh and having it to take home. I often want to send my clients home with a little PlayDoh so that they can have a simple self-regulation tool at home. Because I work with low-income families, I try to provide my clients with supplies rather than asking their parents to purchase things for them. 


Note: My original vision was to make the PlayDoh from scratch with my clients. However, when you make the PlayDoh, you have to heat it over a stove. Not so easy to do in a school setting, and in a home setting, I don't want to be held liable if something were to happen. 
So, I pre-made the PlayDoh, but left it plain colored, and packaged it in the containers. I will include my clients in the process of choosing and adding the color, and kneading the color into the PlayDoh (making it a sensory activity immediately, and also giving them a feeling of autonomy, self esteem, and control). 

Combining Card Games (UNO & The Ungame)

An original idea from Carly Collins, creator of Therapeutic Interventions blog:


I have an adolescent male client who is, let's just say...strong-willed, determined, and persistent (I'm being strengths-based here...). It's a bit of a challenge working with him, which in some ways I am thankful for, because it causes me to grow as a therapist and it forces me to be creative.


He LOVES to play UNO, but sometimes I am at a loss for how to change the game a bit to encourage his self-expression and work toward his goals. I had an idea today and thought I'd try it out. 


At this particular school I work at, we have not only the game UNO, but also The Ungame (pocket size, kids version). For more information on The Ungame, click here. I decided after one round of regular UNO today to shuffle The Ungame cards into UNO, with my client's permission. He reluctantly agreed, but when I told him that The Ungame cards could be used as "wild cards," meaning they could be considered any color or number, as long as he answered the question, he was enthusiastic about adding the cards to the deck. Being very competitive, he loved the idea that it might bring him to a victory sooner. 




Though he still didn't love the idea of answering questions during the game (and he made it known that he didn't), he enthusiastically did so because it was bringing him closer to beating me in the game. In the process, he was expressing himself and receiving lots of praise from me for doing so. I answered any questions I got in my stack of cards as well in order to continue building rapport and trust with him. 

Next time you're playing UNO and want to add a creative twist, try this out if you have The Ungame (or any other therapeutic card game, or you can add your own questions on slips of paper)!

Social Communication Resources

Another Pinterest find!!! Angela Cardenas has created some great resources for Social Communication skills - you can find them here

TONS of FANTASTIC and Realistic Therapeutic Interventions!

So as you all may (or may not) know, I am slightly obsessed with Pinterest (check my various Therapeutic Interventions boards out at Pinterest.com/carlycollins). I was perusing tonight and am always looking for new and creative ideas on there, personally and professionally speaking. 


Well tonight I ran across Amber Seidel's Therapy Interventions (Play, Creative, and More) Pinterest page, and I HAD to share it with you! It has some wonderful, creative, simple, and realistic ideas to use with your clients!!! Click above or here to access her page.


If you need tons of great ideas, check it out, you won't be disappointed!

Building Empathy

Some great ideas for assisting children with building empathy skills:
http://www.johnhoward.ab.ca/docs/modules/Bullying/BLYG0203-EmpathyActivity.pdf
https://dschool.stanford.edu/groups/k12/wiki/15f3a/

http://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/being-mindful-empathy-building-play-therapy-0112114/

Image courtesy here

Target Dollar Section!

I received a bit of money from work for supplies for a new classroom I have at an elementary school. At the Target I went to (in Carson), they had SO much good stuff in the dollar section! All items on the left were $1 (card games, foam swords, various balls, large bubble wand, cubes that I will convert into story cubes, as suggested by Caitlin, noise putty), all items on the right were $2.50 (dinosaurs and safari animals, puppets, blocks, and a play science set).

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