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Monday 08:00 - 17:00 Tuesday 08:00 - 17:00 Wednesday 08:00 - 17:00 Thursday 08:00 - 17:00 Friday 08:00 - 17:00

Nicole le Roux Occupational Therapy

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Nicole le Roux Occupational Therapy

Pediatric Occupational Therapist

Nicole le Roux’s goal is to build on your child’s strengths to promote further independence in daily activities of life, thus empowering every child through purposeful play. Through a holistic approach to occupational therapy, evaluating your child in their different environments, assists her to fully understand the client’s needs to maximize the positive impact on their life. Her approach involves collaboration with a child’s parents, caregivers, teachers and health practitioners to determine the best way forward that can address the immediate as well as long-term needs of every child.

14/10/2026

🐴COULD HIPPOTHERAPY SUPPORT YOUR CHILD?

Hippotherapy is more than simply sitting on a horse. In Occupational Therapy, the horse's movement can be incorporated as a therapeutic tool to address specific underlying skills and support participation in everyday activities.

It may be considered as part of an intervention programme for children with diagnoses or developmental presentations such as:
🧠 Cerebral Palsy (CP)
→ Postural control, balance, coordination, muscle tone, weight shifting and functional mobility
🧩 Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
→ Sensory processing, regulation, body awareness, motor planning, attention, social participation and engagement
🌱 Developmental Delay
→ Gross-motor development, postural stability, balance, coordination, motor planning and body awareness
💪 Hypotonia / Low Muscle Tone
→ Trunk stability, postural endurance, strength, balance and movement control
🧠 Neurological & Motor Disorders
→ Coordination, postural control, motor planning, balance and functional movement
🎯 Attention & Executive Function Difficulties
→ Sustained attention, following instructions, sequencing, impulse control and task engagement
🧍 Sensory Processing Difficulties
→ Regulation, vestibular processing, proprioceptive awareness, body awareness and adaptive responses

But every child is different. ❤️

Rather than focusing solely on a diagnosis, Occupational Therapy looks at the individual child and the skills that are affecting their ability to participate in everyday occupations.

🐴 The horse's movement can provide a unique therapeutic experience that may help address:
✨ Postural control
✨ Balance & equilibrium
✨ Bilateral coordination
✨ Motor planning & praxis
✨ Core and proximal stability
✨ Muscle tone
✨ Body awareness
✨ Sensory processing & regulation
✨ Attention and engagement
✨ Coordination
✨ Confidence and participation

The ultimate goal isn't simply to improve what happens on the horse — it's to support skills that can carry over into PLAY, SCHOOL, SELF-CARE and EVERYDAY LIFE.

🐴 Different movement. Different experiences. Meaningful therapeutic goals.

07/10/2026

✏️LITTLE HANDS, BIG SKILLS! 👐

Fine-motor skills are so much more than being able to hold a pencil!

Children use their hands and fingers throughout the day — from building towers and doing puzzles to opening lunchboxes, using scissors and writing their names.

🎨 Fine-motor skills support PLAY through:
🧩 Manipulating puzzle pieces
🧱 Building with blocks and LEGO
🖍️ Drawing, colouring and creating
🧸 Dressing dolls and playing with small toys
🎲 Handling game pieces and cards
✂️ Cutting, tearing and sticking
🧵 Threading and lacing

📚 And they are essential for SCHOLASTIC SKILLS such as:
✏️ Pencil grasp and control
📝 Pre-writing and handwriting
✂️ Cutting along lines
📏 Drawing and copying shapes
🔤 Letter and number formation
📖 Turning pages and managing books
🎒 Opening containers, zips and school equipment
📌 Manipulating small classroom materials

But here's the important part…

Fine-motor skills don't develop in isolation! 🧠🤲

Children need postural stability, shoulder strength, bilateral coordination, hand strength, visual-motor integration, motor planning and refined finger movements to use their hands efficiently.

