Many preschools with sensory needs have trouble with self regulation. Self regulation, simply means, ability to calm oneself down enough to focus and engage in a present task or activity.

Many children have a hard time with this. And often begin to show behaviors such as running away, or screaming, or being overly silly when it comes to disengaging from a completed task to then begining another (this actually brings us to another common issue of difficulty with transitions, which is another blog for another day :)) for now, here’s a way to promote an organized, ready to go (self-regulated) state in a child before engaging in structured tasks: watching videos of trains moving along tracks!!

I know this sounds weird, but, I have to tell you. For some reason, many of my preschool students respond well to this. Some even ask for it!! They say, ” I want the orange train ” or train please!” It’s really amazing!

Above is one example of a train video that can be used.

A great strategy for how to incorporate it into sessions is to use it as a reward, where child gets train video time, after he does all his work.

Or, as I usually do it, where you start sessions with the video, and say” were going to watch the trains until the bell rings (bell, being your timer, which you manually control, btw!). As they watch, you say, “the bell is going to ring soon. 3 more minutes. Then 1 more minute . After it rings you say “there goes the bell.”

I’m telling you, this has worked wonders for me during OT sessions. It generally results in the student being able to ready themselves for focusing and completing table top/ fine motor tasks and other structured, multi-step activities that would have been seemingly impossible for them to even try!

Now go ahead, see for yourself. When you do, come back and share all about it 🙂!