Here to Play: Re-Centering Children in Pediatric Occupational Therapy
A concrete path to playful, child-led occupational therapy that helps your clients meet their goals.
Kelsie Mick Olds, MOT OTR/LEnrollment Options
Professional Track
Includes a certificate of completion for 0.875 AOTA CEUs / 8.75 Contact Hours. Designed for occupational therapists and occupational therapy assistants looking to earn CE credit for professional development.
This course provides 0.875 AOTA CEUs or 8.75 contact houurs
Personal Track
Designed for parents, caregivers, and educators looking to deepen their knowledge and understanding and learn practical strategies for supporting neurodivergent children.
Professional Track
- Here to Play Self-Paced Video Course
- Post-activity Multiple-choice Assessment
- Certificate of Completion
- Community Access
Personal Track
- Here to Play Self-Paced Video Course
Meet Your Instructor
Kelsie Mick Olds, MOT OTR/L
Mick is an occupational therapist working both on- and offline to share knowledge widely about the ways that children grow, develop, and learn. Mick is passionate about play as the core meaningful occupation that underlies childhood, and about equipping adults with the education and practical tools they need to defend children’s right to play.
Mick has a Master of Occupational Therapy degree from the University of Oklahoma and has worked primarily in schools, as well as consulting with teachers, therapists, and parents to advocate on children’s behalf. Mick blogs as The OccuPLAYtional Therapist.
About This Course
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.
Course Details
Select a track to view what's included.
Course Modules
Module 1: The Work of Childhood
1:46:21Play is a child’s most meaningful occupation, but it often gets lost in OT practice as we navigate the pressures of helping clients meet goals. In this module, you’ll become a skilled observer of play and dive deep into the many varied ways kids of all ages play. You’ll gain the language and knowledge to recognize, create, and defend playfulness in any setting and with any goal.
Module 2: How to Play, Starting Today
3:07:09This module is your concrete toolkit for integrating more play into your unique setting, using your unique style. Through concrete examples and case studies from Mick’s practice as a playful school-based OT, you’ll learn small and big steps toward playful, affirming practice across physical foundations, sensory processing, relationships and connection, social and emotional skills, intrinsic motivation, academic skills (including handwriting), autonomy, and behavior.
Module 3: Playfulness on Paper
1:05:19By this point in the course, you’ll know how to use playfulness to help your clients meet any OT goal. In this module, you’ll get the tools you need to document your playful practice and defend playfulness in evaluations, goals, and daily notes. You’ll see concrete examples of neurodiversity-affirming goals that support fine motor skills, sensory processing, emotional regulation, and more. You’ll get scripts for talking about your practice with schools, IEP teams, and families, and you’ll read examples of SOAP notes for play-based sessions, including sessions where nothing went as planned.
Module 4: Equipped to Play Anywhere
1:05:34Come on in! In this module, Mick lets you peek inside their OT tool bag and OT room, sharing their favorite flexible, playful OT tools (including apps) and how they use them in practice. You’ll learn how to set the plan together with the child, teach skills like writing through playful and natural modeling, and craft your own supply list on any budget. You’ll also see how to set up your space for play whether you have your own OT room, drive from school to school, share a therapy room, or push into the natural environment.
What's Included
Course Content
Registration Information
To register, select your preferred course option on this page and complete your purchase. Access to all course materials is granted immediately upon completion of payment. If you require accommodations or have special needs requests, please contact us at ce@thinksensory.com. Groups of 6 or more can inquire about group rates at the same address.
Course Modules
Module 1: The Work of Childhood
1:46:21Play is a child’s most meaningful occupation, but it often gets lost in OT practice as we navigate the pressures of helping clients meet goals. In this module, you’ll become a skilled observer of play and dive deep into the many varied ways kids of all ages play. You’ll gain the language and knowledge to recognize, create, and defend playfulness in any setting and with any goal.
Module 2: How to Play, Starting Today
3:07:09This module is your concrete toolkit for integrating more play into your unique setting, using your unique style. Through concrete examples and case studies from Mick’s practice as a playful school-based OT, you’ll learn small and big steps toward playful, affirming practice across physical foundations, sensory processing, relationships and connection, social and emotional skills, intrinsic motivation, academic skills (including handwriting), autonomy, and behavior.
