- Gross motor (physical) skills are those which require whole body movement and which involve the large (core stabilizing) muscles of the body to perform everyday functions, such as standing and walking, running and jumping, and sitting upright at the table. They also include eye-hand coordination skills such as ball skills (throwing, catching, kicking) as well as riding a bike or a scooter and swimming.

- Fine motor skills involve the use of the smaller muscle of the hands, commonly in activities like using pencils, scissors, construction with lego,  doing up buttons and opening lunch boxes.

- Attention is the ability to obtain and sustain appropriate attention to a task. This can be influenced by motivation, self-esteem, sensory integration, practice, language difficulties and any existing diagnosis. In Therapy we provide students with multiple sensory experiences and cognitive strategies to help them sustain attention and ignore distractions

- Sensory Processing – or Integration as it is also known – is the effective registration (and accurate interpretation) of sensory input in the environment (including one’s body). When children are efficient in their processing, appropriate responses to the environment around them occur and is demonstrated by appropriate skill mastery, behavior, attention and self regulation (controlling their physical  activity, emotional and cognitive responses). Children are able to sit and attend to the important pieces of information in a classroom and therefore have a good chance at achieving their academic potential. Effective sensory processing allows children to work, play and learn. 

- Visual perception refers to the brain’s ability to make sense of what the eyes see.This is not the same as visual acuity which refers to how clearly a person sees (for example “20/20 vision”). A person can have 20/20 vision and still have problems with visual perceptual processing.

Good visual perceptual skills are important for many everyday skills such as reading, writing, completing puzzles, cutting, drawing, completing math problems, dressing, finding your sock on the bedroom floor as well as many other skills.

- Writing is often thought of as the physical performance of handwriting in order to put pencil to paper to record words, but in its broader context is used to mean the output of pencil skills (that is, written communication on paper or more recently in an IT format). The components involved in written communication are the physical performance of handwriting or typing,  as well as the cognitive (thinking skills) of spelling, grammar and story planning.

- Self care skills are the everyday tasks undertaken to be ready to participate in life activities (including dressing, eating, cleaning teeth, typing shoe laces and more). They are often referred to as the activities of daily living (ADL’s).

- Play is voluntary engagement in self motivated activities that are normally associated with pleasure and enjoyment. Play may consist of amusing, pretend or imaginary, constructive, interpersonal (play with others) or intrapersonal (solitary play) interactions. Play is the way that children learn about the environment, their bodies and their place in the world around them.