The skills most children take for granted as they clamber about on a jungle gym fall into a category called Leisure Skills. Leisure skills have an important part to play in neurological development, gross motor skill development, balance and motor planning.
At Newberry Park, we break large skills such as climbing up the ladder on the jungle gym into small steps. We teach those steps using a variety of different ABA techniques. Once the student has mastered those steps, we start reinforcing their use with the jungle gym to help transfer the newly mastered skills into the student’s natural environment.
This story was inspired by the very personal experience of one of the families that attends our centre. Learning to play on the jungle gym has had a wonderfully positive impact on their little boy and their family life. Their little guy joined our centre a year ago. When he started with us he had several self-stimulatory behaviours such as pacing back and forth, and flicking and flapping his hands. At school, these usually appeared during downtimes, less structured periods such as snack and lunch periods.
Kim Mavroedakis
Posted at 20:38h, 19 JulBeautiful story with a wonderful happy ending well done Juliet and staff 🥰