💡 Try making fine-motor practice FUN!
Instead of worksheets, try:
🧱 Building
🧩 Puzzles
🧵 Threading
🍪 Playdough
🖍️ Drawing on a vertical surface
✂️ Cutting and crafting
🧷 Peg games
🎨 Painting
🧺 Helping with everyday tasks

Play is one of the best ways children practise the skills they need for school!

If your child is struggling with pencil control, cutting, manipulating toys, handwriting, or other hand skills, an Occupational Therapist can assess the underlying skills and help develop them through meaningful, play-based activities.

28/09/2026

🧠💛 LEARNING BEYOND THE LECTURE HALL

Our 3rd and 4th year OT students have started their clinical fieldwork.

We are proud to support the next generation of Occupational Therapists by providing clinical supervision and practical learning opportunities for university students at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), as part of their required practical hours. 🎓✨

During their placement, students have the opportunity to:

👀 Observe clinical reasoning in action
🧠 Connect theory to real-life practice
🤝 Develop therapeutic communication and rapport-building skills
📝 Practise assessment and intervention planning
🎯 Develop clinical reasoning and goal-setting skills
🧩 Gain experience adapting activities to individual needs
🌱 Reflect on their clinical experiences and develop professional confidence
💛 Experience the importance of a client-centred and holistic approach

Supervision isn't about simply providing answers — it's about asking questions, encouraging clinical reasoning, reflecting on experiences and creating opportunities to learn.

Every client interaction becomes an opportunity to learn something new, and every student brings their own curiosity, perspective and enthusiasm to the profession.

🎓 Today's students are tomorrow's clinicians.

We believe that investing in quality clinical education helps strengthen the future of Occupational Therapy and ultimately supports better outcomes for the people we serve.

🌱 Learn. Reflect. Grow. Practice.

25/09/2026

WHEN MOVEMENT BECOMES THERAPY

Did you know that a horse’s movement can become a powerful therapeutic tool? 💛

Occupational Therapy using hippotherapy incorporates the movement of the horse as part of a carefully planned therapeutic intervention to support a child’s participation, development and functional skills.

The horse provides rhythmic, repetitive, multidimensional movement that can be used by the OT to work towards individualised therapeutic goals.

🐴 Hippotherapy may support:

✨ Postural control & core stability
✨ Balance and coordination
✨ Bilateral integration
✨ Motor planning & praxis
✨ Muscle tone and strength
✨ Body awareness & proprioceptive processing
✨ Sensory regulation
✨ Attention and engagement
✨ Communication and social participation
✨ Confidence and emotional wellbeing
✨ Functional skills needed for everyday activities

What makes it special?
The child is working on therapeutic goals while experiencing movement, connection, challenge and FUN! 🌿🐴

Every session is individually planned according to the child's needs, abilities and therapeutic goals. Hippotherapy is not simply “riding a horse” — the horse's movement is intentionally incorporated into the therapeutic process by a trained professional.

💛 Curious whether hippotherapy could be appropriate for your child?

We are currently offering Occupational Therapy hippotherapy services in Stellenbosch.

📩 Enquire with us to find out more, discuss your child's needs and see whether hippotherapy may be a suitable addition to their OT journey.

🐴 Move. Connect. Develop. Thrive.

24/09/2026

🧩 PUZZLES ARE MORE THAN JUST A FUN ACTIVITY! 🧩

As Occupational Therapists, we love puzzles because they bring together **visual perception, fine-motor skills, problem-solving, attention, planning and hand-eye coordination** — all while children are having fun!
Puzzle milestones to look for:

👶 12–18 months:
• Places simple shapes into a chunky puzzle
• Begins matching identical pictures/shapes
• Uses trial and error to fit pieces

🧸 18–24 months:
• Completes simple 2–4 piece puzzles
• Begins rotating pieces to make them fit
• Matches familiar pictures

🌱 2–3 years:
• Completes 4–8 piece puzzles
• Starts recognising where pieces belong
• Uses visual clues to solve the puzzle

🌈 3–4 years:
• Completes approximately 8–20 piece puzzles
• Rotates pieces more purposefully
• Begins using the picture as a reference
• Demonstrates increased persistence when solving problems

⭐ 4–5 years:
• Completes approximately 20–30+ piece puzzles
• Uses strategies rather than relying only on trial and error
• Can identify edge pieces and use visual details to guide placement

🚀 5+ years:
• Progresses towards increasingly complex puzzles
• Uses planning, visual scanning and problem-solving strategies
• Can manage puzzles with more pieces and less obvious visual cues

Try this at home:
Instead of immediately helping your child when they get stuck, try asking:
👉 “What could you try?”
👉 “Where could this piece go?”
👉 “What do you notice about the picture?”
👉 “Could you turn the piece?”

