Yoga for children...
Friday, September 4, 2009


Yoga is an art, science and in broader term it is a way of living. It is not only for the adult to maintain the fitness and flexibility but it can be done for the children after 5yrs.

Generally we assume that childhood is an age for play and relaxation. A child in his childhood does not have any stress and if they are playing well they should be physically fit. But, it is not so for all children. In this competitive world the child develops a tendency of jealousy, hatredness which is another form of stress. Because of studies, sedentary life, irregular food habits and staying in nuclear family add on to mental and physical stress.

Yoga under the guidance of a qualified professional helps in developing the right personal and social conduct. Yoga asana and breathing exercises helps in gentle relaxation and develop the control of body. Yoga includes the gentle and self guided stretching and bending which helps in physical development. For children yoga is generally fun-filled group activity with slow, gentle and rhythmic movements. Physical development means toned body, development of immunity, restoring the beauty and charm. On the subtle level it helps in various body functions like circulation of blood, respiration and digestion. However, children should not be forced to do that but it is designed as a play for them with the help of yoga expert. It helps in developing the healthy regime for the tiny tots. The physical aspects and the guiding principles of yoga like yama and niyama helps in developing the moral values.

Micro yoga is quite beneficial for the children initially which helps in developing the flexibility of every joint and prevention the falls and injury. Initially the session is for short duration varying from 20 to 30 min, depending on the age. Later it can be gradually increased.

Along with the maintaining the fitness it helps in educing the childhood anxiety, fear of competition, asthma, obesity and other chronic ailments.

However Yoga for children should be practiced under a proper guidance and after proper assessment. Initially for sometime few children may need a personal attention in few of the postures and movement. It should not be tried too rigorously.

Posted byNeeti at 2:40 PM 0 comments  

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Hand Dominance... its relevance
Friday, August 28, 2009


Handedness is an attribute of humans defined by their unequal distribution of fine motor skill between the left and right hands. Some are left handed and some are right handed. However, there are 2 more types of handedness seen, Cross dominance and Ambidextrous. Cross dominance means the child uses one hand for one particular activity and other hand for other specific activity. Ambidextrous is a unique quality that a child can perform a particular skill with both the hands with equal quality. Crossed dominance and ambidextrous is not a problem every time until it affects the function.

Handedness is comprised of hardware (musculoskeletal, strength) and software (neurological), interacting to produce an efficient action. Handedness depends on neurological inhibiting of the recessive hand, so that the dominant hand can develop the precise, corrective, rapid movement without any competition from the non-dominant hand. Generally hand dominance is established at the age of 3 to 4 yrs but as late as 7 yrs. It is important to develop the hand dominance. However most of the child does develop hand dominance spontaneously at age but sometimes children with developmental delay and autism may have problem with it. Parents often have concerns that their children can write from both the hands but not sure.

To develop hand dominance it is important to know the preferred hand of child. Parents and teachers can observe the child in various functional activities. Observe child closely for preference of hand, control, strength and stability. Observe the child in unconscious and sudden or alone without interfering or biasing. It gives a better idea than intentional observation which sometimes becomes biased. Sometimes poor shoulder stability leads the child to keep on shifting the hand which gives a wrong expression of poor hand dominance.

Many activities like horizontal and vertical eight can help in finding the midline orientation and laterality. Bilateral hand activities like scissoring, hammering, tearing the paper, screwing, unliding the bottles, pick up games, lifting heavy objects, push ups and pull ups can be done. Observe the child preference and effort during movements. Once if it gives the idea of hand preferences stimulate that side with graded finger and shoulder exercise.



Posted byNeeti at 10:51 PM 0 comments  

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Reading habits...
Thursday, August 20, 2009


To develop reading habits in children with special needs is always a concern for parents. Reading habits are very important for academics. Most of the special need children have poor visual function i.e. fixation, tracking, sorting, depth perception and discrimination. Many a time poor sitting tolerance and hyperactivity make the reading habit a daunting job for the educators and parents.

