ending only
===
[00:00:00]
Welcome to Therapy in the Great Outdoors, the podcast where we explore the business and practice of nature based pediatric therapy of all kinds. If you're an outdoor loving pediatric practitioner in the fields of occupational, physical, or speech therapy, social work, or mental health, this podcast will help you start and grow a successful nature based practice or program.
I am the ever honest, always a hundred percent real. You'll hear it all on this podcast. Dr. Laura Park Figueroa. I'm a pediatric OT with over 20 years of experience and I run a thriving nature based practice with profitable locations in two different states and multi six figures in revenue. I also host the free online community at therapyinthegreatoutdoors.
com to help you pursue your nature based therapy dreams too. Are you ready to take action on those dreams? Let's jump in.....
hello. Hello everyone. Welcome back to therapy in the great outdoors [00:01:00] today. I am going to share with you. Several different, really creative snacks that you can make with children in your nature-based therapy sessions. We love making really creative snacks in my practice. And I think this is something that. Any nature based pediatric therapist can do.
And can. Use these activities to work on almost any type of therapy goal. So if you are a mental health specialist, if you are an occupational therapist, a physical therapist, a speech therapist. There are so many skills that go into. Making these snacks that I think. Any of you, no matter who you are as a pediatric professional. Can find something to take away from this episode. And if you. Like these ideas. You should either get my book, which I never promote.
I wrote this book like five years ago [00:02:00] now in 2019, I never promote it a self, published it on Amazon. It has 44 different activities in it with photos of the activities and different modifications. And. Alternatives that you can do to each activity. And basically I wrote this book because. When I started out in nature-based practice, I found that a lot of the books out there were very complex.
Like they were, teaching you how to make a bow and arrow from Boar's hair and a special kind of Willow bark that needed to be stripped and treated and all this, it was just, I'm making all this up, but the activities were like super complex and. My book, I basically wrote because I tried out a bunch of activities with modifications and things during my first year in practice with kids. And I only put in my book, the things that actually worked with children who are the types of children that we work with, who tend to not have very long attention spans, or maybe they have [00:03:00] trouble sequencing.
I tried to make these activities, things that could really easily be done with a wide variety of children who have different strengths and different challenges. You can get my book. There's that is a way that if you like these activities, that might be something to do. Some of these snacks are going to come out of my book. And the other thing is there is a membership inside of the therapy in the great outdoors community, the online community that I host and run. And we have a free. Area of the community where you can get access to a discussion board and you can, , connect with other members there.
We also have a jobs and volunteer board and there's another area that's free too. And I can't remember what it is right now, but anyway there's free areas there, but we also have supporting memberships and these are. Monthly memberships. So there's no commitment. There's no minimum commitment.
You can cancel any time. It's $9 a month. It's like basically the cost of a good latte with a [00:04:00] good tip at a nice coffee shop. And you can get access for that $9. You get access to a monthly call with me as well as tons of trainings and resources for nature-based pediatric therapist. And access to our treatment activities area.
So this area is a crowdsource area where people share their favorite activities. And a couple of these snacks that I am going to mention are also in that. Treatment activities area inside of the supporting membership in the community. These are two things that I almost never promote the $9 a month supporting membership as well as my book, because they are lower cost resources that I don't find myself having much time to promote or remind people of because I'm busy running my practice and my online business, where I coach therapist in running their practices. I find that my time often gets taken up by selling the [00:05:00] bigger things that I have to offer.
My courses and my programs. And I forget to mention these other low cost resources. So those are there for you all. And now let's get into some of the activities.
So the first one is super unique and interesting.
One of my employees who used to work with us, she's amazing. . I'm so sad that she moved cross country to be with her family. I'm happy for her sad for us, because she was such an amazing person to work with. But. She put a post inside of the TGO community treatment activities area called color changing tea. She said it could also be a fun lemonade. So basically she brought hot water in thermoses.
Okay. And then she bought she brought a bunch of like flowers and edible herbs and lemon and honey and let the kids choose the mix that they [00:06:00] wanted to put in their tea. And she said, if you use butterfly blue pea flour, it creates this beautiful blue tea that has barely any taste to it. Then, if you mix that with lemon, it turns purple.
