70 Play activities

Both in parenting and teaching we do many roles. We do what is right for our kids regardless of what the official job title of the "responsible" party may be. I have worked with parents who clean out trachea tubes before making dinner and teachers who stretch their students to stand. These jobs belong to a nurse or PT respectively, but we do them because we care.  Lynne Kenney and Rebecca Comizio wrote 70 Play Activities for Better Thinking, Self-Regulation, Learning & Behavior integrating the role of the OT who is focusing on sensory processing with those of the psychologist. While I picked this book up after an EdWeb after watching a webinar to see what I might be able to use to reinforce and teach executive function skills, I see that her integrative approach can be used to do that and more. Although it seems that many of her strategies really focus on elementary students, adaptations, which she encourages, could lend them a broader appeal.

A key component of her approach seems to be that movement and play can both teach and prime the brain. For example, she looks at using ball bouncing to reach self-regulation and control. While the activities can be used to alert or calm a student, with the proper preface, they can showcase how self control feels and demonstrate how it helps with completion of a task. The last section of the book talks about how movement can be used to reinforce math. We now have studies that say gesticulating during math learning and explanation increases math performance. It stores information in more places in the brain helping students develop both better encoding and recall. If we start bouncing from me to you and back again, we then add the cognitive piece of reciting math facts. For example skip count or multiplication facts can be mirror counted, alternate counted, chorally counted or only student counted.

One activity I liked from the webinar that is discussed in the section on musically rhythm goes like this. Practice a rhythmic skill that the student can do to automaticity- like marching, or clap-tapping- then add counting. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, ... Then ever fourth cycle add a piece of cognitive recall such as identify the type of quadrilateral, continent, chemical element, phonetic sound of a letter, math fact or color I show on a piece of paper.

One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, trapezoid.
One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, Africa.
One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, carbon.
One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, A- apple- /a/.
One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, 12/4=3.
One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, green.


This could also work with chanting to a beat, whether it be marched, clapped, jumped, or some other combination thereof. You could even have the definition projected on a whiteboard. This sort of practice is highly associated with recall. If you involve more of the brain, more dendrites fire and students are more likely to encode it and then recall it.

The book intersperses brief theory and explanation with pages of activities. As I mentioned, most of the activities would need some modification for older kids. Her thought is to encourage older kids to play the coach or person who will help others learn. Although she talks about the neuroscience of learning, it is on a very light scale. This book is highly readable, but if you want to teach kids the neuroscience behind the idea, you will need to do more research. She does talk about specifically labeling the executive function you are trying to develop and showing how the activity helps do it. This piece of metacognition is important in helping kids understand the science behind it working. Altogether an interesting book working on using sensory processing, physical movement and cognition to improve skills in children.