Tips for developing reading habits

  • If hyperactivity is diagnosed as a sensory issue, resolve it with guidance of Early interventionist or occupational therapist.
  • Work on developing the visual functions like sorting, matching, tracking and visual discrimination etc. this can be done with lots of visual cues and visual supports.
  • Most of autistic children are visual learner, so use this strength to develop reading and matching skills.
  • Read lots of story books, depending upon the age and child understanding level, the books can be selected. This not only creates the interest in child but also helps in improving further the visual memory. Repeat the story of the child favourite character and then keep on adding the new concept. For e.g. if the child likes “POOH”, create a story with some more pictures to teach the social skills and other functional activities.
  • Be patient as it may require lot of time and efforts. If you are patient the child tend to calm down easily and that further helps you and your objectives.
  • Bed time is best time for some children as they are calmer during that time.
  • Always remember every child learns with difference pace as every child is special 

Posted byNeeti at 3:32 PM 0 comments  

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Fine Motor Control
Thursday, August 13, 2009


Most of the children with developmental delay (including CP, Autism, ADHD, poor attention, SPD, Down Syndrome) have poor fine motor function. For parents and children it is major concern as it affects the child overall performance varying from play, academics, writing and activities of daily living (ADL). Fine motor development is essentially associated with the hand function or in other words fine movements. But, it is not only the hands which are responsible for the effective fine movements. The other gross motor aspects like shoulder movement and shoulder stability, back mobility and back strength are equally important. It has been seen that parents and even professionals tend to forget the gross motor aspect.

Whenever there is poor fine motor control, the therapy plan should start from the shoulder and back stability exercise. This other way helps in better posture, core stability and better functioning of fine motor control.

Use of therapy ball, full range of shoulder movements (extension, flexion, rotation and circumduction) should be designed and practiced in the form of functional activities like drawing a big circle on wall or on floor in clockwise and anticlockwise direction, stair climbing etc. Various asanas like bhujanasan, tadasan, sarpasan should be practiced if the child understands the commands and above 8 yrs. Younger ones should practice under proper professional guidance. Asans in whole help in developing core stability, flexibility and relaxation

Fine motor activities like tearing the paper, crumbling the big sheet of newspaper, pegs activities, screwing and unscrewing movements, scissoring activities, pasting and folding, balancing, play dough activities, movements with the elastic bands in fingers, art and craft activites with different textures materials, strengthening of various grips and grasps (palmer, pincer, cylindrical, spherical, diagonal volar grasp and tip to tip grasps) etc.

Sometimes poor hand functions are associated with poor visual information process or poor visual perception. Activities should also includes eye hand coordination and midline and laterality orientation. other aspects like fixation, tracking and discrimation

Posted byNeeti at 11:37 PM 0 comments  

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One year of smiles!!!
Monday, June 15, 2009

So, happy to share that Sakshum has completed one year of its Child Education sponsorship project last month. Sakshum started sponsoring 3 children of a physically challenged roadside sketcher last year.

The information can be found at this link. All these children passed with good marks and we decided to continue to support them for this new academic session as well.

This year we are planning to sponsor one more children and will soon update on that.

Please reply us at info at sakshum dot com or look at contact us page at www.sakshum.com if you want to contribute for this program by paying the educational expenses of one or more children fully or some part.

Posted byUnknown at 6:15 PM 0 comments  

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Tree Plantation drive
Monday, June 8, 2009

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now. ~Chinese Proverb”

Sakshum has celebrated its 1st birth day on 7th June 2009, with tree plantation in a Mandal Parishad School, Siddique Nagar, Kondapur, Hyderabad. According to the founders “we should celebrate our occasion by planting the trees”. The idea was to plant trees and inculcates the planting habit among the school children. The volunteers had given the orientation to the students about the importance of plants, their protection and uses.

