Kids’ Therapy Works is a team of highly experienced and fun Physiotherapists and Occupational Therapists, dedicated to providing highest quality, personalised therapy services for children of all ages and abilities.
The Physiotherapy aims were to develop the child’s ability to turn around independently by working on her balance and coordination. Also using it to engage her to step up onto a yoga step independently.
OT aims were to develop the child’s ability to remain focused and concentrate on a particular activity. Also, to increase bimanual performance of the upper limbs.
Turning around: Set the cosmoids to “shuffle” in a line formation, with 4 cosmoids approximately 50cm apart on the ground. Encouraged the child to walk to get the cosmoids, whilst working on turning around and squatting to the floor to win points before the time ran out.
Concentration/attention/focus: Seated in minimally supportive specialist chair at a height adjustable desk the child participates in a warm up game of ‘whack-a-mole’. For this child we use 3 Cosmoids in a line formation at present, with the intention to progress this 4 soon (level progression from beginner to intermediate in approx. 4-6 weeks).
We set a yoga step up in front of our spider therapy cage and stuck the cosmoids onto the cage with the magnet. To play the relevant noise for that part of the story-telling activity, we asked our patient to step up onto the yoga step and reach for the Cosmoid that lights up.
Turning around: She enjoyed the challenge of trying to beat her high score and has progressed from getting 7 points to now getting 10 points. The child found the Cosmo games fun and didn’t even realise she was doing physio. Stepping up: She also has become more independent when stepping up with less hands-on support required and more successful attempts without facilitation from therapists when stepping up.
The client has enjoyed using the Cosmoids during therapy sessions and the therapist has noted a positive correlation between engagement and self-confidence of the client. There has been a reduction in task avoidance and overall engagement with therapy has increased
A challenge we can face is that sometimes the children actually get too excited when doing games with the cosmoids and this can impact on their focus on the exercise. To avoid this, we often use the cosmoids for short bursts (such as 10 minutes) and mix in other exercises around this. Being able to adjust the length of activity is very helpful to be able to find the right game for the patient.
At times it can be challenging to find the correct level for the children, especially for those who have dystonic/irregular movement patterns. This has been a challenge with some games, in particular ‘Tap Dash’ as the child requires a harder level to meet their understanding/cognitive abilities, but the pacing is too fast for their movement pattern.
Turning around: When playing with the cosmoids we would often do “races” where the child must get the cosmoids before the therapist. In addition to this, telling the child how long they have left (i.e. 10 seconds) seems to work well to keep them engaged towards the end of an activity. Stepping up: Having the magnets attached makes it much easier for the treating therapist especially when working on their own, as you can easily attach to our spider cage (universal exercise unit) to free you up to support the child as required.
She has thrived from positive competition, consistently wanting to better her previous scores. The flexibility of the cosmoids positioning has also enabled other therapeutic goals such as upper limb flexion/extension and accuracy of touch to be addressed without a change in activity. Often as a reward, the cosmoids will be used to play competitive games with family members and other therapists/assistants.
The cosmoids have been a real asset. We use them for a huge variety of children with all kinds of different wants, needs and goals. They are handy for school and community visits as we can throw them in a backpack, and this saves us from carrying large toys or equipment. In addition to this, the app has a brilliant range of games and activities which has proved to be an invaluable engagement tool in our clinic-based activities.
As a multidisciplinary team, we all love using the cosmoids to make our therapy sessions as fun and engaging as possible. One of the first questions that gets asked each morning is who has all the cosmoids because no one wants to do their session without them!
