[Quick Tip] Getting Started with a Sensory Gym
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Why is a sensory gym useful even if you don’t have a dedicated space?
How to get started with creating a sensory gym. Creating a sensory gym does not have to be as difficult or as expensive as you think, and I can't wait to share some easy ways you can get started creating yours.
What's up everyone and welcome to Making the Shift for Autistic Kids. We're an SLP couple from California with four boys. And we're here every week to bring you neuroaffirming tips, tricks, and tools. Are you ready to make the shift? Let's do this!
Hello, hello, welcome to Making the Shift. I'm so excited to be here with you today to talk about one of my favorite things, which is my favorite room that we have in our clinic, our sensory gym. Now, I will say, for those of you who are like bummer, I don't have a gym or I don't have access to this equipment. I do want to say you don't need a sensory gym in order to have sensory-based sessions. There are so many ways that you can still have amazing sensory based sessions without having your own gym that is designated as the gym. However, that will be an episode on its own. So I will make sure to come back to that topic and we could talk about that more. Today is for those of you who are looking at actually turning one of your rooms into a sensory gym or trying to make your
You know, maybe it's even one room that you have for therapy, more sensory friendly. So I think that we get in our heads thinking, okay, well, if I want to create a gym, it's going to cost thousands and thousands of dollars. And that is simply not true. And I will tell you some easy ways. And these are ways I got started that worked really well for me. Okay, that were not expensive or difficult. So first of all, the first clinic I was ever in. Had wooden beams. If you are in a building. With wooden beams, it is so easy to put up a swing hook. Like truly. Call someone. Your office might want someone who carries insurance and all of that, right?
How can you install a swing hook when your clinic has wooden beams?
But call someone, have them put it in. They could literally come in in fifteen minutes. You could have a hook from the ceiling. with an incredible hook that you can use for a swing. So I did that in my first building. That gym and space. We were in for five years. Okay. So of course we brought in some of the other extras. We brought in a mini trampoline. We brought in mats. We brought in stepping stones. Some of the fun sensory stuff. But the only real piece of uh construction we had to do was getting that swing hook into the ceiling. And again, that lasted for five years. These hooks you could buy for like fifteen dollars, right? So it's not something that it is expensive. It's just something you have to figure out structurally what your building can
And can't do. So if you do have wooden beams. your life is m way easier. The opposite, which is What happened to us when we moved? So after we were in that office for five years, we moved into this building, which was a huge upgrade, big building, lots of medical offices, professional offices. And it's one of those buildings where You lease and they build out what you want. So the walls come up and down so easily. The construction team can come in overnight and put your entire office together. They can move a wall so quickly. And the thing is, there's no wooden beams in this entire building. It's all like steel or whatever kind of metal it is. All I know is It is not easy to drill into. That being said, There are ways to drill into the
steel beams. But the thing with our office was that we actually didn't have anything above us. So if you open those big squares, you know, those big um ceiling tiles, it's just like endless up there wires and pipes and things like that. So I was like, oh my gosh, what are we gonna do?
What challenges arise when moving a sensory gym to a steel‑framed building?
Our gym was our favorite room, and now all of a sudden we are in this gorgeous building, but we don't have a gym. So at that point is when I started getting online, and that is when I found a freestanding swing hook. And I would send you or put the link to this here. However, this company has discontinued this particular swing hook, which is such a bummer because I couldn't even tell you how often I was getting people asking where I got our swing hook.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
Why is a sensory gym useful even if you don’t have a dedicated space?
0:00–2:15
2
How can you install a swing hook when your clinic has wooden beams?
2:15–4:23
3
What challenges arise when moving a sensory gym to a steel‑framed building?
4:23–7:02
4
Which affordable freestanding swing hooks work best for indoor use?
7:02–9:21
5
How do you choose a stable swing base for aggressive swinging kids?
9:21–11:39
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from The NeuroAffirm Podcast
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Ep. 123 Not Seeing Progress in Speech Therapy? Start Here.
Ep. 122 Screen Time Considerations for Autistic Kids
Ep. 121 The Biggest Sensory Mistakes SLPs Make
Ep. 120 Why Anxiety is So Common in Autism (And What Actually Helps)