Art Set iPad App

This is actually one of my own pins on Pinterest. Art Set is my favourite creative iPad App.

This a video review of the app which gives a pretty realistic review... it does have some limitations but I personally haven't found these to be too much of an issue.

I love painting and drawing, and I really like that this app gives a fairly realistic paint effect...
I enjoy the creative process and see this as portabale therapeutic activity, which requires pretty much no preparation or clean up and I can store all my artwork without the need to clear out a cupboard! Bonus!

So I know the way I use this app and it features almost daily in my life. I wanted to see whether anyone else enjoys this as much as I do...

My 3 children all like to draw and paint on Art Set and my youngest had been using it to help him practice his handwriting skills, both tracing with his finger and using the stylus and I have been seeing good improvements in his handwriting.

My older two just like to create!

The last few days my eldest son who is 11 has been creating all kinds of images and has really enjoyed just sitting and creating... I asked him why he liked it so much and he described enjoyment of creating something, having a finished product, feeling calm and losing time. Sounds to me like experiences of flow!


Flow

Flow is a term which describes how an individual can become immersed in an occupation and can experience feelings of happiness, satisfaction and concentration (Wilcock, et al, 1998).  
Flow has been associated with wellbeing because it encourages development of a skill and feelings of satisfaction about ones accomplishment, the experience of flow has also been linked to feelings of self esteem and self-worth (Reynolds & Prior, 2006).  



What I like about Art Set is that it is easy to use, it can be done with your finger or stylus, there is a variety of mediums to choose from and can be used for any age.

I also use Art set when creating my Comic OT Reflections http://comicotreflections.blogspot.co.uk/

Reynolds, F. Prior, S (2006). Creative Adventures and Flow in Art-Making: a Qualitative Study of Women Living with Cancer. British Journal of Occupational Therapy. 69(6), pp. 255-261

·         Wilcock, A. A. Van Der Arend, H. Darling, K.  Scholz, J. Siddall, R. Snigg, C (1998). An exploratory study of People’s Perceptions and Experiences of Wellbeing. British Journal of Occupational Therapy, 61(2), PP. 75-82.

Explosion box

The original Pin was designed as a card/gift which is a great activity in its self but I wanted to think about what else it could be used for.

http://pinterest.com/pin/8725792998300247/

Memory box

Decades- Tool for OTs to use with clients. I made this one based on the 1950's, historical information is readily available on the internet and some pages have it all in a timeline. Things I search for included,; news, events, celebrities, fashion, sports, music, inventions...  It took me about an hour to make this including the research and printing. This could be a good way of generating discussion or triggering a memory.


This could also be made more personal to the individual, maybe about significant events, people, hobbies etc..

This is something which the therapist or assistant could produce, the client themselves, in groups or with family.

Reminiscence - research into reminiscence says that its is a widely used in occupational therapy within dementia care and that it is pleasurable activity and can help improve depression, life satisfaction and self esteem. (Baillon S. et al 2005)


Other options - Sensory, fine motor. You can add various textures and colour's to the box. I made holes in one of the sections and added some thread for weaving, and added buttons to some sections with various shapes that could be fastened on. I used what materials I had to hand, but this could be planned in more detail to include colour and shape matching, sequencing activity and threads with beads.

Both of these then fold up neatly into a box for storage. I made this fairly small, but you could make them any size you wanted and use the lid as part of the activity; maybe add a small bead roller-coaster to the top or have some fold out information, or a quiz inside the lid of the memory box. I made this fairly quickly and roughly as you can see.. but with proper planning, materials and time, these could be great little activities... I am definitively going to give these some more thought and effort.

      Baillon S, Van Diepen E, Prettyman R, Rooke N, Redman J and Campbell R. (2005) Variability in Response of Older People with Dementia to Both Snoezelen andReminiscence. British Journal OF Occupational Therapy.  68(8) pp 367-374.

Building Roads

I saw this pin today but not on an Occupational therapy board. We had a box at home that we hadn't decided what to do with yet, so my children and I thought this was the perfect project. As you can see  we haven't copied the pin exactly, as we wanted to enjoy the creative process.

http://pinterest.com/pin/43769427599405109/

I wanted to encourage them to design, to be creative and plan out their idea. We discussed what they wanted to do and how we should do it. 

We spent time planning what materials we would use from our craft cupboard, and the stages in which we would make this. They also worked together as a team, offering ideas and deciding together on the design they wanted. The only disagreement was about whether or not to have ducks in the pond.

They wanted to make roads and quickly realized that their pens weren't showing up on the black background, so using some problem solving they decided to make them with paper. This was a good opportunity to practice scissor skills, so we drew some straight lines and practiced cutting. They then decided they needed something circular to make roundabouts, so we went on a hunt and decided old CD's were the perfect size for their cars.

Next they wanted to make a car park and so they measured the cars to ensure they could make the spaces the right size. We later used this to practice sorting the cars by color. 

Most importantly they had fun and enjoyed the process whilst working on some skills. I tried not to be to involved to much in the creative and problem solving parts, so that they could work on these and I only offered some slight hints to point them in the right direction.

 But I was on hand to supervise and to offer encouragement.

 They have played with this for hours and have already told me that tomorrow they want to build a town to go with it.

One thing I thought of afterwards was that this type of activity could also be used to create a map of your own neighborhood. It provided the opportunity to talk about road safety and we discussed different types of crossings and what traffic light colors mean.

The design could also be made more complicated with tunnels etc and encourage more manipulation skills and build on a bigger scale encouraging gross motor skills as they crawl around their creation.

This is my first Pinterest post and isn't one of the 14 in draft.. We did this today and I saw all the obvious skills this involved, so I thought I would write it up now. 

This was quite time consuming and it took us a couple of hours to make, but has kept them occupied for hours since!

My youngest needed quite close supervision with the scissors but it is a skill we had already identified that he needed to develop, so this activity was great for that. 

My children are aged 4 and 8 and they both equally enjoyed the project .

Will be posting soon

This has taken longer than expected! I want these blogs to be useful and so it is important to me to be thorough. Currently I have 14 blogs in draft! I am working on some and hope to  be posting soon!

Setting this up.

I've been thinking about doing some Pinterest Blogs on my main Blog gilliancrossley@blogspot.co.uk . But I have decided to do a completely separate Blog.

No post yet because I'm thinking about what kind of disclaimer I need on here.

I don't want anything on here to cause any harm! So any ideas found on here should be subject to your own clinical reasoning and not blindly followed.

I am a student and certainly don't claim to know it all as far as OT is concerned, but I love the ideas I see on Pinterest and can see how I can use Pinterest as a resource in my OT tool kit.

I want this blog to be a place for sharing how the ideas seen on Pinterest can been applied in practice, with some theory / evidence to support the activities use.

I am also planning an #OTalk about how the arts and crafts roots of Occupational Therapy link to modern day practice and I think Pinterest will be significant here and would love some posts before the talk.

Also I was thinking that I would love to make this more of an OT community blog that I will moderate and post on. I would love to hear from anyone interested in guest blogging (full credit given to them!).

Or if anyone has any ideas, advice on establishing a global OT community blog? I would love to hear from you!

Thanks.

 Gillian Crossley