Occupational Therapy is a service provided by licensed Occupational Therapists who help individuals improve cognitive, physical, sensory, motor, and daily living skills. While some may think that occupational therapy is only for adults with "occupations," in fact, it is for children as well. What is a child's main job? To play and learn. Our occupational therapist comes into the classroom and uses various exercises, activities, strategies, and accommodations to help children develop various skills. They also work collaboratively with our faculty and staff to train our student teachers to implement specific strategies and techniques to support child-specific goals.

Speech and Language Therapy is a service provided by licensed Speech Language Pathologists who treat speech, language, social communication, cognitive communication, and swallowing delays and disorders. Our Speech Language Pathologists come into the classroom and use strategies and techniques to help children develop speech, language, and communication skills. They also work collaboratively with our faculty and staff to train our student teachers to implement specific strategies and techniques to support child-specific goals.

Physical Therapy is a service provided by licensed Physical Therapists who help individuals reduce pain and restore or improve mobility. They use various techniques to help individuals improve their ability to move, decrease pain, restore function, and teach ways to prevent and manage conditions. Our Physical Therapist comes into the classroom and uses strategies and techniques to support children in these areas. They also work collaboratively with our faculty and staff to train our student teachers to implement specific strategies and techniques to support child-specific goals.

Research has shown that children learn and develop at the highest rate during the first few years of life. During the first few years of life, the brain is rapidly building circuits that creates a foundation for learning. These first few years of life are incredibly important because the brain is malleable. Over time, it becomes increasingly difficult to change.

Providing children with early intervention services improves outcomes across developmental domains, including cognitive development, language and communication, and social/emotional development. Providing early intervention also helps families better meet their child's needs from an early age.

Intervention best occurs in developmentally appropriate learning settings, rich with first-hand experiences and caring teachers that understand early childhood education. Teachers should always ensure environments and activities that are challenging but achievable, interesting, relevant, rich in opportunity, and engaging to the preschool children (Copple & Bredekamp, 2009).

At BYU-Idaho, we use varying levels of intervention that help the children grow and promote self-directed learning. This is accomplished by helping children with the least amount of help initially and then moving to more intentional levels of support when needed.