Therapeutic Recreation

Written by Grandview Kids Recreation Therapist, Discipline Lead Alicia

In her guest-written article, Alicia breaks down the Therapeutic Recreation (TR) discipline at Grandview Kids. She details the benefits of TR, the role of a Recreation Therapist and more!

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What is Therapeutic Recreation?

Therapeutic Recreation (TR) is a systematic process utilizing recreation and activity-based intervention to achieve psychological and physical health, recovery, and well-being for clients. This means we use play and specific leisure activities to help support your family and your child’s goals. These goals can be relating to physical functioning (fine motor or gross motor), emotional functioning (self-regulation, winning/losing, coping strategies), or social functioning (developing meaningful relationships with peers or family members).

What are the benefits of TR?

Participating in TR can improve or maintain physical or cognitive functioning, increase confidence and self-esteem, and provide opportunities and skills required for social engagement. Through your child’s participation in TR services, you can foster greater community involvement in recreation and create the foundations for a healthy leisure lifestyle. By participating in play and recreation, your child can feel a sense of accomplishment, improve coping skills, and navigate several social situations to develop meaningful relationships.

What can your Recreation Therapist do for you?

Your Recreation Therapist can provide 1:1 or group interventions to target your specific goal areas collaboratively with caregivers. We can complete a leisure strengths assessment to help guide and support your child’s participation in community recreation. We also support families in accessing funding support, reducing anxiety, and removing barriers to participation.

How do you access TR services at Grandview Kids?

Referrals can be made internally by your current clinicians (OT, PT, SLP, social work, BCBA, etc.) or by contacting service navigation to complete a family referral.

Any child accessing Grandview Kids’ core services is eligible for TR; this can be through the Preschool Outreach or School-Based Rehabilitation programs. We serve clients age 1-21, as long as there are active needs and a clinical diagnosis.

What qualifies a Recreation Therapist to practice in Ontario?

Recreation Therapists all complete post-secondary education in TR, covering many subjects, including assessment techniques, intervention planning, child development, anatomy and physiology, and program evaluation. After completing this education, a therapist can choose one of two pathways; CTRS Certification or R/TRO Registration. Both pathways require formal education standards, continuing professional development, and involvement in the community. CTRS certification includes completing a national certification exam, while R/TRO registration includes specific and current practical experience working in the field.

If you have questions about Therapeutic Recreation at Grandview Kids, you can check out our dedicated TR web page, contact Service Navigation, or talk to your other clinicians.

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Written by Grandview Kids Recreation Therapists, Julia and Alicia

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Whether it’s indoors or outside in the sun, the role of a sibling during play is extremely important to your child’s social development. In a time of limited social opportunities, siblings act as social partners and an opportunity for those important reciprocal interactions. Use this resource to find new ways to foster play between siblings at home with the toys and equipment that you may already have. It features helpful tips and activity examples in 4 different categories; turn-taking activities, pretend/imaginative play activities, manipulatives, and active games. The resource offers progressive steps in each category to enhance the social and play skills your child is developing. Sibling play has the ability to not only promote growth in a child’s ability to engage with others outside of the home, but it also enhances the life-long relationship between siblings themselves.

A sibling relationship is one of the first relationships your child will develop across the life-span. Sibling relationships are unique with differing effects on a child’s development and perception of the world. Siblings function as social partners and an opportunity to develop experience with reciprocal interaction, communication, and conflict resolution skills.

McHale, Updegraff & Feinberg, 2017

Tools for Success

1. Encourage communication between siblings; have your child prompt their sibling to play: “come play with me”, “your turn”, sign “play”, or point to the activity
2. Incorporate different types of activities to hold their interest, and understand when it is time to take a break (short activities, under 5 minutes are a good starting point)
3. Provide each sibling with the chance to choose an activity
4. Encourage parallel (side by side) play as much as possible to build tolerance of another child in their play area
5. Make sure the activity matches the skill level of each participating child (a task that is too easy or too difficult with not be successful)
6. Modify materials/set up when required if there is a large gap in abilities or ages (Example: smaller/larger blocks, different options for arts & crafts materials, implementation of movement breaks, etc)
7. Celebrate all wins; encourage siblings to provide praise to each other (Example: high fives, or “Good Job”)
8. Incorporate your child’s interests in the activities you choose, follow their lead as much as possible
9. Choose activities where they work together to achieve a common goal (example: building one block tower vs. building independent towers side by side)
10. If helpful, provide a schedule or timer for each set of planned activities

Finding ways for siblings to connect and engage with each other is crucial to the development of an enjoyable play experience and ongoing relationship. This resource will provide activity ideas and tips for facilitating sibling play and the development of this relationship.

