Weekly Update June 9, 2023

Lindsay and Josh are so pleased to welcome baby Ezra to their family! We know you've all been watching Lindsay's pregnancy progress in Burton, and we're so happy to report that mom and baby are doing well. Sweet Ezra made his debut on June 4th! Congrats to Lindsay and Josh!

We are pleased to be able to offer all of our children an opportunity for Occupational Therapy integrated into their therapy day at Strive. Leigh Harter Speech Services (LHSS), our current speech partner, has expanded and hired an amazing Occupational Therapist, Paige, who is available to visit both centers.

Why should you look into Occupational Therapy (OT)? A child's life is made up occupations, or everyday activities. These occupations include playing, learning, sleeping, and resting, interacting with friends, getting dressed and other daily activities. OT supports children by incorporating the occupations that are important to you and your child into the intervention process. Many children with Autism benefit from this therapy.

OT services can be integrated right into your child's day at ABA, no need to have evening appointments or drive to another location. Your ABA Therapist will take your child to Paige for his session and will resume ABA when the session is finished.

If you are interested in OT, you can let your BCBA know or contact LHSS directly at www.leighharterspeech.com or call (713)-542-8833.

Paige can provide a screening if you're not sure whether OT is right for your child, and she'll share with you the areas she'd expect to work on.

We have learned that laying out turf takes a lot of time and patience, as we watch out the window every day. Putting up the playground equipment went really fast, but the crew has been patiently laying the turf out around each item for several days. It looks like we'll be playing on Monday!

Each Friday in the summer, we plan for an extra fun activity and a dress up day. All the dress up days are designed to be simple ones you can do with things you have at home, please don’t feel obligated to buy anything to make these happen. Staff and children will both participate in dressing up! We'll send home a calendar with all of the dates for the summer, or you can check here for weekly details.

One of our recurring dress up days is School Spirit Day, where we all wear Strive shirts. We will provide Strive shirts for each of the children to wear.

June Fun Fridays

6-16-23

Reading Buddies - We do this activity throughout the summer - we'll grab a blanket or a beach towel, a book, and a buddy - and go outside to read.

Pajama Day - wear your PJs. You can send slippers if you like, but be sure we have shoes to play outside.

6-23-23

Sink or Float science experiment - this is a fun outdoor activity to find out which common objects sink and which ones float.

Beach Day - dress like you're headed for the beach - bring your sunglasses, and we'll pretend we're there.

6-30-23

Reading Buddies

Red, white and blue Day - just wear any red, white, and blue you've got.

For 2023, instead of just sharing our background info, we are going to share some of our team's answers to a recent survey. We asked staff what they enjoy most about their jobs overall, what they like to teach the most, and what they would tell other people considering working here. We'll share answers from a new staff member each week!

This week, we'll hear from Taylor, one of our amazing RBTs in Burton.

What is your proudest moment at Strive so far? "My proudest moment is whenever I see a child spontaneously use the tools that we've been working on. There's nothing quite like the feeling of when a child uses something you taught them to help remain calm in situations that were previously upsetting.!"

What is Taylor's favorite skill to teach? "I really love teaching kids how to use their communication aids. Seeing a kid go from having difficulties expressing their wants or need and becoming frustrated by it, to their excitement when they use their aid and the person they're communicating with understands; there's nothing quite like it."

What is your favorite part of working for Strive as a company? "I love the people I work with. I truly feel like we're all here for each other and we all try and be better every single day for our clients."

One addition to our newsletter this year will be some definitions of terms we use most often in ABA. We know we use a lot of lingo and we want to help families understand it better. All of these terms will also be on our website in a glossary, so you can check them out anytime.

This week's term is Listener Responding.

Listener Responding is a way to classify skills that require a child to respond to something said by another person, such as following a direction. It is primarily used in ABA to help us distinguish between skills that require a child to speak and those that require a child to listen.

Listening may sound like a small thing, but ask any parent and it's clear that it's a large part of what we expect from our children daily! Listening can include skills that are typically learned quite early, like responding to a direction to "come here" or to sit down while a grown up helps you put on your shoes.

More advanced listener skills are used in classrooms all the time. Kids need to follow multi-step directions like "Use your pencil to complete your worksheet. When you are finished, turn it in to the mailbox and choose a book to read quietly."

You'll see us working on beginning listener skills by saying a direction when a child is about to complete the task anyway. So when a child is going to sit down because he's approaching the table for snack, for example, we'll quickly say "Sit down" and provide reinforcement when the child sits down. This helps him learn that our words can help tell him what needs to happen.

We even sneak these types of directions into fun activities, like when a child gets on the trampoline, we'll say, "Jump!" and reinforce with praise when he jumps. He was going to jump anyway, but this helps to pair the word with the action. We call that following directions in context.

We'll just keep this link right here, for your convenience. For any absences scheduled in advance, please use this form to report the dates. You may take an entire day or half day, depending on your needs.

Therapy Schedule Update Form

Here are some additional dates that the centers will be closed:

Monday, July 3rd and Tuesday, July 4th - Independence Day

Friday, August 25th - Professional Development Day

If your family is planning a longer absence around one of those dates, or at another time, please let us know as soon as you are able!

Email: info@sc-centers.com
Website: www.sc-centers.com
Location: Burton and Brighton, MI
Phone: 810-344-8082