And if you mix that with hibiscus, it turns red. So it's really fun for the kids to try these different combinations. And it also is so great for being adventurous and just being willing to try something that's very different from something they probably have ever tasted or tried before, maybe at home.
That was a really great idea. And she has a lot of info here about how she did it and how it was helpful in the TGO community posts that she did here, but you can find that inside the community under color changing T if you want to, if you want to look that up and just do these like color combinations with kids to. See how they can change the color of their drink.
I thought that was a super cute snack idea. [00:07:00] So that's the first one.
So the second activity is also inside of the TGO community here, and it is apple pizzas. So this is the cutest idea.
Basically what you do is you cut apples in two slices and then you spread different toppings on top of them like sunflower butter, not slices, but sorry, not slices. You cut apples into. You try to get it like a full circle. So it looks like a pizza, right? So maybe like down the sides of the apple, you guys get what I mean?
You get it so you can see the full, a full piece that looks almost like a circle. So you cut off like one side of the apple. So it's this like domed curve, like flat. Surface on top, but a dome on the bottom. Oh my gosh. You guys, I should not record at five o'clock in the afternoon because I can't speak this late in the day.
My brain is like, Fried, I guess I hope you get what I mean. So you have your apple slice and then you bring different [00:08:00] toppings for the kids to put on top of their apple pizza quote, unquote. And so you could have sunflower butter, you could have peanut butter. If kids aren't allergic, you spread that on.
You have them spread that on top for the sauce, and then you give them different toppings to put on top of it. Now. In the Contigo approach. I am really big on the idea that kids have so much access to sugar nowadays, that it's just awful. So I try to keep all of these snacks that I offer and that my employees offer. To be really healthy things and I'm not totally opposed to sweetener, but I do feel like if we use sweetener, we should be using honey or maple syrup or something that has some kind of vitamins and minerals in it.
We try to keep the toppings that we would put on these apple pizza's pretty healthy, like raisins or grapes or things that they would. Be able, like things that are natural foods. That's essentially what I mean. So not [00:09:00] chocolate chips, for example, not that we never do smores. I know I probably wouldn't ever do smartest, but I know some of my employees have, and I'm not like that. Big of a jerk about it, but.
Yeah. So just think about things that you could put on top of the apple.
So you might have a little. Shaker jar of cinnamon or a little shaker jar of nutmeg, or like some other flavors that they could put on top of their, to play with. So that is apple pizzas. Okay. Along the apple. Topic. I will share in my book. I have an activity in the snack section called fun with the apple peeler.
And basically this is called. If you go on Amazon or go online and look up Johnny apple peeler. You will find this old fashioned very heavy. K they're usually made out of cast iron. These old fashioned heavy. [00:10:00] Hand crank apple peelers, and they are so fun. This is probably like one of my number one tools that I love to use with kids in sessions. They are so fun to use because you put the apple on these prongs and then you hold the bottom of the kind of contraption and you crank. This little handle and it spiral cuts the apple and peels it all at once.
So it makes this big, long string of apple peel, which the kids in one of my groups called apple spaghetti. I thought that they would not want to eat the peel. And they used to fight over who got to eat the apple spaghetti. Then after you have this apple spaghetti, the peel is all off. Then you have this spiral cut, apple.
That gives you just these beautiful, perfect. It's basically how back in the day. Grandma's used to make apple pies more quickly because they didn't have to then hand slice all and peel all of the apples. It is such a great tool. I highly recommend it. So that is something too that you can [00:11:00] use is just get that apple peeler. Tool. And then have fun with it and play with it and use different.
You can use that to cut up your apples, to put in a fruit salad, or you could just eat the apple slices and dip them in some kind of Plain yogurt with honey and peanut butter is my favorite. I love it. It's got the protein in there from the yogurt and then the fat from the peanut butter and the creaminess.
And then a little bit of honey for sweetness. It's so good. It's my favorite and a little cinnamon too. So you can do all different kinds of things with the apple peeler. That's super fun. Another fun thing to do once you've cut up. All those apples is to make apple crisp over an open fire.
So you make a fire in the, if you're allowed to. Sometimes I know in California where my one of my practice locations is we usually can't make fires in the summer because it's too dry. But if you can make fires in the summer, you could at summer camp, you could make that fire, get the fire going really hot.