This encourages problem-solving and flexible thinking, rather than simply finding the answer for them. 🧠✨

🧩 Play is practice for life — and sometimes the smallest puzzle piece is building a much bigger skill!

24/07/2025

Occupational therapy plays a vital role in developing mathematical skills in children by addressing the foundational stages of learning. Before children can grasp abstract math concepts, they must first build strong cognitive, sensory-motor, and perceptual skills. At the practice, we support this by strengthening attention, memory, visual-spatial processing, and fine motor coordination—essential for number recognition, counting, and problem-solving.

We work through a step-by-step approach that begins with early developmental skills such as sorting, patterning, and sequencing, and progresses toward more complex tasks like mental math, estimation, and multi-step problem-solving. Each stage of development builds upon the previous one, and occupational therapists tailor interventions to meet each child at their individual level of readiness.

By fostering confidence, motivation, and hands-on engagement through play-based and functional activities, our practice helps children make meaningful connections with numbers and apply them in everyday situations—laying the groundwork for academic success and lifelong learning.

22/07/2025

✨ Watching babies grow is truly amazing — especially as they begin to develop their fine motor skills and early cognitive concepts that lay the foundation for lifelong learning! 🧠👶 As an occupational therapist, supporting these milestones is at the heart of what we do. From grasping toys and bringing hands to midline, to pointing, transferring objects between hands, and eventually mastering the pincer grasp — each tiny movement builds strength, coordination, and brain-body connection. 💪🖐️

We also focus on introducing basic concepts like cause and effect (shake the rattle and it makes noise!), object permanence (peekaboo never gets old!), and early problem-solving through play. These moments aren’t just cute — they’re essential for developmental progress.

🔍 Encouraging babies through purposeful play, tummy time, and sensory-rich environments fosters both motor development and early learning. If you're a parent, caregiver, or therapist, remember: every little reach, grasp, and giggle is a step toward independence. 💛

28/12/2024

We are excited for what 2025 has in store for Nicole le Roux Occupational Therapy!

Our practice will be open from 6 January however regular session will commence as usual from the 13 January 2025.

Reminders will be sent out.

We look forward to the new year with you! There are so many new project launches and exciting things coming in 2025.

27/12/2024

Endless fun has always included play dough!

Play dough can include developing multiple skills and sensory stimulation for multiple sensory systems simultaneously.

When playing with play dough our children benefit by:
- Developing fine motor skills by strengthening hand muscles.
- Creating a calming effect.
- Encouraging creativity with manipulation methods, tool use and creations.
- Enhancing hand-eye coordination.
- Creating opportunities for social skill practice.
- Making learning basic concepts fun and engaging.
- Creating sensory experiences with scents and textures.

The best part of play dough it is easy to make at home and ensures endless enjoyment.

Contact for more information:
[email protected] | 0729945079 | www.nicolelerouxot.co.za

25/12/2024

Merry Christmas | Geseënde Kersfees

A Merry Christmas and Happy Festive season to all our clients, parents, grandparents, families and friends who have been part of the journey this year at the practice.

We appreciate each and every one of you. It is a privilege to be part of each child's growth and development.

Be safe and wishing all the best time with loved ones.

Address

25 Bergrivier Boulevard, The Precinct
Paarl
7646

Opening Hours

Monday	08:00 - 17:00
Tuesday	08:00 - 17:00
Wednesday	08:00 - 17:00
Thursday	08:00 - 17:00
Friday	08:00 - 17:00

Website

http://nicolelerouxot.co.za/

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