GHMC (Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation) is running mass initiatives to promote greenery in Hyderabad for last 1 year. GHMC is working with a many NGOs, and other organizations for plantation in and around the city. In the drive volunteers had dug the holes and planted the trees. They involved the students and teachers as well. The students were divided into the batches and a tree was allotted to every batch. The students along with the teachers had taken the responsibility for maintenance of trees. The students were told to submit a monthly report on their trees; this would help in active participation from the students. School children were very excited to participate in the plantation drive. They all cleaned the land and watered the plants with the volunteers. They were happy to see first few trees and plants in their school compound.

According to a volunteer, “Working as a corporate employee, we spend most of the time in the offices; we do regret and feel bad when we see a cut trees or people talking about global warming. Today planting a tree gives me an immense satisfaction”.

Thanks to all volunteers, students and teacher for their efforts and special thanks to Mr. Salman and Mrs. Vijaya for sponsoring the event.

Posted byNeeti at 1:11 PM 0 comments  

Happy birthday Sakshum
Tuesday, June 2, 2009


Sakshum is 1 :)

A ‘Birthday’ is just the first day of another 365-day journey to achieve a new destination. Enjoy the trip!!!

When a child is born he is helpless. Neither he can walk nor can he talk. He is totally in a new world of love, surprises, failure, success, achievements and appreciation. As he grows he achieves his milestones with great effort, practice and help. By the age of 1, he can express, can make his presence loud and struggles to achieve further milestones. During this first year he lays a foundation for his entire life and this progress makes his first birthday special.

“Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional. ~Chili Davis”

Sakshum(http://www.sakshum.com) in Hindi means “being capable. With the idea of bringing a change in life of people with special needs, a year back Sakshum was born.”. It was a new world for all of us. Fortunately, we had a team of 5 members who were dedicated and still working for Sakshum. Initially, it was hard for us to streamline ourselves as we wanted to achieve things fast. We were unorganised. But, pursuance helped us to move ahead. Few professionals, mentors and CSIM streamlined our ideas and helped to turn in action.

Today after a year, Sakshum(http://www.sakshum.com) has achieved few milestones. Sakshum is running 4 active projects and 1 is under pipeline. 4 projects are:
  1. Eye care I care: this project focuses on screening school children with vision problems and creating awareness about healthy vision. The screened children with vision problems are provided with spectacles and required treatment. In past 3 months 522 children are being screened in various schools and 59 children are being provided with treatment.
  2. Eye Donation Awareness: In association with EBAI (Eye Bank Association of India) Sakshum(http://www.sakshum.com) is promoting eye donation to reduce the corneal blindness. Till now 250 people have pledge for their eyes. You can pledge your eyes here
  3. Sponsor a child education: Sakshum continues to support the children who can’t study because of poor financial background. Sakshum is sponsoring 3 children education. You can sponsor a child here
  4. Creating awareness about prevention of disability among children: Sakshum(http://www.sakshum.com) actively participates in creating awareness in govt hospital and community during prenatal screening. Sakshum volunteers conduct lectures for parents who have children with special needs for parenting tips. Sakshum maintains a blog(http://sakshum.blogspot.com) and forum(http://forums.sakshum.in) which shares information about disability, and various other treatments available.

Other project is to establish a holistic, Trans-disciplinary and specialised centre for children with special needs and “At risk”. Sakshum(http://www.sakshum.com) envisions enabling every child with special needs to develop to his full potential. This project is still in pipeline.

On the sakshum 1st birthday volunteers are planning to plant 50 trees in a school campus which is a gift for our young generation. Plantation will be done with the children to inculcate the habit of plantation and healthy environment. Sakshum(http://www.sakshum.com) efforts have been appreciated by many people whose lives are changed with the help of sakshum.

Sakshum(http://www.sakshum.com) wants to extend this opportunity to thank all the volunteers and other subscribers and appreciators whose sincere efforts could bring a change for the better world.

Posted byNeeti at 9:00 PM 0 comments  

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