Most pediatric OTs already sense that play is where the real work happens. The harder part is trusting it, building a session around it, and explaining to a skeptical insurer, teacher, or parent why following a child's lead counts as skilled therapy.
In this AOTA-Approved CE course, Mick Olds (the Occuplaytional Therapist) walks you through child-led, play-based practice from the ground up, starting with why play matters for a child's development and ending with a toolbox you could pack up and use tomorrow, in whatever setting you already work in. You won't be asked to throw out everything you do. Mick shows you how to expand it.
Along the way, they share real stories from their own caseload, the wins and the moments that didn't click right away, so you can see how this looks in real life instead of only in theory.
What You'll Learn
- How to read the themes in a child's play and turn them into meaningful, motivating strategies across daily routines
- How to set up a room, a center, or a grab-and-go toolbox that makes genuine child-led play possible in any setting
- How to adapt a session in the moment when a child takes it somewhere you didn't plan, and still come away with real progress
- How to write documentation that defends play-based therapy to insurers, schools, and teams, with example notes at different levels of clinical language
- How to look at handwriting, tool use, and fine motor skills through a whole-child lens rather than one isolated skill at a time
- How to understand what a child is communicating through distress, so you can meet the need underneath instead of managing the moment
When therapy connects to what's meaningful to a child, the gains tend to carry into everyday life and stay there. This course gives you the foundation to know why that works, the language to defend it, and the practical tools needed to make it happen.