October 2, 2025
Hello friends and happy October! I wanted to chat a bit about today’s blog title, which is relevant to a High Five Grant that I recently applied for. This opportunity was created by The Mama Ladder for moms to help grow their businesses. Since 2018, they have awarded 8 lucky winners yearly, with grants of $1000, $2500, $5000 and the grand prize of $10,000.
And this time around, I decided to go for it! In my application, I was asked what I would do with the grant. Here is my “why.”
When our daughter was born in 2001, a therapy bag for early intervention was a large duffel bag full of fun toys, books, and materials. It was lugged in by either the ST, OT or PT into our home, and then loaded back into their car, leaving us empty handed. We quickly realized how important the use of novelty was for our daughter to make therapeutic gains. She also needed the subsequent redundancy of repetition having the item in our home throughout the week.
Fast forward twenty years: the pendulum has swung to now there is no therapy bag. As an EI therapist, the novelty provided comes solely from me. I am the instrument. I bring my voice with songs, chants, and people games. However, if that is not the love language of the parent I am working with, what would be a hybrid solution?
What if…drum roll…I bring back the novelty of the therapy bag AND provide materials to leave with the families? Materials created, of course, at a nominal cost. My ultimate goal is to create a home therapy kit for each family that I work with. Over the next few weeks I will share “Therapy Bag Thursday” which will give you an idea of the tangible tools I use in my sessions.
Today’s first friend is Rover, a beloved pup whom I featured on my Favorite Strategies Series (read more on this post!). Rover has been a beloved part of my early intervention practice motivating my littlest friends to use first words like “apple,” “banana,” “cookie,” and “doggie.” For my friends who are learning to make word combinations, then examples would be “eat apple” or “doggie eat.”
Recently, I received a video from a former client’s mom. Her son was feeding Rover, and, at the end of the video he exclaimed, “Rover full!” What a delight to see that interaction!
I would love to find a way to help Rover stand up so he can easily be “fed” food cards. I have attempted attaching him to cardboard feet, and also using cups with velcro. I applied for the High Five grant to explore how to level up my materials by exploring 3D printing and book publishing, which will provide what our littlest friends deserve!