The Alert Program® helps to teach children how to change how alert they feel and to teach adults how to support learning, attending, and positive behaviours. By using an engine analogy, children learn “if your body is like a car engine, sometimes it runs on high, sometimes it runs on low, and sometimes it runs just right.”
This easy-to-teach, practical program shows parents, teachers, and therapists how to choose appropriate strategies and activities so children’s engines are running “just right.” Students learn what they can do at circle time or at homework time to attain an optimal state of alertness.
The Alert Program® was found to be effective in helping children to “self-regulate, change tasks, organise themselves, cope with sensory challenges, and focus on tasks in the classroom” (Barnes, Karin J., et al., 2008).
Take Five Parents, teachers, and therapists love using these activities with their children.
The activities that Mary Sue Williams and Sherry Shellenberger present are “intended to enhance daily routines and provide sensorimotor strategies for self-regulation (methods to change our levels of alertness through what we see, hear, feel, taste, smell, and how we move).” You'll find suggested activities for alerting and calming that encourage children to move, touch, look, and listen. Materials are easy to find or create, and the instructions are clear. Alerting and calming activities suitable for home or school.
This book is also available in the Alert Program - 5 pack - by Mary Sue Williams, OTR/L and Sherry Shellenberger, OTR/L -AOTA Approved Includes Introduction Booklet, How Does Your Engine Run - Leaders Guide, Test Drive - Introducing the Alert Program Through Song, Take Five - Staying Alert at Home and School, The Alert Program - Songs for Self-Regulation.
