It's Coming and I Don't Have a Good Feeling About It

Our evaluation by the school district is coming up in a little over two weeks. Thursday they will send someone to observe her at school. Then two weeks later I bring her in for a morning of testing. I just don't think she'll qualify for further services.

She's doing so well. The occupational therapy has been nothing short of a miracle. She's trying new foods, tolerating stimulating environments, touching a wide variety of things without too much protest, and playing more with others. It is amazing and I am in awe at the transformative powers of occupational therapy. I'm not sure she needs much more OT.

Her speech is still full of errors, but her language is fine. Her teacher is just an amazing teacher and has a lot of experience with little ones and so doesn't have a lot of trouble understanding her at school. Most of what she has to say at school has a lot of context to help out. Her intelligibility is aided by her good coping skills. She will often try another way when her first attempt at communicating is unsuccessful. She also has good inflection, facial expressions and body language which helps boost her intelligibility. All of that is wonderful, but is going to work against her during this assessment. I suspect they will not qualify a child who isn't even three yet based on the presence of speech errors alone.

We'll just go and see what happens. But I'm not getting my hopes up.

Speech Therapy Update: Speech vs. Language

We saw Ms. J for therapy yesterday. It was the first time in about three months. Ms. J had some issues with her office space and wasn't seeing clients for a while and then we had some scheduling conflicts. It is amazing how time can just slip away.

Three months is a long time at this age. Ms. J was amazed at Ava's language. She's talking in full sentences. For her age, her sentences are complex and she is also doing well with grammar. To be honest, even when she had no words, I wan't super concerned about her language skills. She always understood exactly what was being said around her and was managing to be pretty expressive through body language and other non-verbal communication. Now that she's talking she has a lot to say.

Her speech, on the other hand, hasn't progressed a lot. After working with her for an hour, we were sent home working on mostly the same things. We're still working on that final /k/ sound. I think I hate /k/. Never once, did I imagine working on the same sound for months and months and months on end. However, I should note that it is finally coming in. It is guttural, but with prompting and multiple cues we can get a back sound instead of a front one. So now we're going to try to stimulate /k/ in medial and front positions as well.

So, in summary, language is great, intelligibility is moderate (pretty good in context to a familiar listener, but iffy under other circumstances), and speech is still our biggest area of concern.

Discovery Bottles

Magnetic, Static Electricity, and "Magic Dust" Discovery Bottles

Discovery bottles are just clear closed bottles filled with something for the children to explore visually and through interaction with the bottle. We've made several over the past week or two, but I'm sharing my three favorites today.

Magnetic Discovery Bottle

This bottle is simple in concept. Fill the bottle with pipe cleaners cut into half inch or inch long pieces. Have the children predict if a magnet will attract the pipe cleaners. Give them the bottle and the magnet and let them find out.

The kids loved watching the magnet attract the pipe cleaner segments. They competed to see who could get their magnet to attract the most segments of pipe cleaner. They attracted pipe cleaners near the bottom of the bottle and then would drag the magnet (and therefore the pipe cleaners) to the top of the bottle very carefully to watch them suspended seemingly by "magic" at the top of the bottle. Michael even managed to suspend the bottle in mid-air through the power of the attraction between the magnet and the pipe cleaners.

Static Electricity Discovery Bottle

Cut small shapes out of tissue paper and insert into clean dry bottle. I presented this to the kids like a magic trick. I showed them the bottle "at rest", so to speak, with all the shapes resting at the bottom. We talked briefly about gravity and what happens when we flip the bottle upside down (fall to the bottom) or on it's side (fall to bottom again). I then told them I needed their help to do a magic trick and had them repeat magic words after me as I rubbed the bottle against the carpet. (abracadabra, alakazam, etc.) Then I showed them how our magic made the shapes stick to the side of the bottle. When Michael asked I explained a little bit about how it was really static electricity that made it work, not really magic.

"Magic Dust" Discovery Bottle (or Current Bottle)

Put some shaving cream in the bottle (about 1/3 full). Then fill bottle with colored water (be careful, the shaving cream will try to escape). Swirl until the shaving cream dissolves and then add more water until the bottle is completely full. Now your bottle will make beautiful swirls and current-like patterns as you swirl or shake the bottle. It is hard to see in the picture but it really is quite peaceful and beautiful. The children call it the "magic dust" bottle. It is one of the first ones they choose to show off to guests.