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Earlier this spring, Ben Shinabery, Executive Director of the Dick & Jane Project contacted Helping Hands Center. He stated that he had received a grant from Autism Speaks and had chosen Helping Hands Center to launch a pilot program that would culminate with our student’s writing and producing two original songs. This was the first time the Dick & Jane Project approached an educational environment that primarily serves students with autism and other developmental disabilities. With great excitement, the planning began. Ben and Andy presented timelines, examples of previous musical productions and many ideas with one main goal in mind: to modify their program to fit our student’s needs. Together, we discussed lesson planning that would prepare the students for the Dick & Jane Project. Students discussed the idea having a theme for a song much as they would discuss a theme for an academic paper, and vocabulary associated with the project, such as genre, chorus, and melody. Students in the third through sixth grades were chosen to participate.

The project began the second week of June. Ben and Andy along with two producers, Rashad Thomas and Corey Montgomery, visited Helping Hands Center for a two week time period, an hour and a half each day. The musicians spoke directly with the students about their interests and explained the song writing process. The musicians and students created a list of common interests, then held a vote to determine song topics. Two topics were chosen: avoiding reminders which is a behavior redirection strategy utilized at school and visiting the pool during community outings.

Rashad and Corey spoke in depth about the reasons the students enjoy the pool and the reminder system. Corey would return each day with lyrics in mind that encompassed what the student’s had suggested. Rashad would return with a suggested rhythm. Both musicians were incredibly open to criticism from the student’s and made changes to their ideas as needed. Suggestions ranged from, “hey maybe a little less flute sounds,” to “why don’t you add a lyric about the slide at the pool.” As our students practiced making suggestions and giving corrective feedback, Corey and Rashad listened and encouraged them. Over the course of two weeks, two incredible radio quality songs were written and composed with the help of our students. Throughout the entire process, our student’s made comments about how Ben, Andy, Rashad and Corey really heard what they had to say.

As the coordinator for many of the student’s involved, it was exciting to witness so many students feel empowered. Every single student was engaged in the production process and excited to know that a song they had a hand in writing would be heard on the radio. They truly felt like “rock stars,” as so many of our students’ stated. Co-Executive Director Erin Nealy had the following to say about the experience: “In a very short amount of time, the Dick & Jane Project team made a tremendous impact on the students and staff at Helping Hands Center’s Summer Camp program.  The students were so engaged in the songwriting and production process and this even transferred into my home environment, as my (typically developing peer model) daughter shared the experience with me with joy and enthusiasm.  She taught one song to our family, and shared her excitement about her participation in the process.  We even transferred the song to make it applicable in our home environment as well.  In addition, I was able to observe one of the sessions with the team, and all the students demonstrated engagement in the process and with the team.  We are grateful to the Dick & Jane Project and Autism Speaks for their partnership this summer and for providing our students with such a unique opportunity.”

As an organization we truly appreciate the staff at the Dick & Jane Project. Not only were they professional, caring and ambitious with their work, they truly made the experience an exceptional one for everyone involved.

The sensations we feel every day, we often take for granted. Sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch, we learn about these in school as our five basic senses. But our internal senses, vestibular and proprioceptive, are often not taught growing up.

The vestibular system regulates our balance and movement.

Our proprioceptive system provides us with a sense of where our body is in space based through the muscle and joint feedback we receive.

The vestibular and proprioceptive systems develop in utero at 6 weeks gestation.

We all learn through sensory sensations, and what we feel by touching and moving is how we individually experience the world.

As an Occupational Therapist (OT), I have taken numerous classes and studied for years about our sensory system. I continuously learn new information as I grow as a therapist. At work, I get into the OT mindset where everything is sensory related, but at home things change.

I am a mother of two, 3 and 6 years old, self-diagnosed, sensory seeking daughters. It is a challenge to entertain after a long day at work and school. TV is so much easier to keep their attention when I’m trying to cook dinner or go through backpacks or pack lunches for the next day. But I know they love physically exploring new environments and crave movement. So, I started developing a list of things they can do on their own while I supervise and get the after-school madness back in control. Here are some of our favorite sensory activities:

Outdoor while the weather is warm:

Play on a swing set, slide and climb monkey bars or a climbing wall, jump on a trampoline. My kids like to pretend they are American Ninja Warriors and make up their own obstacle course. Don’t have a gym set? Dollar stores often have cheap toys that kids love such as hula hoops, jump ropes, balls to kick or throw, and crawl through a tunnel. Don’t want to spend money on things? Check out outdoor/indoor.

Outdoor and indoor activities:

How about doing jumping jacks, animal walks (bear crawl, crab walk, kangaroo hops, walk like a seal, penguin, or gallop like a horse), spinning, jumping forward and backwards, skipping, running, wall push-ups, yoga po
ses. Cosmic Kids Yoga on YouTube is one of our favorites. Brain Breaks on GoNoodle.com.   Build a fort out of blankets and crawl through. Squeeze and smash with pillows, jump on a pile of pillows on the floor, wrap up in a blanket like a burrito. A way to get the kids to stay on task is to make a game out of it. Taking pictures of them doing the activity, print then pick a card. The kids take turns doing activities 5-10 times.

