Skill Sense OT

Skill Sense OT Thoughtful Support, Not Labels or Quick Fixes. Occupational Therapy isn’t about ticking boxes or applying one-size-fits-all advice. We don’t jump to conclusions.

Skill Sense OT (formerly SPOTS Therapy for Children) helps parents uncover what’s behind emotional, sensory, behavioural or learning challenges with clear, professional OT support. It’s about understanding your child’s unique way of experiencing the world, and using evidence-informed tools to help them feel more settled, engaged, and successful in daily life. We take time to assess your child’s st

rengths, challenges, and goals and work with you to create a plan that fits your family. What You Can Expect:
1. A whole-child approach not just labels
2. Clear, practical guidance tailored to your family
3. Support that respects your instincts and builds you and your child confidence

When I plan activities for Pencil Ready, I keep coming back to materials that families are likely to already have at hom...
05/09/2026

When I plan activities for Pencil Ready, I keep coming back to materials that families are likely to already have at home.

Paper, pegs, containers, tape, soft toys, cushions, kitchen items. Nothing particularly special, and that is very much the point.

I do not want school-readiness preparation at home to start feeling like another classroom, and I do not want parents to need a cupboard full of equipment before they can support the skills we are talking about.

Simple materials also leave more room for the child to explore, adjust, repeat and play with the activity in their own way, while the parent still understands what the activity is helping to develop.

The purpose sits underneath the play, rather than taking it over.

That is why Pencil Ready activities are designed to be practical, uncomplicated and easy to bring into ordinary family life.

A child may manage an activity beautifully when they are sitting with one adult, then seem much less certain when a simi...
04/09/2026

A child may manage an activity beautifully when they are sitting with one adult, then seem much less certain when a similar instruction is given to a whole group.

The skill has not suddenly disappeared.

One-to-one, we naturally adjust ourselves to the child. We notice when they have missed something, slow down without really thinking about it, repeat a few words at just the right moment, point towards what they need or wait until we know they are listening before we continue.

In a group, much of that individual adjustment is no longer available.

The child may need to recognise that the teacher is speaking to them as part of the group, pick out the important information, remember enough to begin and keep going while the teacher’s attention moves on to other children.

That is quite a different situation from having an adult beside you.

As formal schooling becomes more structured, this shift towards shared instructions and shared adult attention becomes part of everyday learning. It is one reason I am interested not only in what a child can do with support close by, but also in how manageable familiar activities become when the setting asks for a little more independence.

That belongs in the school-readiness picture too.

A child may understand exactly what they are being asked to find, yet still take a long time to locate it once there is ...
03/09/2026

A child may understand exactly what they are being asked to find, yet still take a long time to locate it once there is a lot happening on the page.

Perhaps they keep returning to the same place, skip over what they are looking for, or need an adult to point them back in the right direction.

That does not necessarily mean the idea itself is unfamiliar.

As children move into formal schooling, the amount of visual information around a task increases. There may be pictures, boxes, lines, symbols, instructions and several things competing for their attention at once, so part of the demand becomes working out where to look and what is important right now.

This is another reason I think about school readiness more broadly than whether a child knows the answer. Sometimes the knowledge is there, while finding and using the right information on the page is the part requiring more effort.

02/09/2026

Searching for a school-readiness checklist makes complete sense when you are trying to work out whether your child is ready for the move into formal schooling.

A good checklist can give you some direction. It can help you think about skills you may not have considered and give you a clearer idea of what to observe in everyday life.

But the tick itself is only part of the information.

A child may be able to complete a task, while needing quite a lot of help to organise it. They may manage it easily in one setting and work much harder in another, or have the skill but tire quickly when they need to use it alongside several other demands.

This is why I see school-readiness checklists as a starting point for looking more closely, rather than a pass-or-fail measure of whether a child is ready.

For me, it is not only about whether the child can do the task, but how comfortably they manage it once they are actually doing it.

Give a child a simple cutting-and-pasting activity and, at first glance, it does not look particularly complicated.But w...
01/09/2026

Give a child a simple cutting-and-pasting activity and, at first glance, it does not look particularly complicated.

