By the end of the program you will be able to –

• "Preschool Sensory Scan for Educators (Preschool SENSE)," a collaborative screening tool to help OTs or other qualified professionals introduce sensory processing to teachers.
• Help parents and teachers recognize that “Behavior means something!”
• Describe activities to take back to the classroom, home, or clinic to use with all children, with or without SPD.
• Recognize characteristics of tactile, vestibular, proprioceptive, visual, and auditory dysfunction and how these difficulties affect children’s learning and behavior.
• Observe children’s self-therapy and how to redirect it, if necessary.Identify ways to make accommodations in home and school, and increase opportunities for heavy work activities and open-ended play.
• Explain how movement and touch experiences are essential ingredients in every child's daily sensory diet. Movement is learning!
• Explain how sensory processing allows us to function as active participants in everyday life.
• Explain the three major categories of Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD): sensory modulation disorder, sensory discrimination disorder, and sensory-based motor disorders including postural disorder and dyspraxia.
• Describe how SPD interferes with a child's ability to function in typical childhood occupations of learning, socializing, communicating, self-regulating, working, and playing.
• Explain how children’s involuntary, neurological reactions to sensory stimuli affect their learning and behavioral responses.
• Identify SAFE activities, specifically designed to engage the senses, promote motor perception, and thereby improve learning and regulate behavior.