March 23, 2018
Issue 12, Volume 11
It's All About the Choices!     
          
Greetings and Happy Friday

 Please enjoy our weekly newsletter!
 
News Items:
  • Infants Are Able to Learn Abstract Rules Visually
  • More Food for Thought on Kids' Eating Habits, Emotions
  • Young Children use Physics, not Previous Rewards, to Learn About Tools
  • Study Testing First Medication To Treat Autism
  • Don't Blame Adolescent Social Behavior on Hormones
PediaStaff News and Hot Jobs 
  • Hot, New Job: School-Based Social Worker - Oak Park, IL
  • Hot, New Job: School-Based SLP - Portsmouth, VA
  • Hot, New Job: School Psychologist - Everett, WA
Therapy Activities, Tips and Resources
  • 21 Wonderful Easter Egg Hunt Ideas
  • Easter Fine Motor Activities
  • 10 Creative Obstacle Courses
  • Oldie but Goodie Pinterest Find - Finger Twister!
Articles and Special Features 
  • School Psych Corner: Facts About Students With Emotional Disabilities
  • SLP Corner: Social Interaction with Peers and Ideas for Groups of Preschoolers
  • OT Corner: How to Help Children Improve Executive Functioning
  • Dyslexia Corner: Rethinking How Students With Dyslexia Are Taught To Read
  • Autism Corner: 3 Ways Mini-Schedules Will Improve Your Instruction
Feel free to contact us with any questions about our openings or items in these pages. Have you discovered our RSS feed? Click on the orange button below to subscribe to all our openings and have them delivered to your Feed Reader!  Don't have an RSS Feed Reader set up? Sign up at Blogtrottr and have our blog posts delivered right to your email.

Have a great weekend and Take Care!

Heidi Kay and the PediaStaff Team
8

The Career Center

The links to the right are "live" and reflect the most recent SLP, OT, PT and related assistant jobs, and ALL our Bilingual and School Psychology Jobs. 
Girl
To further narrow your search by state,
setting, bilingual, or term, use the
check boxes drop down menus.

If a particular search is returning
no hits it is possible that we do
not currently have new openings for
you with that selection criteria.

To see ALL our openings
click HERE and further narrow your search.
Recent Occupational Therapist and COTA Jobs 

Infants Are Able to Learn Abstract Rules Visually
[Source: Science Daily]

Three-month-old babies cannot sit up or roll over, yet they are already capable of learning patterns from simply looking at the world around them, according to a recent study. For the first time, the researchers show that 3- and 4-month-old infants can successfully detect visual patterns and generalize them to new sequences.

Throughout the animal kingdom, being able to detect not only objects and events, but also the relations among them, is key to survival. Among humans, this capacity is exceptionally abstract. When we learn a rule or pattern in one domain, such as an alternating pattern of lights, we readily abstract this pattern and apply it to another domain -- for example, an alternating pattern of sounds.

Read the Rest of This Article Through a Link on our Blog
More Food for Thought on Kids' Eating Habits, Emotions
[Source: Science Daily]

A University of Texas at Dallas psychologist has examined the preconceptions about the effects of emotions on children's eating habits, creating the framework for future studies of how dietary patterns evolve in early childhood.

Dr. Shayla C. Holub, head of the psychological sciences PhD program and associate professor in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, demonstrated that children from 4½ to 9 years old chose chocolate candy over goldfish crackers more frequently in response to both happiness and sadness.

Read the Rest of This Article Through a Link on our Blog
Young Children use Physics, not Previous Rewards, to Learn About Tools
[Source: Science Daily]

Children as young as seven apply basic laws of physics to problem-solving, rather than learning from what has previously been rewarded, suggests new research from the University of Cambridge.
The findings of the study, based on the Aesop's fable The Crow and the Pitcher, help solve a debate about whether children learning to use tools are genuinely learning about physical causation or are 

Read the Rest of this Article Through a Link our Blog
Study Testing First Medication To Treat Autism
[Source: Disability Scoop]

Children and teenagers with autism face challenges every day fitting in with friends, classmates and others in the world around them.

"My perspective is that people with autism are different, just like every other human being - unique, one of a kind," said Dr. Roger Jou, a psychiatrist at the Yale Child Study Center who treats and works with those on the autism spectrum. But they often feel lonely, unable to find others they can relate to, he said.

Read the Rest of this Article Through a Link our Blog 
Don't Blame Adolescent Social Behavior on Hormones
[Source: Science Daily]

"Changes in social behavior during adolescence appear to be independent of pubertal hormones. They are not triggered by puberty, so we can't blame the hormones," says Matthew Paul, an assistant professor in UB's Department of Psychology and lead author of the groundbreaking paper recently published in the journal Current Biology.

Disentangling the adolescent changes that are triggered by puberty from those unrelated to puberty is difficult because puberty and adolescence occur simultaneously, but Paul and his collaborators have found a way to tease out the two using a seasonal-breeding animal model.

Read the Rest of this Article Through a Link our Blog
Are you looking to work 2-3 days per week for the remainder of the current school year as a School Social Worker?  We need an experienced, licensed School Social Worker to work with a middle school population in the vicinity of Forest Park, IL.

Qualifications: You will need to have a Master's Degree in social work with an Illinois State license or Type 73 with the school social work endorsement.

Read the Rest of this Article Through a Link our Blog
Are you looking for a waterfront community and a little bit of "old school" for your next assignment?  Great opportunity for a Speech-Language Pathologist in the Portsmouth, VA area this coming 2018/19 School Year. This old Virginia seaport city thrives on its rejuvenation, inviting people from all over the world to call it home. Portsmouth's center holds the largest collection of antique homes between Alexandria, Virginia, and Charleston, South Carolina, plus a bundle of early 20th-century buildings that either has been restored or are in the process of being renovated.

