Inspiring symbolic thought via a royal kingdom

Hark! Can thee believeth this?!

Our symbolic play room has been transformed into a Royal Kingdom complete with a cardboard castle, knights and dragons.

Set to change every couple months, this therapy room is an important piece of our practice as it incorporates a symbolic theme which can be used to work on a child's specific therapeutic goals. For example, a child who struggles with fine motor may be more apt to persist in a challenging activity if he is making a fire-breathing dragon while alongside a castle turret.

A child working on the motor plan of shifting from standing to crawling, can now practice these skills entering and exiting the drawbridge leading to the throne room. We have even strategically placed velcro inside our cardboard structure to hang laminated story book characters. When we give clues to a child on where to find these characters, kids not only work on the comprehension of prepositions (above, below, next to, etc.) but also must move their bodies and fine tune their visual spatial skills.

Our castle building station will inspire many a lego lover and help children with symbolic thought, planning, organization, fine motor skills and more.

Don't forget the many royal kingdom figures we have featured that are inviting children to develop ideas and share them with peers all while working to develop those critical parts of the brain responsible for social and emotional growth. Did you know that when children pretend to be characters other than themselves, research shows that it helps them to develop empathy? Pretty cool stuff, if you ask us!

So, grab your shield and sword and take a moment to pop in our Royal Kingdom next time you are at the clinic. We promise that our dragons are friendly!