Hi, I'm Sally MacKenzie

Me and my family

I'm an Occupational Therapist living and working in Knysna, South Africa. I have a busy private practice from home in Knysna, and from a pre-primary school in Plettenberg bay. I have been in private practice for 11 years in the Garden Route area, and have 2 excellent OT’s and a physiotherapist working with me. My CV, together with theirs, are available on this website. I am Sensory Integration trained and lecture extensively on the subject. I have also got a degree in Psychology and use a holistic view in my work. I address the physical, emotional and sensory challenges of an individual.

Michelle Luyt, Diane Parker, Sally MacKenzie, Janet Michaelides

Michelle Luyt has completed a Masters in Intervention and is also Sensory Integration Trained. She enjoys sensory challenges in children and families.

Janet Michaelides is NDT (Neurodevelopmental Therapy) trained and enjoys physical disability such as cerebral palsy.

Diane Parker is our physiotherapist who predominantly treats the cerebral palsy children along with low muscle tone and other physical conditions.

I have 2 boys (aged 8 months and 3 years). Janet has a little girl who is almost 2 years old and is pregnant again. All 4 of us in our practice love children, and share a passion for early development and stimulation.

Janet and I run an Early Stimulation and Education Program called Baby Steps – for Moms and their babies (aged 0-2 years old). The moms and babes enjoy special time together singing, playing on balls and hammocks, and doing many age-appropriate activities. We enjoy messy play, sand play, dark play, puzzles, water play and lots of music. The groups are divided into similar age groups of between 6 and 10 babies, and we meet weekly. Many special friendships have been made in our groups.

I have written and illustrated a series of 5 books for children with learning difficulties and their parents. It is my passion to educate the children about their difficulties in a warm and non-threatening way, thereby empowering them to deal with the difficulty, know that there are other children with similar difficulties, and to make it into a positive fun experience of activities and fun exercises. The stories are based on my experience with special needs children and describe the most common symptoms of each learning difficulty. These books are for reading to children, either just as bed time story books, or as a therapeutic tool to explain their difficulties. They are written with empathy and humour, and involve the children in doing tasks and finding different hidden objects in each book. They are full colour, A5, firm soft cover books. On the back cover of each book, there is a section for parents and teachers with valuable information on ways of recognizing the different difficulties, and ways of overcoming them (activity ideas). I forsee them getting used by children, parents, teachers, occupational therapists, remedial teachers, psychologists, paediatricians and many more people involved with children.

I have included many articles on this site to give you insights and information into some of the subjects that we are involved in or that we have done research on.

I hope that you find this site useful.

Sally Mackenzie.