AnonyMouse_33615 Posted October 14, 2012 Posted October 14, 2012 I have a child in my setting with extensive additional needs. She was assessed age two and a half at around 12 months developmentally in all but her physical development. Physically she is very able, and can walk, run and climb, which obviously has implications as she has no awareness of danger! Initially I worked on her expressing choices, by reaching for an object she wanted or pushing away an object she didn't want. At that point we had no communication, not even eye contact. However, 6 months on she is now trying to communicate, using eye contact, gestures, and copying some vocal sounds, which is great. Her play is very repetitive, such as posting items into a box, building towers, and she loves music. I'm wondering where to take her next. I seem to spend a lot of time in sessions carrying her about as she protests when put down. We also sing lots and lots of songs, such as down at the bottom of the deep blue sea, row row row your boat etc, all physical songs if you know what I mean. Any suggestions? I have portage coming in after half term which I rally hope will help with ideas, but at the moment I feel we're not really making progress, whereas before the summer holidays every day seemed to have a new milestone!
Guest Posted October 14, 2012 Posted October 14, 2012 (edited) Is she able to make choices using PEC cards, maybe you could offer her a choice of two cards and get her to point to the one she would like to do, Does she have lunch with you, we introduced PECS using lunch and getting the child to pick the card of the food she wanted to eat, it took alot of encouragement but the child is now doing it really well You can also do this with songs, have a choice of two songs and try and get her to choose which one to do.... Also do you use signalong in your setting, maybe you coudl use this to help her communicate Edited October 14, 2012 by Guest
AnonyMouse_33615 Posted October 14, 2012 Author Posted October 14, 2012 We don't have access to pec, although I am aware of it. I was wondering about using cards with photos on of her doing different activities, to help her think about what to do next, although I'm not sure she is ready for visual cues yet. At the moment she does 2 1/2 hours of a 3 hour morning session, so no lunch. We sing a lot throughout the session, but I'm not aware of singalong - what is this?
AnonyMouse_30128 Posted October 14, 2012 Posted October 14, 2012 devondaisy are there no targets set by her ed/psyc peadiatrician/salt etc...if poss i would be trying to form an iep with the targets set from them. If not i think i would be trying to encourage the walking unaided (which will be her doing things on your terms not hers) and intensive interaction for speech (repeating all the sounds she does back to her...try google!)which will be the start of language and you can tune into the sound she can form.
AnonyMouse_33615 Posted October 15, 2012 Author Posted October 15, 2012 I will be putting an IEP into place this term. Up to now her progress has been so rapid that I have documented it on a form I made up, and have updated it daily. We do repeat back her utterances, but these are all babble, "uh uh" "buh buh" etc. I try to intorduce words as often as possible, naming things etc. And she does make sounds when we count, she loves to hear counting, which sound like the numbers, so I encourage this with lots and lots of counting. I think I will try to introduce pictures, real photos, and see how they go down, for now. Thanks everyone.
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