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Pg4
Getting results - the progress
accelerates.
[pg1,
pg2, pg3,
pg4,
pg5, pg6, pg7, pg8]
After spending over 12 months working
and living in Antarctica
the difference I saw in Isabella when I returned was astounding.
Liz and the therapists had been very busy while I was away,
working with Isa 5 days a week with two - 2 hour sessions
each day. I also tried to do my bit from afar, making up and
sending her, via email, interactive slide shows and stories
of Isa's favourite furry friends - Humphrey
and his friend Snowy doing all sorts of stuff at Macquarie
Island. Liz reported that she loved to see them over and over
reading the stories and sentences out aloud and watching Humphrey
and Snowy get up to their antics.
Isa has also been attending a special school and has slowly
been increasing the number of days she attends. Right now
she attends school 4 days a week, while her sessions at home
have reduced to 2 days a week comprising of two 3 hour sessions.
We have been very fortunate in finding a fantastic special
school, she absolutely loves going there. They go on excursions,
do cooking, kinder gym, speech therapy, all sorts of everyday
activities as well as primary school curriculum tailored to
the very broad learning spectrum of the students.
We have found some unusual but
fun ways to teach her as well. Before I left her favourite
pass time was jumping on the trampoline,
I would very often jump with her and teach her words of things
around us like the sky or the grass and trees etc etc. Now
she is into throwing and catching a big blue ball (gym ball)
in her room while I teach her short sentences such as "bouncing
the big blue ball" which is a challenge for her vocabulary
skills. I will write the short sentences on the chalk board
so she can see the words and it is amazing to see the effort
she puts in to say it properly, she gets a kick out of finally
getting it right. We have also started to make words out of
her made up sounds as she attempts to speak, she gets a great
laugh out of hearing us repeat them and writing them on the
board so she can see how they are spelt. One example is a
sentence she made up which sounded like "a cuckoo in
the ear" she was quite amused when I wrote it on the
board in that context and she would repeat the sentence perfectly
after some practice. I think that with autistic children you
have to encourage their language skills by repeating whatever
they say and trying to make a word or sentence out of it in
a fun way. Liz and the therapists re-enforce these type of
teaching methods and activities, where she has fun learning,
so much so that she continues to search for more knowledge
through books, computer learning programs and videos as well
as imaginative play when she is not in her therapy sessions.
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