Pillow Forts For Your Clinic, Ineffective Teaching Styles, & Helping Kids With Remote Learning

This is one of the coolest clinic toys I’ve seen in a while. The company is called Fort, and their magnetic fort pillows are launching on kickstarter on January 26th. If you sign up now you’ll get a significant discount off of the retail price of $399.

They are also making fabric covers for the pillows, which would be perfect for home use.

The pillows are made of polyurethane foam covered in polyurethane leather. They are waterproof and look to be easy to sanitize.

Each set comes with 12 pieces: 2 half moons, 2 arches, 2 triangles, 4 rectangles and 2 squares. That seems really generous to me, and makes this a better deal than you could find on “therapy equipment” sites.

I haven’t seen these in person, but they look like the perfect OT building toy. You can purchase up to 4 sets at a time once they launch. If I had a clinic space I would definitely scoop up a couple of sets.

I do home-based therapy, so I’m sending this site to some of my families who are interested in building sensory spaces for their children.

You can find them here.

The theory of multiple learning styles has dominated education for years. I’ve watched many harried teachers go out of their way to amend their lesson plans to accommodate multiple learning styles within their classrooms.

A recent review by Swansea University Medical School has found that teaching to a child’s learning style (auditory, kinesthetic, etc.) is ineffective. It turns out there’s no evidence in the research literature that shows that teaching to a child’s learning style improves learning.

In fact, teaching to a child’s learning style may hinder learning. “For example, a student categorized as an auditory learner may end up thinking there is no point in pursuing studies in visual subjects such as art, or written subjects like journalism and then be demotivated during those classes..”

This makes sense from a neurological point of view. If a child is weak in visual learning, shouldn’t we be challenging those neuro pathways to improve their ability to learn visually rather than ignoring the weakness?

Teaching to a child’s learning style also places unrealistic expectations on educators and therapists who are expected to individualize their lessons for each learning style.

The author points out that other methods of teaching, such as practice tests and spaced repetition, have far more support in the literature. Our valuable and scarce time and resources should be directed toward those teaching strategies instead.

You can read more here.

There’s no doubt remote learning can be difficult for even the most attentive child. The kids we treat hardly stand a chance when faced with lessons delivered by a face on a screen.

I’m always being asked for advice on how to help kids stay engaged with remote learning, and I’m sure you are being asked the same types of questions.

This article published by the Child Mind Institute gives some good suggestions on helping parents help their children with remote learning. Some key take-aways:

• It may seem counterintuitive, but the child may require more distance from the parent. If a parent is hovering over the child and checking in too much, the child may feel too pressured to pay attention. It’s a delicate balance and different for every child.
• It’s important to understand a child’s motivation. The child probably isn’t motivated to ace online school, or to get A’s in every subject. Especially the kids we treat. They need the adults in their lives to understand what really motivates them and to capitalize on that motivation. If the only way you can get a child through the school day is to promise two hours of PlayStation after school, that may be the best option.
• Validate the child’s feelings by letting them know you understand how crappy it must be to have to sit in front of a computer all day. A parent’s empathy can go a long way toward helping a child process negative feelings.