OTA 1270 Pediatric Fieldwork I

I did my Level 1 pediatric fieldwork rotation at Davis County School District, and I observed my COTA at South Clearfield Elementary School. They asked for a fine motor activity that had gradability built into it. Mindy Newbold, COTA/L, mentioned that she wanted a duplicate of another fine motor activity, a button snake, so that each practitioner had at least one of their own to take with them to the different schools. The OT team has a caseload of about 756 students across the whole district, and the COTAs and OTRs travel between the schools each week. Because they were in different schools each day, they had to split the OT supplies amongst themselves, which meant that they didn’t always have the same tools for every visit. I volunteered to do both. I already had most of the supplies for both activities, and I relish any opportunity to use crafts and my sewing skills for service. I made three button snakes, which took me a total of two hours to design, gather materials, and put them together. For the second activity, I designed a button book that had four layers of difficulty, starting at the easiest and getting progressively more difficult with smaller buttons. This was way more challenging than I thought it would be. The first design did not work, and I made a lot of mistakes in the process of making the final product, but eventually I figured it out and made what I hope is a sturdy button book. The only cost for me was time and materials I already had. Mindy used both activities in a couple interventions, and the kids liked it! The OT was also excited because she had been mulling over the idea of a button book in her mind for a while, and she was happy to see it finally realized.

I really enjoyed this project. I enjoy every opportunity I have to use sewing as a way to contribute meaningfully. I plan to use it regularly in my professional practice, wherever it might be appropriate, and as volunteer opportunities arise. The button book was an opportunity to think of sewing and therapy tools in a new light; it also felt very empowering to create something useful of my own design. I am very proud of the final product, and it was validating to see it used in therapy. One thing I learned from this project was to save my notes on projects. I didn’t keep the measurements for the book, so now, if I want to make another one, I’ll need to go through much of the process again. This is a good lesson to learn for my professional practice; it wastes time and energy to duplicate a process that has already been done, so it’s a good idea to keep regular notes on what does and doesn’t work in different situations. The design process also made me think about things like contrast, size, and placement of objects as elements of difficulty in an intervention tool, which were somewhat new ideas. I made sure that there was high contrast between the buttons and the fabric; that the placement was as close to a real shirt as possible; and that the buttons were different enough is size to provide grading up with each layer. All of these new and developing skills will serve me as I create more interventions and use my talents to serve my future clients.