An OT and I are working with a preschool student on eye-hand coordination and using her vision to stack objects. Her mother would like us to work on this, as she is hoping to teach her daughter to help put away dishes in the future. Stacking is thus an important goal for both home and school. The student has not yet started stacking at home or at school using blocks, Legos, play plates, etc.
We have written the following goal: “_____ will use her vision to help her coordinate her movements to stack items (for example blocks) in the classroom moving from prompts to independence with 75% mastery (OT SUPPORTED)”
The OT had this “Lego-ish” toy that the student loved playing with. The student successfully stacked 4 blocks before losing interest, and this a great start! They’re called Light Stax and are available from Amazon. I’ve ordered a set to use in my evaluations. If the student has difficulty stacking with other materials, (a common eye-hand coordination task), then I will pull these out and see if they make a difference.
There are so many things that we can work on with these Light Stax blocks, including fine motor coordination, positional concepts, color recognition, looking behaviors, counting, hand skills….the list goes on!
This is yet another example of why collaboration is so very important! I wouldn’t have known to look for this toy had it not been for the OT. Schedules don’t always allow for collaborations, but when they do….magic happens!
The brick can light up if it’s all the way on the base that lights up or if it’s part of the brick, it will light up completely.
The picture below shows a “plug” of sorts. It says to remove it before using and you need to to press the button to light up the bricks. I decided I’m going to keep the plug though, as I have found that batteries don’t last long with all of the traveling I do. When I drive, toys turn themselves on by the shifting in my bags. This way I can put the plug back in and conserve that battery!
