Unique Group Skills™ Programme in day activity center

Functional skills such as prevocational skills are essential to independent living. While certain social and community-based skills are learnt through modelling; literacy and numeracy skills are learnt through input and practice. Youths with developmental disabilities, such as Autism Spectrum Disorders, and significant cognitive or multiple disabilities often need to have these daily living skills taught through modeling, breaking them down and the use of Applied Behavior Analysis or ABA. The teaching of life skills also requires the coach to complete appropriate task analyses in order to teach the specific skills. In the transition phase from special needs schools or a day activity centre, our youths are taught as a part of their adult special education basic skills such as compliance and specific community skills such as appropriate interaction, payment methods and writing or typing for the more advanced youth. At times, our art therapist comes in to guide the youth to express his/ her feelings through various forms of expressions. Learning to self-regulate is also a functional life skill.

Sensory play includes play that engages any of your child’s senses. This includes touch, smell, sight, sound and taste. But it also covers movement, balance, and spatial awareness. 

Sensory play encourages learning through exploration, curiosity, problem solving and creativity. It helps to build nerve connections in the brain and encourages the development of language and motor skills. There are many benefits that may go unnoticed, such as the development of abilities to focus and block out distractions.

We believe that a therapeutic sound session with leisure activities is healing – aspects of sounds and music can improve our physical and emotional health by helping us feel relaxed, alleviate pain and anxiety or help boost memory and focus. Some research has shown that sound therapy can help improve our immune functioning, lower cholesterol and being exposed to it is associated with better health .

Some research shows that playing therapeutic music produces many potential benefits, such as:

Capturing and maintaining attention, which can reduce anxiety and improve cognition.

Reducing negative or self-stimulatory responses.

Increasing participation in socializing through positive behaviors.

Offering a method for nonverbal individuals to express themselves.

Assisting in the development of some verbal skills.

Improving interpersonal reciprocity in shared play, including listening and taking turns.

Identifying and appropriately expressing emotions.

Integrating multiple senses like sound, touch, and sight, which some people with autism struggle with.

Improving gross and fine motor skills through organized, rhythmic sounds that inspire certain body responses, like dancing.

Some research articles  state the findings that playing therapeutic music or sounds may help children with ASD to improve their skills in primary outcome areas that constitute the core of the condition including social interaction, verbal communication, initiating behaviour, and social‐emotional reciprocity.

Our inhouse MindCognition™ series of critical thinking worksheets have been formulated by our Consultant who designs curriculum for gifted education in Dubai. The worksheets have been tried and tested on clients who have previously attended our critical thinking skills classes at I Learn Specially.  The parents observed better focus, less hyperactivity and increased confidence as the child progressed in the levels attempted with the worksheets.

The  MindCognition™ curriculum builds logical, thinking skills from the very basic level by first laying the foundation with basic information and then helping the child to think out of the box with its series of exercises which encourage the child to use the information input in various ways in the literacy and numeracy aspects.

The MindCognition™ series of worksheets builds the 5 main aspects of critical thinking in any child with learning disability; observation, analysis, interpretation, reflection, evaluation, inference, explanation, problem solving, and decision making. These abilities are essential for executive functions and executive functions are a set of cognitive processes that are necessary for the cognitive control of behavior.