Construction Notice: The west entrance of the Talbot Professional Center (near the fountain and steps) is closed for building maintenance. Detours are marked. Please build in extra time for appointments. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Dear Valley Medical Center Children’s Therapy Families,
We hope that you are staying safe and taking care during this difficult time. We miss seeing our patients and families in the clinic and look forward to seeing you again when it’s safe for us to reopen fully.
We would like to share our plans with you, as well as resources that we have gathered to support you while therapy isn’t in session.
Attached is Children's Therapy, Patient Visitor Advisory during Covid-19 response.
Please read on how we are taking extra steps to protect our staff, patient and community.
This document contains the pre-screening questions asked before getting the vaccine and the recommendations depending on your answer. For that document please. Valley Medical center also has a future roll out plan for the vaccination, for more information
June 3rd Update:
Our clinic is now fully open and we are so excited to be back to working with our families! We continue to offer a hybrid model of teletherapy visits over video and in-person visits in the clinic. The decision to come to the clinic or receive therapy over video teletherapy is currently being made between the therapist and the patient’s family, and depends on the needs and abilities of your child.
Reminder calls are not going out right now, so put your appointments in your calendar to remind you of your day and time. We hope to have reminder calls functional again soon.
Some of our therapists who have smaller caseloads will not be coming back until at least the fall. If you saw one of these therapists and have not been contacted yet, please give our schedulers a call at 425-690-3513 to see if there are openings on another therapist’s schedules. If you are on the waiting list you can also call to see if there are any openings to fit your schedule.
We continue to follow the below guidelines:
Please reach out with any questions to 425-690-3513 or email Barbara_bryant@valleymed.org
Read a picture book together – without reading the words! Read a book and tell the story by describing what you see in the pictures instead of reading the words. Pause frequently to let your child look at, point to, or talk about pictures. For children who are using few to no words, use the sentence “I see ….” to describe what you see, like “I see a big yellow fish!” For children who are speaking in sentences, ask questions about the story, such as “What do you think the bear is going to do next?” This activity is called “dialogic reading” because it helps your child to engage in a dialogue, and it’s a favorite activity for many teachers and speech therapists. If you don’t have books at home, use a phone or tablet to check out free e-books at PBSkids.org.
Practice social skills using family playtime or digital communication. Games like tag, chase, tickles, peek-boo, and “flying through the air” are all social games that can be used to promote your young child’s social communication skills. Consider using the R.O.C.K. strategy included in this handout.
For older children, have your child stay in contact with family members or friends from school to share their personal experiences at home. Have your child generate a list of questions to ask their friend or family member to learn about what they are doing to stay busy at home. Additionally, have scheduled mealtimes together and practice sharing the highs or lows of your day.
Create your own sensory bin. Sensory bins are a great activity for the development of various senses, as well as imaginative play skills! If your child likes to touch everything or shows some avoidance to different textures, sensory bins can be a great way to support tactile exploration and fulfill your child’s sensory needs. For more information and tips on how to build your own sensory bin(s), check out this site for details.
Enjoy some family exercise time together. Running, jumping, climbing, and crashing can be difficult and often dangerous for kids while stuck inside the house, but movement and physical play is essential for development and regulation. There are limitless opportunities for kids (small and big) to get the movement they need in a safe way while indoors. Some ideas include:
For more fun physical indoor play ideas, look at these links: indoor gross motor activities and ways to keep kids active indoors.
Practice ways to ease feelings of stress and build self-awareness. The recent events regarding COVID-19 have added feelings of stress and uncertainty to all of our lives, and impact our children as well. Practicing healthy and safe methods to relieve stress together can benefit the emotional, cognitive, and physical well-being of your entire family. Activities such as animal pose yoga can be done along with your children. For instance, standing on one leg can become “flamingo”. Try counting together and holding the pose for 10 sections. This is a short kid-friendly video about yoga poses: or check out more kid-friendly poses at Kids Yoga Stories or Preschool Inspirations. Mindfulness practice can also support self-awareness and provide structured breaks for people of all ages. Mindfulschools.org is offering free online mindfulness videos (live and on-demand) to support guided practice.
The Pacific Science Center: They have launched "Curiosity at Home", to engage kids who are home. Curiosity doesn't stop and now you can participate in live science experiments and create your own experiments by following their videos. For more science at home activities check out their website by clicking here.
Virtual Art Therapy: Occupational Therapist Loren, shares how you can have fun and build skills with this art activity.
For more information on the art activity click here.
Here is a fun Thanksgiving art activity you can make at home with minimal supplies. You will need the following supplies; a brown paper bag, feathers, googly eyes, red and orange construct paper, scissors and glue. From Monday (11/23) through Wednesday (11/25), Children's Therapy will be giving away brown paper bags with those supplies included, with the exception of glue and scissors. Feel free to stop by and grab the turkey craft kit!
Here is a link showing you how to complete the art activity. Happy Thanksgiving!
Behavioral Health Guidance for Back to School: The Department of Health (DOH) is providing behavioral health tips and resources for navigating emotional responses children, teens, and adults may experience as we start heading back to school and in-person routines.