And then you take the apple peel, the peeled [00:12:00] apples. Again. Oh, my gosh. Y'all I'm sorry, I won't record it in the afternoon again. Sorry for all my flub ups. I'm not going to edit these out because this is real life. I'm real on the show. You can take those apple slices that you have sliced with the apple peeler. Put them in a little aluminum foil with a little granola, a little honey, and maybe some um, what was I going to say?
Granola, honey. An apples and a little cinnamon and then put it on to the, wrap it all up and foil seal the edges and put it in the fire and let it cook. And you have apple crisp. If you really want to extend that activity, you can get an ice cream ball too, and you can make ice cream sweetened with honey and heavy cream. In the ice cream ball and then have it with your apple crisp, that would be an awesome celebratory meal for the last day of a week of summer camp or something.
Okay. And then the last one that I want to share with you all.
Is pasta [00:13:00] packets. Okay. Similar to what I just talked about with making the apple crisp, where you would put it in foil and seal all the edges and then put it in the campfire. You can also use a spiralizer. And actually you probably, it wouldn't, spiralize it though.
You can also use a spiralizer, which is another machine, basically like a very simple hand crank machine. That will spiralize vegetables. So you can take zucchini is usually what's used because it's soft enough to spiralize. You can put those zucchini in this machine, on these little prongs, and then you hand crank this thing and it turns it, or it pushes it through this thing to spiralize the spaghetti and make like pasta noodles, but spaghetti. They would be zucchini noodles. And I was amazed when we did this several years ago at camp.
How many kids that would not touch a vegetable? Would eat these pasta packets when we made them, because we had [00:14:00] made the whole
We had made the whole thing. Together. So you spiralized zucchini. You put it in the little pot in the little aluminum pouch. Put a little bit of tomato sauce on it and a little Parmesan cheese. If you want to get really fancy, you could bring like Italian seasoning or you could bring a regen own Bazell or something for the kids to put on top of theirs. And then you cook them in the fire and take them out.
And it's like eating pasta out of this little packet. So it's super fun. And another little idea for you all. So I realize some of these are more extensive, right? They're not a quick little snack that you're going to do in a nature-based therapy session. Open a granola bar and eat it. It's not that kind of snack.
The intention of these activities is to be something that is a large part, a very meaningful part of your nature-based therapy session so that you are. Connecting kids to natural foods. This is nature-based therapy. You all, it's not just being outdoors. It's all enmeshed, [00:15:00] it's all intertwined.
What we do in our nature based work with kids and getting kids to eat healthy foods that are natural whole foods that the earth gives us is a great opportunity. To talk with them about that concept of how awesome it is that we rely on the earth to give us our food. And so we want to take care of the earth because the earth gives us our food.
There's so many fun lessons that we can teach. They're just in having an activity like this, where we are using foods that are natural foods that the earth gives us. So I hope you all found this episode. Interesting and are excited to try some of these things. If you do, please reach out to me on Instagram and tell me, I love hearing from you all. And we are, it is Monday when this comes out .
And Contigo, my nature-based pediatric therapy, mentoring and certification program is open for enrollment till tomorrow night, Tuesday, April 30th, at 5:00 PM central. So we open enrollment for this program three times per year. It will open again [00:16:00] in September for an October cohort, but we are running a cohort this may.
So if you want to join us, you can check out all the details at contigoapproach.com and as always my . DMS are always open to you on Instagram. All right, I'll talk to you guys next week. Bye. Wait a second, don't go yet. Do you want 120 ways that you can take your pediatric therapy work outdoors into nature? I wrote the free, big, huge list of nature based therapy activities just for you. The big, huge list will give you quick ideas for nature based sessions. In the big, huge list, there are activities for gross motor, fine motor, Visual, perceptual, executive function, balance, group collaboration, and team building, social, emotional, and self regulation skills, as well as speech and language, and a whole section just for swing activities.
So, go on and get your free big huge list so you can get started taking kids outdoors or have some new ideas if you've been doing this a while. You can download your [00:17:00] free copy at therapyinthegreatoutdoors. com slash list. So until next time, get outside, connect, reflect, and enjoy the outdoors. Therapy in the great outdoors.
