Description
The Little Room is part of Dr Lilli Nielsen’s Active Learning approach and is included in CAP’s range of specialised equipment. The basis of Active Learning is that children are encouraged, supported, facilitated and allowed to explore their environment in their own time and be responsible for their own touch, sounds and learning. As children learn to interact with their environment and make changes to objects and sounds around them they learn to put these connections together and develop a greater sense of where and who they are in their world.
The Little Room has been designed for children with visual impairment and children who are especially developmentally threatened. The Little Room is a valuable piece of equipment for home, therapy centres and early intervention pre schools, day care centres and schools.
The Little Room provides your child with opportunities to explore unknown objects, helping them to become familiar and experience the differences between auditory and tactile stimuli. The Little Room encourages upper limb gross motor and fine motor development including reach and grasp. Depending on the configuration of the Little Room and where your child is placed, the Little Room can be used to promote lower limb gross and fine motor development too.
What the Little Room creates is opportunity. It is a safe space for children to explore shapes, textures, sounds and objects in their own time with their hands, arms and feet. For many children with visual and physical impairment this opportunity is otherwise difficult to create.
For children with sensory processing difficulties such as children within the Autism spectrum, the Little Room can be very useful. With a blanket for a roof, it can be a safe dark space for calming down and exploring items such as soft, cold or squeaky toys. The Little Room can also be a space where various textures and sounds can be introduced at your child’s pace to facilitate acceptance of various textures.
The Little Room is best used on the 1300 x 700 Resonance Board.
Dr. Lilli Nielsen’s book Space and Self details the use, benefits and positive outcomes achievable with the Little Room
Adjustability
The Little Room is a small light weight structure with a variety of moveable panels that make up the sides of the room, encouraging your child to explore their surroundings. Some of the panels are covered in various interesting materials to allow exploration with hands and feet. Found objects (not included) can be suspended from the roof for added interest.
A standard Little Room comes with 10 panels** some with large openings for ventilation and access. Various configurations are possible from the standard pack. The roof panels are clear with perforations to allow natural light into the space, promote airflow, hang objects for exploration and enable observation from the therapist, carer or parent. The Little Room is quick and easy to assemble and disassemble and light enough to be easily moved by 2 adults.
The Little Room can be completely customised for each child either through the base configuration or the items that are attached to the panels and the size of the Little Room used. The size of the Little Room can be graded so it is smaller when first used and increased as the child becomes more familiar and learns greater spatial awareness.
Finish and Colour
The CAP Little Room has recently been redesigned for better resonance and provide a greater range of options. It has varnished plywood walls and strong polycarbonate roof panels. All materials used have been chosen to be safe for children to touch (even with their tongues)!