Public Health Seattle & King County COVID-19 information page (available in many languages)
King County Crisis Connections: available for crisis support 24/7 by phone at (866) 427-4747, and on the web at crisisconnections.org.
Self-care for parents: Make sure to take care of yourself, and find some tips here.
Facts for Kids: Here is a document helping kids understand how they can protect themselves against COVID-19, click here.
Discussing COVID-19: A resource to help navigate discussion around COVID-19, please click here.
Livestream Series on "Parenting Through COVID-19" : Information on a new livestream series for parents, focusing on coping strategies and emotional regulation to help parents. To get more information please click here.
Tips for Families: This website has tips on home activities, self-care and how to stay connected, for more information click here.
Washington State Department of Health: Here are recommendations on pregnancy, birth, and caring for your baby with suspected or confirmed Covid-19. Also this information is available in Spanish.
UW Center for Philosophy: The center is offering free materials to have families talk about the questions and emotions that are surfacing, as children experience Covid-19 and quarantine. For more information click here.
Children's Village: Here are some videos, both in English and Spanish, to help families expose and practice wearing a mask, to their children. For more information please click here.
Corona Superhero Kids: This book is a great way to discuss the coronavirus pandemic with your child. It uses child friendly language to bring awareness and solutions. If interested please check out this link.
"Just A Vaccine": Enjoy this video, "Just A Vaccine," a Schoolhouse Rock Parody promoting the COVID-19 Vaccine.
Beginning with Babble: Beginning with Babble is a free app, available for Android or iPhone, that parents of children age 0-5 can download to receive daily tips on helping their child develop language.
Hanen Center Parent Tips: The Hanen Center has a website with tips for parents of children who communicate without words, children who have just started talking, and children who talk in sentences.
Speech sound worksheets: For children who are working on specific speech sounds in therapy, a large collection of words are available here.
Advanced language goals: For children working on more advanced language skills, check out some learning websites, such as Khan Academy, Starfall, and Time for Kids.
Mealtime Madness: To help avoid meltdowns at mealtime, create a schedule as a visual reference for both parents and children. This helps increase predictability while decreasing fear of the unknown. Increase participation and responsibility of your children at mealtime by encouraging them to be involved in mealtime preparation, exploring and discovering new foods, as well as cleaning up the foods after the meal. Limiting distractions, such as screens at the table, helps to promote socialization and avoids poor mealtime habits, such as overeating. For more information on how to promote healthy mealtime behaviors, see the full handout from The American Occupational Therapy Association.
Reading with Your Child: In this document Children's Therapy gives you specific book recommendations to promote your child's language and literacy to elementary. For more information click here.
It’s More than the Words on the Page! Kristina and Amy are speech-language pathologists here at Children's Therapy. In this video they show you techniques for getting the most out of reading to your child. Their reading tips will help improve language development, from infant to later elementary ages.
For more information click this link!
Does Language Development Through Masking: Children's Therapy has strategies to help continue your child's early speech/language development. For more information click here.
OT Plan: The OT Plan is a website full of developmental activities, parent resources, and therapy related products available to support your child at home! It provides a simple search engine feature that helps parents find OT activity ideas organized by specific developmental skills and/or by the materials available in your home!
The Best Ideas For Kids: An online community resource for sharing fun developmental activities while at home. Plenty of ideas for craft projects to work on fine motor skills, kid-friendly cooking recipes self-care independence, and information for parents about favorite tools like apps and educational resources. Visit and explore here.
The OT Toolbox: Find resources, tools, ideas, and activities geared toward the healthy development of kids; from functioning self-care skills like dressing or potty-training, fine motor skills and handwriting, sensory processing, and executive processing skills like attention and self-regulation. Based on function and occupation-centered activities, the ideas shared on this site promote the underlying skills needed for action and performance in kids. Visit and explore here.
Busy Toddler: This website has many ideas on different play activities for all ages. If you want to play inside or outside there are lists of activities you can do! Click here for more information!
Cotton Ball Soccer: Pediatric occupational therapist Alexa Anderson and her boys demonstrate an indoor cotton ball soccer game that builds skills and is a calming activity.
To try it at home check out the YouTube video!
Keep kids moving indoors: Try some of these ideas to keep your kids active while out of school, or check out some active videos here.
¡Ideas para practicar movimientos gruesos y quemar un poco de energía! Sabemos que ahorita los niños están pasando mucho tiempo en casa, y tal vez extrañen su tiempo de recreo. En estos sitios web, pueden encontrar bastantes ideas para que se mantengan activos y practiquen habilidades como brincar, balance y planeación motriz. 5 actividades para mejorar la motricidad gruesa , actividades de movimiento para ninos con energia , 10 formas de trabjar la motricidad gruesa en los ninos
Actividades para practicar la lectura y el vocabulario: Visita este sitio web con ideas para apoyar el desarrollo de habilidades de lectura y vocabulario de tu niño/niña, tanto en español como en inglés y para recibir información de como criar un niño/niña bilingüe.