Indoor activities:

Tactile bins are a great way to keep the hands engaged. We have hundreds of nerve receptors in our palms and fingers. Our tactile sensation helps us understand the world around us by our sense of touch. Making sensory bins for home is fun and they can be filled with all kinds of items like rice, beans, salt, sand, bird seed, grass seed, dry corn, dry oats, shaving cream or water beads. Just make sure kids do not ingest the non-edible materials. Other tactile play may include Play-Doh, Moon Sand, Slime or Putty. See below for recipes and pictures for home-made dough and slime. Musical instruments are also a great way for kids to experience their senses. Holding and making noise provides auditory feedback as well as proprioception when something is struck like a cymbal or xylophone. When hands feel rhythm sticks tapping together, the feeling or vibration can resonates through the hands for up to several minutes after stopping the play.

Here is the basic recipe for Home-Made play-dough:

1 cup salt

2 cups flour

2 cups water

1 tablespoon cream of tartar (find this in the baking section at the grocery store)

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Make it smell like fall by adding 1 ½ tablespoons of pumpkin pie spice

Make it look like fall by adding yellow, red or a mix of food coloring to make orange.

Directions: Whisk all ingredients into a pan and put it on the stove. Cook on medium heat for a few minutes. It will start out runny but quickly form into a ball. When it gets thick, remove it from the heat and continue to stir. When it is semi-cool, place the ball onto a floured surface and knead the dough. Add another ½ tablespoon of flour and knead until the consistency you want. Store in a Zip-lock bag in the refrigerator to last longer.

Here’s the recipe for Home-Made Slime

4 oz. bottle of Elmer’s white glue or Elmer’s school glue gel

Water

1 teaspoon of Borax (find this in the laundry detergent aisle)

Two bowls

Food coloring or glitter (optional)

Directions:

1. In one bowl, mix 4 oz. of glue and 4 oz. of water. Add red, yellow or a combo to make orange of food coloring and glitter
2. In the other bowl mix 1 teaspoon of Borax with 1 cup of warm water until the detergent is dissolved.
3. Add the glue mixture to the borax solution, stirring slowly.

The slime will begin to form immediately into a ball. Use your hands to pull it out and finish kneading it until it gets less sticky. Dump out the excess water.

Have fun letting your kids help measure and mix the ingredients. I hope you enjoy these activities.

-Leslie Murdock, M. S., OTR/L

Music Therapy is the clinical and evidence-based use of music interventions to accomplish individualized goals within a therapeutic relationship by a credentialed professional who has completed an approved music therapy program.

Music Therapy is an established health profession in which music is used within a therapeutic relationship to address physical, emotional, cognitive, and social needs of individuals. After assessing the strengths and needs of each client, the qualified music therapist provides the indicated treatment including creating, singing, moving to, and/or listening to music. Through musical involvement in the therapeutic context, clients’ abilities are strengthened and transferred to other areas of their lives. Music therapy also provides avenues for communication that can be helpful to those who find it difficult to express themselves in words. Research in music therapy supports its effectiveness in many areas such as: overall physical rehabilitation and facilitating movement, increasing people’s motivation to become engaged in their treatment, providing emotional support for clients and their families, and providing an outlet for expression of feelings.

What is Music Therapy at Helping Hands Center?

At HHC, students receive music therapy in a variety of settings, including individual and group sessions and multi-modal sessions with psychologists or speech language pathologists. The music therapists assess each student for the setting that will be most successful based on their abilities and challenges, and each student receives a group music therapy session. Social and pragmatic language and communication skills, articulation, receptive and expressive language development, fine and gross motor skills, and cognitive skills may be targeted during a student’s music therapy session.

What is Large Group Music Therapy at Helping Hands Center?

All students at Helping Hands Center receive 30 minutes of music therapy in their classrooms as a large group. There are 2 15-minute classroom music therapy sessions per week in the Early Intervention classrooms and 1 half-hour classroom music therapy session per week in the preschool through middle school classrooms.

The classroom music therapy sessions target many of the skills our students find challenging. As they participate in songs, chants, finger plays, dances, and clapping games, students become a part of their class and school community, focusing on positive social interaction. There is an emphasis on joint attention, thus promoting an awareness of the environment. Research shows that during group music therapy experiences students exhibit an increase in following directions, conversational skills, responsiveness, and eye gaze and eye contact. Other skills that are targeted during large group music therapy are eye-hand coordination, problem solving, creativity and choice-making, persistence, self-control, keeping a steady beat, and listening. Almost all of these skills are targeted during one half-hour or 2 15-minute group music therapy sessions, and all of these skills are targeted using fun, playful activities that are easily remembered and reproduced in various settings.

If you have any questions about music therapy at Helping Hands Center, you can contact any of the music therapists on staff at the school. They can direct you specifically to your child’s music therapist(s), or they can answer any general questions you may have.

