What’s ‘Play as Therapy’ about?
Novita’s Play as Therapy’ is a series of short videos that show how play is one of the best ways to help children living with disability develop skills and achieve their goals – anything from improving balance, communicating with others or learning about their emotions.
The videos include kids of different ages, with different types of disability including cerebral palsy, autism spectrum disorder and developmental delay. But the focus is on how play can be used to achieve a range of goals, so even if your child lives with a different disability, you might still find the videos useful.
Play as Therapy is meant to encourage you to think beyond the examples in the videos. It’s all about how you can use some of these ideas in your own life, with your own child, to help them achieve their particular goals.
The videos include ideas about how to make everyday activities playful and fun – like eating breakfast, getting dressed, or going to the shops. We also hope you will come up with more of your own ideas.
Where do I start?
- There’s a number of videos of each child – all focusing on achieving a different goal.
- You can watch one or all of the videos of each child.
- Make sure you watch the introductory video about play first
- Then watch the video introducing the child, before moving on to the rest of the videos about each of their goals
- There is also a summary video for each child with key messages and ideas
- The key messages for each child are also available
How do I share ideas and experiences?
This is a starting point, so we invite everyone, whether you’re a parent, grandparent, sibling, carer, teacher, therapist or researcher to share your thoughts and videos, ask questions, and give us your feedback.