Module 3: Playfulness on Paper
1:05:19By this point in the course, you’ll know how to use playfulness to help your clients meet any OT goal. In this module, you’ll get the tools you need to document your playful practice and defend playfulness in evaluations, goals, and daily notes. You’ll see concrete examples of neurodiversity-affirming goals that support fine motor skills, sensory processing, emotional regulation, and more. You’ll get scripts for talking about your practice with schools, IEP teams, and families, and you’ll read examples of SOAP notes for play-based sessions, including sessions where nothing went as planned.
Module 4: Equipped to Play Anywhere
1:05:34Come on in! In this module, Mick lets you peek inside their OT tool bag and OT room, sharing their favorite flexible, playful OT tools (including apps) and how they use them in practice. You’ll learn how to set the plan together with the child, teach skills like writing through playful and natural modeling, and craft your own supply list on any budget. You’ll also see how to set up your space for play whether you have your own OT room, drive from school to school, share a therapy room, or push into the natural environment.
What's Included
Course Content
Registration Information
To register, select your preferred course option on this page and complete your purchase. Access to all course materials is granted immediately upon completion of payment. If you require accommodations or have special needs requests, please contact us at ce@thinksensory.com. Groups of 6 or more can inquire about group rates at the same address.
Learning Outcomes
Upon completion of this course, participants should be able to:
- Interpret and analyze common themes in a child's play in order to develop meaningful strategies that support playful, authentic, engagement in a variety of daily occupations.
- Design a static environment or mobile toolbox that facilitates genuine child-led play in a variety of occupational therapy settings.
- Develop strategies for confidently and flexibly adapting the course of a treatment session based on a child's meaningful occupations to enhance the client’s takeaway and authentic joy during daily routines.
- Defend the value of child-led play-based occupational therapy practice in medical documentation.
- Appraise a client's handwriting, tool use, and other fine motor skills through a holistic lens to improve meaningful engagement in academic, pre-academic, and self-care skills.
- Examine the underlying roots of children's distress behaviors to identify and support the need they are expressing, skills they are lacking, or help they are requesting in order to reduce barriers to participation in daily routines.
Continuing Education Details
Here to Play: Re-Centering Children in Pediatric Occupational Therapy
This self-paced course is delivered through recorded video lectures with accompanying slides.
Instructional content includes:
- Recorded lectures with visual slides
- Concrete examples and case studies from the instructor’s school-based occupational therapy practice
- Worked examples of clinical documentation, including SOAP notes for play-based sessions
- Scripts and language examples for communicating with schools, IEP teams, and families
- Post-activity multiple-choice assessment with rationale-based feedback
To receive 0.875 AOTA CEUs (8.75 contact hours) for this activity, you must complete all of the following:
- View all required video content in its entirety.
- Pass the post-activity learning outcome assessment for each module with a score of 80% or higher.
- Complete the post-activity evaluation.
Partial credit is not available. You must complete all requirements listed above to receive CEUs and a certificate of completion.
If you do not achieve a passing score of 80% on the learning outcome assessment, you may retake the assessment. There is no limit on retake attempts.
Mick was paid for their contributions to Goal Writing for Autistic Students. Mick receives commission for the sales of Big Talks Little Talks. Mick is the author of a book, “Your Child’s Point of View: Understanding the Reasons Kids Do Unreasonable Things” and receives royalties for its’ sale. Mick is the owner of The OccuPLAYtional Therapist and receives speaking fees.
Mick is Autistic and has friends and family members who are Autistic.
Think Sensory is an AOTA Approved Provider of professional development. Course approval ID# 0000016288. This Distance Learning – Independent course is offered at 0.875 CEUs (Intermediate Level, OT Service Delivery). The assignment of AOTA CEUs does not imply endorsement of specific course content, products, or clinical procedures by AOTA.
Think Sensory will issue a full refund to a learner who requests cancellation within 10 calendar days of purchase, provided the learner has not accessed any course content. Once any course content has been accessed, no refund will be issued, regardless of how much of the activity has been completed. Due to the digital nature of CEU-eligible PD activities, Think Sensory does not offer partial refunds after content has been accessed.
If Think Sensory cancels or removes a course from the platform, affected learners will be notified in advance and provided with an appropriate remedy. For full details, see our Terms of Service.
To request a cancellation, email ce@thinksensory.com.