But while they are doing it, they may need to hold the paper steady, turn it as they cut, coordinate both hands, keep their eyes on where they are going, manage the scissors, remember where the piece belongs and then organise the next part of the activity.

None of those demands necessarily looks enormous on its own.

The difficulty can come when several of them have to happen together.

That is something formal schooling asks of children repeatedly. Classroom activities rarely isolate one skill at a time, because even a fairly ordinary task can involve the body, attention, organisation and hand use all working together.

This is one reason I think about school readiness as more than a collection of individual skills. How comfortably a child can bring those skills together is part of the picture too.

Two children can look very similar during the same activity.Both may stop, need help, avoid the task or seem to struggle...
31/08/2026

Two children can look very similar during the same activity.

Both may stop, need help, avoid the task or seem to struggle to keep going, yet the reason underneath that difficulty may be quite different.

For one child, the physical demands may be taking more effort. Another may be trying to hold onto several pieces of information at once. A different child may be managing the task itself comfortably, but finding the amount of noise, movement or distraction around them much harder to handle.

The outward response gives us useful information, but it does not automatically tell us what is driving it.

That is why I am cautious about reducing school readiness to whether a child can or cannot complete a particular task. I am much more interested in understanding what the child is being asked to manage in order to do it, because that is often where the more helpful information sits.

Sometimes the question is not whether a child can do something.They can sit for the activity. They can use the scissors....
30/08/2026

Sometimes the question is not whether a child can do something.

They can sit for the activity. They can use the scissors. They can follow the idea. They can manage the puzzle, join in with the craft or get through the task.

But you may also notice that it seems to take more effort than you expected, that they tire more quickly, need more help to keep things going, or simply seem to work harder than other children their age.

That is the kind of school-readiness picture I want parents to understand more clearly.

Pencil Ready looks beyond the obvious early school skills and helps parents understand some of the physical, motor and thinking foundations children draw on when learning becomes more structured.

Across five weeks, we look at those foundations in a practical, parent-friendly way, with playful activities that fit into ordinary life rather than turning home into another classroom.

Pencil Ready begins in Term 4.
You can find the details through the🔗 in my bio and the comments.

A child may happily complete an activity on the floor, then look much less comfortable when those same materials are pla...
29/08/2026

A child may happily complete an activity on the floor, then look much less comfortable when those same materials are placed on a table.

The task has not suddenly become more complicated, and the child has not lost the skill.

What has changed is everything around it.

At a desk, the child has to manage their sitting position while also freeing their hands to work, keeping the materials within reach, looking between the work surface and their hands, and staying organised in a smaller space.

For some children, that extra physical demand barely registers. For others, it can make a familiar task require noticeably more effort.

This is one reason school readiness cannot always be judged by asking, “Can they do it?”

I also want to know what the task asks of the child while they are doing it, because formal schooling often requires familiar skills to be used within a very particular setup.

I’m now on Substack.It gives me a little more space to explore the bigger ideas behind children’s development, learning ...
27/08/2026

I’m now on Substack.

It gives me a little more space to explore the bigger ideas behind children’s development, learning and everyday participation, and to share the thinking that often sits underneath the practical information I write elsewhere.

If you enjoy the more reflective side of Skill Sense®, you can read along.

27/08/2026

The Animal Actions Spinner may look like a simple movement game, but there is a school-readiness reason behind the movements.

Children arrive at school needing much more than early academic knowledge. Their bodies are also being asked to sit, reach, carry, balance, move between different positions, use both sides of the body together and support increasingly precise work with their hands.

Animal movements give children playful opportunities to use their whole body in many of these ways, without turning school readiness into more table work.

You also do not need a special time of day or a carefully planned activity session to use the Spinner. Try a few spins after your child has been sitting for a while, while you are waiting for dinner, on a wet afternoon when outside play is limited, before bath time, or whenever your child is looking for something active to do.

Five or ten minutes is plenty. Some days it may only be two animals.

The idea is simply to bring more varied whole-body movement into ordinary family life, with a clear reason behind why you are doing it.

The Animal Actions Spinner is free and was created as a playful introduction to the physical foundations that form part of the wider school-readiness picture.

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