Learn About / Apply for This Job on our Blog
How would you like to work in a city surrounded by water and mountains in the beautiful Pacific Northwest? We have a need for a wonderful School Psychologist north of Everett for the 2018-2019 school year and would love to talk with you! Opportunities are available to work with children from age 3 to 21, depending on the Psychologist's comfort level. We can consider new graduate candidates who have strong school fieldwork experience. This is an amazing location with Puget Sound to the west, the mountains to the east, the city of Seattle to the South and Canada to the North!

Learn About / Apply for This Job on our Blog
21 Wonderful Easter Egg Hunt Ideas  
[Source: Childhood 101]

The highlight of Easter for my girls has to be the Easter egg hunt, after all what isn't there to love about running around the garden to find delicious chocolate treasure! In fact, my ten year old already has our hunt on her mind, asking me to make it more of a challenge this year. Thanks to this collection of Easter egg hunt ideas, I've got lots of fresh ideas. But don't just think these suggestions are just for tweens or teens, there are ideas here that will work with toddlers right through to teens.

Read the Rest of this Article Through a Link on our Blog
Easter Fine Motor Activities
[Source: Pre-K Pages]

This Easter-themed cutting skills tray will provide your kids with plenty of fine motor practice. These activities will help your kids build fine motor skills in fun and playful ways, so they won't even know they're learning.

Try this fine motor tray with an Easter theme at home or in your Preschool or Kindergarten classroom. Many of these items are easily found at the dollar store.

Read the Rest of Post Through a Link on our Blog
10 Creative Obstacle Courses
[Source:  The Inspired Treehouse]

One of our favorite activities at The Treehouse and in our school-based therapy sessions are obstacle courses. We love them, the kids love them, and they're perfect for promoting a huge range of developmental skills from coordination to balance to strength and more!

Read the Rest of this Article Through a Link on our Blog
Oldie but Goodie Pinterest Find - Finger Twister! 
Editor's Note:  I was paging through the School Occupational and Physical Therapy group on Facebook and saw a photo someone posted of this activity she made from Pinterest.  She didn't post the link, but it wasn't hard to find!  So creative and cute!

[Source:  LaterGator Crafts]

I have been racking my brain trying to come up with a few simple stocking stuffers and today an idea hit me. I saw these cute little finger twister boards but was not about to actually pay money for them... I figured It wouldn't be to hard to make something similar on my own.

Read More and Download the Template Through a Link on our Blog
School Psych Corner:  Facts About Students With Emotional Disabilities
[Source: Education Week]

The academic past of Nikolas Cruz, the accused mass shooter at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., was littered with red flags suggesting serious emotional problems
News outlets that have reviewed Cruz's disciplinary records and interviewed his te achers paint a picture of a young man prone to violent outbursts and fascinated with weapons. 

In high school, he spent time in a Broward County public school that specializes in serving students with emotional and behavioral disabilities. The Associated Press has reported that a high school resource officer who was also a sheriff's deputy and two school counselors recommended in September 2016 that Cruz be committed for mental 


SLP Corner:  Social Interaction with Peers and Ideas for Groups of Preschoolers
[Source:  Blog Talk Radio]

Join pediatric speech-language pathologist Laura Mize of teachmetotalk.com as she answers questions from listeners including these:
  • a mom of a kindergartener who has an autism diagnosis asks how to get her to play with her sister and other children as well as answer questions related to her day.
  • an SLP wants ideas for small groups of 4 preschoolers who are functioning at younger developmental levels.
OT Corner:  How to Help Children Improve Executive Functioning
[Source: Your Therapy Source]

Executive functions are a popular "buzz word" right now and with good reason.  In a nutshell, executive functions include the following skills: inhibitory control, working memory, cognitive flexibility, reasoning, problem-solving and planning.  These super-important skills can be improved with training which is good news since they are necessary for at school, home and work.  Executive function training includes activities such as computer-based training, working memory activities, traditional tae-kwon-do, aerobics, mindfulness, and yoga.

Read the Rest of This Article on our Blog

Dyslexia Corner:    Rethinking How Students With Dyslexia Are Taught To Read
[Source: MindShift]

Dyslexia is the most common learning disability, affecting tens of millions of people in the United States. But getting help for children who have it in public school can be a nightmare.
"They wouldn't acknowledge that he had a problem," says Christine Beattie about her son Neil. "They wouldn't say the word 'dyslexia.' "

Other parents, she says, in the Upper Arlington, Ohio, schools were having the same problem. The district in a suburb of Columbus wasn't identifying their children's dyslexia or giving them appropriate help.
Autism Corner: 3 Ways Mini-Schedules Will Improve Your Instruction
[Source: Autism Classroom Resources]

Mini schedules or activity schedules are probably not new to you on my blog.  I talk a lot about visual supports and the usefulness of them in instruction.  I find them useful for students with ASD but also for lots of other students.  Here are 3 ways that mini-schedules can improve your classroom instruction and help your students learn better.

Read the Rest of this Article Through a Link on our Blog

Did You Get This From a Friend?

 

Sign Up For Your Copy of This Newsletter!
Would you like pediatric and school-based therapy tips, resources, articles, and news delivered to your computer once a week? Sign up here for our newsletter!

Sign up HERE
Quick Links to PediaStaff
If you would like to opt out of receiving this newsletter, there is a link located in the footer below. However, please note that once you've opted out, we will be unable to send you any future correspondence via newsletter.
Please Note:  The views and advice expressed in articles, videos and other pieces published in this newsletter are not necessarily the views and advice of PediaStaff or its employees but rather that of the author.  PediaStaff is not endorsing or implying agreement with the views or advice contained therein, rather presenting them for the independent analysis and information of its readers.