Gymworks Occupational Therapy Verified listing

At Gymworks, we believe occupational therapy should be interesting and engaging for children.

Our programme is designed for children aged 3 to 12 years old who are having difficulties with fine motor skills like writing and drawing, gross motor difficulties affecting fundamental movement, sensory problems, cognitive perception challenges such as spatial awareness, and functional skills that kids need every day.

We also work with older children/teenagers with challenges e.g. specific learning disorders such as dysgraphia.

Our commitment to making positive changes in your child’s performance is a key aspect of our practice. We believe that giving support as early as possible ensures the best outcomes for your child, and often means less need for intervention at school age. By embedding confidence, ability and skills at an early age, your child develops their love of learning and engaging with others.

The Gymworks approach

We believe the most effective way to help children develop fundamental skills is through a combined sensory-motor and PRPP approach. PRPP is a problem-solving method that stands for Perceive, Recall, Plan, Perform.

It encourages children to use their own thinking skills to learn how to solve problems and adapt their performance. By using this combined approach, your child learns and develops core skills through active movement and problem solving.

State-of-the-art gym

Our multi-sensorial gym is a key aspect of our sensory-motor methodology and provides a wonderful environment to practise listening, attention, memory and movement. It features three different stations for fundamental movement, balance and strength, a flying fox, a trampoline, a foam pit, a variety of suspended equipment, and balance beams.

Each week, the gym is set up completely differently to keep the children interested, promote listening skills and help with new motor planning.

Theme-based therapy

We use theme-based learning to engage the children, make their therapy more interactive, and help kids who need to practise their language skills and learn to follow instructions.

Every term features a different theme like animals, space or fairy tales, and with each new theme, our gym is completely transformed.

As well as motivating children and developing their imagination, this helps fearful children to overcome their fears by focusing their attention on something interesting instead.

Learning through memory and listening

We know that memory is an important part of development, and in order to learn, children need to be able to process and remember instructions.

This is why we embed memory and listening skills into every task. But we do this in a way that also promotes problem-solving. We give children guidance and prompts, and in doing so, encourage them to think for themselves and work out how to perform the instruction.

Group Occupational Therapy Sessions

Our tailored occupational therapy programme consists of a combination of sensory, motor, perceptual and cognitive-based activities designed to be engaging for children. Depending on your child’s specific needs, we can help them to master fine and gross motor skills, improve sensory and thinking skills, and help with other problems affecting their behaviour or performance, such as eating difficulties.

The occupational therapy programme starts at the beginning of every school term and runs for eight weeks, with weekly one-hour therapy sessions. The sessions are run in small groups to represent a classroom situation, with four children and two specialised occupational therapists.

Each session lasts for 50 minutes, with 10 minutes of feedback time afterwards. At the end of the session, your child will receive a Home Fun Pack and be asked to complete exercises that are most relevant to their development.

We also run school holiday programs for one week every school holidays.