Getting ready in the morning: Routines

Sensory integration

﻿In today's lesson, we're going to look at some morning routines and how we can make the space of our bedroom an easier place for our eyes to tolerate. We, as therapists, have tried to think of the best way to continue to support children, young people, and their families. We will be exploring topic areas that we regularly provide advice and support on across all ages and abilities. Each lesson will have ideas and activities that can be carried out at home or in school. This information is to be used alongside any specific strategies or resources which have been given by your child's school or therapist. If you have any questions or would like help tailoring this to your child's needs, then please contact your local therapy service. In today's lesson. We're going to look a little bit more about our visual sense and how organising our room and home environment can help our visual sense. So let's see what we can do about it. Pause the video to complete your task. So for today's lesson, what are you going to need is you are going to need some clean socks that you need to help to match, and you're going to need felt-tip pens and some paper. So once you've got all your things ready, press play again, and then we can carry on with the lesson. How sometimes our eyes can be really over responsive, especially when there's too much stuff to look at or when there's too much light, and that can be really bothersome to us. So what happens with morning routines? And morning routines is anything where what we need to do in the mornings to get ready. It could be that you have to get up. You have to have a shower. You need to get dressed. You need to have breakfast, but it can also be things like feeding your pet. All of these things are called your morning routines, and our eyes can be over responsive. If you prefer to wear maybe similar colours together, or only like one or two colours, and other colours really make it hard to wear. When someone changes your cupboard or move things around in your bedroom, and you get really annoyed about it, that can mean that your eyes are a little bit over responsive, because they notice change very quickly. It can also be when you are really distracted by what you see. Other people may, their eyes may be under responsive, and this may be you, too, when you miss out visual clues and you sometimes, on the other hand, will look for extra clues to see what's going on in your environment. And this can really impact on your morning routines. So your eyes can be under responsive if you don't really notice any visual changes happening around you. If you really struggle to find stuff in your cupboards in the mornings, that can mean that your eyes are under responsive. Or, just generally, you kind of look a little bit lost when you have to get ready in the mornings and do all those morning routines. That could mean that your eyes are under responsive. So let's have a look at our activity that we're going to do today and see what your visual preference is. And we're going to do this by sorting some socks. So here is the task that we're going to do today, and I'm going to ask you to pause the video after we've read through the instructions. And then when you've done, you can play this video again. So folding socks, chat with your parents or carer while you fold two or three pairs of socks. Choose the ones that you really enjoy looking at. It may be the ones that have patterns on, or you may prefer the colourful ones, or you may prefer more plain socks. Have a chat about it, because that will help you understand about whether your eyes are over responsive or under responsive. Enjoy doing this task, And once you've done, press play again, and we will carry on with the lesson. Okay, great. Here's some more tips for your morning routine. So when you have overwhelmed eyes, you may want to make sure that you have a tidy wardrobe and colour coordinate your clothes. You may want to set out your clothes the night before to make it easier the next day. Have an organised basket for toiletries with only one of each. So instead of having lots of things that can be really overwhelming for your eyes, just choose one shower gel and one shampoo that you enjoy and keep it together. When your morning routine makes your eyes kind of really slow, and your eyes struggle to kind of find things, it really helps to have contrasting colours on surfaces to help things stand out. You can even think about making your own colourful labels on toiletries to help them stand out, and set your clothes out in advance. Using a visual schedule really help you to keep on track of what you need to do in the mornings. And I'm going to ask you now to do exactly that. So pause the video here to complete your task. You're going to, with your parent or carer, write down all the things that need to happen in the mornings. Write an action plan for each of these tasks to make it less of a visual struggle. So what I might mean by that is you going to write down every single thing you need to do, so from the moment that you wake up, so getting dressed, having breakfast, cleaning your teeth, all of those little routines, going to write them down. And then next to them you're going to think of how to make it easier. Do you enjoy having the light on? Do you like having the lights off? Do you like some light coming through the window, or do you like to keep the blinds down? Do you like things to be very organised, or do you like things to be a little bit more busier in the room? So once you've made a little action plan, then please carry on, and press play, and we will finish the lesson. Creating a visual schedule, you can either now kind of decorate it with lots of colours or patterns that your eyes enjoy looking at. The other thing that you can do, if you enjoy a more calmer piece of paper or a visual schedule to look at, is just choose maybe three or four of your favourite colours and just gently colouring the whole page with your favourite colours, so they create a calming visual schedule for you to look at. It's been great to do this lesson with you, and well done. You've done brilliantly. So you can now try out your, using your visual schedule tomorrow morning. Share your work with Oak National. If you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

Getting ready in the morning: Routines

Getting ready in the morning: Routines

These resources will be removed by the end of the Spring Term 2026.

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