Pediatric OT

Our Activate Playdate Review

| Patti Webb

For our last 2025 Playdate Review, Mary and I headed over to Activate Games. We had brainstormed this venue a few years ago, but our kids were just under the age recommendation. Now that they are 7 and 8, we decided to give it a try and see how they’d fare.

Activate is an indoor, high-tech gaming facility where you and your friends physically step into interactive game rooms that blend technology, puzzles, and movement. It’s like stepping inside Nick Arcade. The environment reacts to your movements in real time. Each themed game room is filled with lights, sensors, and challenges:

  • Laser mazes: Duck, dive, and dodge beams to reach the other side.
  • Arcade-style basketball hoops: Fast-paced scoring challenges.
  • Puzzle rooms: Memory, logic, and teamwork tasks.
  • Climbing and agility rooms: Test your speed and coordination.

The kids have all done their fair share of video gaming and interactive gaming with their consoles, VR, laser tag, and Immersive Gamebox. Mary and I have also had a couple adult group outings with immersive gaming. Could we shepherd them into a new gaming world??

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Late Bloomer: The Prefrontal Cortex

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

You ever think back on the things you did during your childhood and just ask yourself, Why? Like, what was I thinking?

Now that we’re parents, we find ourselves like a broken record, repeating instructions to our kids or cringing at their decisions and asking the same question: Why? What are you thinking?

Honestly, no one thinks as critically as an adult and for good reason: the prefrontal cortex. We’ve mentioned this brain structure and its significance in many of our previous posts, but it’s time to put a spotlight on this region and give it the credit it so genuinely deserves.

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Our Big Bounce Review

| Patti Webb

Because we loved our SlooMoo experience, Mary and I planned a slate of local Atlanta playdates to do and share on the blog every other month.

Criteria: The playdates need to be a something new that the kids have never done before. These would be more involved activities than the standard meet-up-at-the-park and would have some sort of sensory/development function.

For February, we bought tickets to The Big Bounce America. Advertised as the world’s biggest bounce house, we bought tickets for their opening weekend here in Atlanta. Tickets are for 3-hour sessions with timed entry into the main bounce house. This was also a junior session, geared for kids 7 and younger.

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Toddlers and the Power of Why

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

From the weather to why we brush our teeth, it’s almost like they can’t help themselves. It’s been covered in TV episodes and in cartoons. You can picture it even now. An exasperated parent being followed by a super-inquisitive toddler, relentlessly asking “why”.

Research reveals that kids ask around 40,000 questions between 2-4 years of age. Similar studies also found that some 4-year-olds ask about 200-300 questions DAILY. As taxing as their inquiries can be for us as parents, it’s a good thing! Questions and curiosity are good indicators of social and cognitive development.

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