Tanya Corso, MT-BC, NMT, Department Supervisor:tcorso@helpinghandscenter.com
Alyssa Graber, MME, MT-BC:agraber@helpinghandscenter.com
Kristin Kummer, MT-BC, MA:kkummer@helpinghandscenter.com
Pam Richardson, MT-BC:prichardson@helpinghandscenter.com
Valerie Robinson, MT-BC:vrobinson@helpinghandscenter.com
Liz Woolley, MT-BC:lwoolley@helpinghandscenter.com

 

Together, we’ve spent the past ten years building an organization of which we can all be proud. We are who we are today thanks to the professionalism and exceptional dedication of our staff, the hard work of our students, and the faith each family has placed in us to provide educational and therapeutic services for their children. We begin the 2015-16 academic year with over 140 students enrolled in the Education Center, and in September, will open our 18^th classroom. We will celebrate all of this, with old friends and new at our Homecoming Family Festival on Saturday, October 3^rd!

During the first half of 2015, we underwent a thoughtful, complex process in order to plan for the future of Helping hands Center. As many of you know, part of this plan includes changing our name to Bridgeway Academy. Arriving at this decision was a long and emotional process as we worked to find a name and a brand that represents the important work we do while allowing us to grow in the future. Most importantly, we sought a brand that was mindful of the hard work and compassionate community that helped to define Helping Hands Center and honors the attachment that we all feel in our hearts to our original name. We will officially switch to the new name and brand in the first week of January 2016.

We will use the first half of the new school year to reassure our community that this is a transition in name and logo ONLY. Our mission remains unchanged. Our leadership will not only be the same, but will be reinvigorated by this evolution. We are more ready than ever to continue building on the great work that we’ve done together in the past and chart a bright course into the future.

Here are some exciting highlights of things to come:

• For the first time, we will have 9^th graders in our building and will continue to build and strengthen the Middle School Skills program.
• We will embark on a year-long artist residency with visual artist Keo Khim, thanks to VSAOhio and its program, “Adaptation, Integration and the Arts.”
• We will partner with Local Matters and adapt their “Food Maters,” curriculum into every classroom. The curriculum will provide children with an understanding of what healthful food is, where it comes from and how it grows and will create unique opportunities for students to explore our school garden.
• Our October 3^rd Homecoming Family Festival will welcome students, staff, friends and families, old and new, back to Helping Hands Center to conclude our 10^th anniversary celebrations.

Please join us as we embark on our second decade of meeting the educational and therapeutic needs of students with autism and other developmental disabilities. Just as we all, together, have built this organization, we all, together, will build this bridge to an exciting future.

Sincerely,
Abby and Erin

It’s summer camp time at Helping Hands Center. On June 9^th, over 100 students, preschool through grade 8, will return to Helping Hands Center for eight weeks of fun, recreation and academic review.

Helping Hands Center organizes camp thematically, with special activities and guests scheduled throughout each week. A preschool classroom might read and explore a book about the theme while a school-aged classroom might go more in-depth on a particular topic or activity. Each week, all classrooms participate in an organized sport and every day, splash in pools and waterslides. This summer, the Wallaby, Bears, Bison, Cardinals and Blue Jays will take weekly trips to the pool.

In 2015, themes and activities include:

• Barnyard Palooza – classrooms explore farm animals and get a visit from Fuzzy Friends. Yoga is the sport of the week.
• Under the Big Top –faces will be painted and this year, Columbus Juggler Dave Kaplan will visit Helping Hands Center to perform for students (http://www.davidkaplanshow.com/movies.html). Gymnastics is the sport of the week.
• Parks and Rec – students will explore their community. From kayaking to meeting the Columbus Mounted Police and exploring a camping station, Helping Hands Center’s students will discover all things recreational. Kickball will be the sport of the week.
• Party in the USA – Helping Hands Center’s annual 4^th of July celebration will take place with a family gathering on the grounds and a parade around the block. Basketball will be the sport of the week.
• Music and Arts – for the third year, Helping Hands Center will explore the arts, from taiko drums with Eric “the Fish” to making art with Katy Sanford, the halls will be filled with music and artwork. T-ball will be the sport of the week.
• Around the World – This week, classrooms have the opportunity to learn about and share a new culture. Soccer, the most popular sport in the world, will be the sport of the week.
• Sensational Science – students will explore all things science, including the new garden on Helping Hands Center’s grounds. A naturalist from Sharon Woods will visit, and Track & Field is the sport of the week.
• Wacky & Wonderful – our last week of camp, it’s a time to revisit favorite activities or try something new. Coach Chris, a camp perennial favorite, will visit, and we’ll end summer camp with camp-sing-a-long!

We are always looking for new guests and activities, so if you have a special talent to share, please let us know!

Camp begin June 9^th and ends July 30^th. For more information about all of Helping Hands Center’s programs, please visit www.helpinghandscenter.com or https://www.facebook.com/pages/Helping-Hands-Center-for-Special-Needs/140882449291032.