Children’s Therapy Centre #35 – March 2018
A Message from the CEO
I am happy to announce that Children’s Therapy Centre has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Cooroy Family Practice in Myall Street Cooroy. Both Cooroy Family Practice and Children’s Therapy Centre bulk-bill services in Cooroy. We can provide therapy at the health centre or in the community. We hope that it leads to integrated and streamlined care for children with health conditions, developmental delays and disabilities. To access our services in Cooroy, the Cooroy Family 
Practice can provide a Medicare Enhanced Primary Care Plan (sometimes called a CDMP) or Mental Health Care Plan for eligible children. For more information, please phone Kylie at Children’s Therapy Centre on 54417199.
As a not for profit company, the Children’s Therapy Centre is always grateful for kind donations from local community organisations. We were thrilled to be contacted again this year by the NAMBAS Tennis Club about a generous donation.
One of our young clients, Kaiden, and his mother Amy, helped me to receive the cheque from NAMBAS Tennis Club. The donation was used to purchase 
equipment that is used by the children in therapy sessions. Thank you to NAMBAS club members who have been keeping us at the forefront of their fundraising efforts over many years.
Kind regards
Debbie Blumel
CEO
Sign and Play at Kawana Children’s Therapy Centre
Kawana Children’s Therapy Centre is offering a Sign and Play group for children aged 2 to 4 years with delays in play and language skills. The program is run by an experienced Occupational Therapist and Speech Language Pathologist. The group provides a safe and supportive learning environment for children and will enable parents to develop skills to use at home. The program runs for 30 minutes and can be attended by 3 or 4 children. The small group size enables one-on-one therapy with children which can be observed by parents to do at home. The small group format means that the therapists can focus on the individual need of your child.
Please call Melissa, our Centre Co-ordinator at Kawana on 5301 9350 to register or find out more about this program.
Nursery Rhymes
With technology changing the landscape of childhood, studies show that children who are exposed to traditional nursery rhymes continue to reap many benefits, including better language and reading skills later on.
This is because nursery rhymes strengthen children’s ability to hear sounds, rhymes and rhythms. This develops sensitivity to sounds and phonemic awareness is linked to better literacy outcomes. But there are lots of other benefits too!
Nursery rhymes:
- Help build a child’s vocabulary, and provide opportunities for oral language to be spoken and expanded
- Are fun, engaging, short and quick – te perfect way to introduce a love of reading and books to a toddler. They are also the perfect length for a toddlers short attention span!
- Teach children a basic story structure i.e. a problem and solution; a cause and effect. This will lay the basis for more complex stories later on.
- Improve fine motor skills and coordination e.g. action rhymes such as Incy, Bitsy Spider
- Teach about the past e.g. ‘Jack and Jill’ can teach about a time before plumbing’; Jack be nimble, Jack jump over the candle stick’ can teach about time before electricity.
My favourite reason is that they can provide a wonderful childhood memory for you to pass onto your children. Many have been around for more than 500 years. Nursery rhymes can be fun, and the reason they continue to be so popular is that for many children, they are surrounded by memories of special together time with a parent or grandparent.
At childcare and later at school they can build a sense of community. Children united and enjoying the same rhyme is a wonderful and powerful positive language experience!
Back to School Success
We received this lovely photo and Facebook message from the parent of Arthur (on the right). It’s very rewarding to see two children who attended our ‘Transition to Prep’ program looking so confident on their first day of school.
Here’s the message from Arthur’s mother, Libby. “Clancy, Samara, Linda, Melissa and the rest of the team. THANK-YOU. We couldn’t have done it without you. Massive smiles at the end of the 1st day of school”.
Early Communication Using Signs for Key Words
Did you know that Signing is a great way to help children develop early speech and language skills.
Speech is a very complicated skill – we use about 72 muscles to speak! Signing is developmentally easier than coordinating the jaw, lips, teeth, tongue and breathing muscles for speech. Children naturally use gestures before they learn to say words, for example, they point, wave ‘bye’, and putting their hands up to be picked up.
Children’s Therapy Centre is running a Parent Workshop in March or April 2018.
Please register your interest if you would like to participate in our:
- Signing playgroup – 3-6 year old children
- Introduction to Sign Group – 0-3 year old children.
These groups will be held on Tuesday mornings at our Nambour Centre. Further groups will be considered if there is enough interest, so please let our friendly Centre Coordinators know if you are interested by calling 5441 7199.
Giving Feedback to our Children – Part 3
In our last newsletter, we explored when and how to give feedback to our children. In this final article, we will consider how feedback can be used to guide our children’s behaviour.
How do we use feedback to guide behaviour?
- Remember our children are learning and we are the most loving teacher they have. Mistakes are a natural part of the learning process, and we need empathy.
- Be honest.
- State how you feel. Children need to understand the impact they have e.g. “I feel sad and my body hurts when you bite me.” Avoid comments that may make your child feel responsible for your feelings e.g. “You make me feel sad”.
- Include empathic statements, “I can see you are frustrated, but we do not hit each other”.
- Be specific about what should be done e.g. “When we are angry, we need to use our words and say ‘I feel angry when you snatch my toy’”.
- Comment on what is working even if they are being inappropriate e.g. over-hugging everyone). “You’re really trying hard to make a friend, let’s try ………….”. “I can see you’re holding the pen right down the bottom, and you’re holding the paper very still”. “I noticed how you shared your doll. Your friend was really happy”.
- Role play where appropriate as this helps the child put the suggestions into practice using people or toys.
- If a child appears to be struggling, notice your child’s willingness, “You really want to put that on”, or persistence, “I see how hard you are trying to concentrate, I like to see you stick at it”.
Giving feedback is a skill that most parents struggle with, especially when we have not had fantastic modelling. It is useful to revise what tumbles out of our mouth on a regular basis, and see where our children could benefit from a change from us. It is important not to be hard on ourselves when we don’t like what we notice. Those we love also benefit from the kind feedback we give to ourselves.