Practice Activities

Turn-taking Activities

Step 1: Games requiring a tool e.g. Critter Clinic or anything with a set of keys, Don’t Break the Ice, Cariboo, pin the tail on the donkey, piñata, T-Ball, bowling (one ball), Operation

Step 2: Slot Games or games with multiple pieces. E.g. Kerplunk, Piggy Bank, Pop The Pig, Jenga, crocodile dentist, Sneaky Snacky Squirrel

Step 3: Games with rules or competition e.g., Connect 4, Guess Who, snakes and ladders, Monopoly, battleship, I Spy, Trouble

Pretend/Imaginative Play Activities

Step 1: Toys or Action Figures e.g. Potato Head, cars and trucks, farm animals, sea creatures, Paw Patrol, Barbies/LOL Dolls, superheroes

Step 2: Role-Playing e.g. build a fort and playhouse, doctor/patient, vet clinic, construction site, play-dough restaurant, tea party

Step 3: Games with rules or competition e.g. charades, Pictionary, sculptionary, Cranium, Cadoo

Manipulatives

Step 1: Parallel Play – have both children completing their own activities with their own pot, e.g. beading, play-dough, Mag-formers

Step 2: Associative Play – have each child complete their own activity, but pull from the same pot, for example build LEGO but have all the LEGO in one bucket

Step 3: Cooperative Play – complete an activity together e.g. build one tower together, work on a puzzle together, use a gears board

Active Games

Step 1: Structured games with both children playing actively e.g. obstacle course, dance videos, freeze dance, yoga, scavenger hunt

Step 2: Leader games e.g. Simon Says, follow the leader, Action If, trick shot basketball or bowling (take turns making up trick shots that the other person must complete)

Step 3: Competitive Games e.g. musical chairs, hide/seek, Activity Bingo, tag variations

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Grandview Kids Director of Clinical Services, Leslie Suite, commemorates National Therapeutic Recreation Month.

I would like to take a moment to recognize the Grandview Kids Therapeutic Recreation team, as February is National Therapeutic Recreation Month. The Therapeutic Recreation team has taken on adversity over the last year with commendable poise.

Recreation Therapists (RTs) at Grandview Kids work with children, youth and families to improve physical, emotional and cognitive well-being through activity-based interventions. RT sessions can take place 1:1 or in group settings, virtually or in-person. RTs use play, recreation participation and leisure activities to support overall physical and mental health.

Normally, the Therapeutic Recreation (TR) staff offers a variety of social group activities. Some of these activities include preschool play groups, swimming lessons, Tae-Kwon-Do classes, physical literacy groups, Parasport programs and several more. Running these activities was a large part of the program’s day-to-day regimen and it is clear that families deeply miss this aspect of TR.

It is no secret that getting to work with clients, in groups, face-to-face, has always been at the core of the work RTs do. However, like everyone in 2020, the TR staff had to adjust to the new normal. They have recently expanded their team and were able to quickly adapt, beginning to offer tele-practice social groups, and continuing to offer 1:1 in-person sessions for clients who were unable to participate virtually. The TR team has worked determinedly to develop new games and activities to adhere to the new COVID protocols and parameters. Their work does not go unnoticed, as the time RTs dedicated to adapting their programs and creating new activities has only improved the day-to-day lives of the children and youth they serve. 

Thank you, to all of our RTs, for all that you do to help make Grandview Kids a welcoming environment and an adaptable point-of-care for all families and caregivers who visit us.

To learn more about what Recreation Therapy looks like at Grandview Kids, click here.

To learn more about the Canadian organizations that are supporting TR Awareness Month, please visit the links provided below:

• The Canadian Therapeutic Recreation Association
• Therapeutic Recreation Ontario

Sincerely,

Leslie Suite, Director of Clinical Services

Written by by Grandview Kids Recreation Therapist, Alicia (Discipline Lead)

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If your family values recreation and leisure activities, or you are looking for ways to get your children active, the registration fees can be daunting, especially if you have a child who may require variation or a number of children with varying interests and abilities. Check out this chart to see if you are eligible for funding support through private organizations or through your municipality. There are many options for families who qualify for low-income, and there are some that are based on diagnosis only, which may not require proof of low income/financial hardship.

If you are considering Jumpstart funding, but do not quite meet the cutoff, contact your municipal contact and explain your current circumstance to see if they are able to approve your application in person. This decision is made based on available funds and family-specific circumstances.

Contact your Recreation Therapist or Service Navigation if you have questions.

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• How to make Halloween accessible
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Welcome to the end of 2020! The focus this year has been on monitoring your family’s physical health and taking every precaution to protect it. Unfortunately, this means that we likely have been under a huge amount of stress. Safety measures and closures have resulted in the loss of many of the activities that help us unwind and connect with others. It is important to take some time at the end of the year to engage in activities that help us relax, reconnect, and recharge.

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The Grandview Kids Therapeutic Recreation Team has put together a large Activity Package (31 pages!) for families to access throughout the Holidays and beyond! We hope that this package chock-full of activities helps keep your family busy and entertained.

Click the link below to download the package: