Weekly Update -- 12 - 18 April 2010

Yay, I'm 171 weeks old today!

Masinja had a good time at OT and Speech this week. During OT he got to sit on the edge of the slide again because all of the rooms were occupied. He worked on stringing shapes instead of beads. The shapes had two holes and typically would require putting the string through both holes, but the main objective was for Masinja to practice stringing something other than a bead or pasta. He struggled quite a bit with it because he was more interested in trying to collect the shapes. There were all different sorts, (i.e. airplanes, apples, cars, etc.), and he just wanted to hold as many as he could! He also had a hard time concentrating because there was a maintenance man changing light bulbs. After he reached his frustration level, his therapist moved on to having him copy pictures using foam shapes. He seemed to really enjoy it and was able to complete the task without too much trouble. When he was done, he got to eat some chocolate pudding which is one of his favorite treats. His therapist is still trying to work on getting him to eat with a spoon independently. He's still having a lot of difficulty grasping the spoon correctly though and ended up wearing more than he ate :o)

During Speech Masinja continued to experiment with pretend play. His therapist gave him a baby doll and showed him how to feed her, rock her and brush her hair. I don't think he knew what to make of it and he didn't seem all that interested. T.M. was relieved when he heard that :o) He doesn't want his little boy playing with dolls! Masinja also worked on putting the boy and girl cards into piles. This week his therapist had him using the word "is" to describe what the boys and girls were doing. The goal is to broaden his vocabulary in an effort to help him form different sentences. He tends to be very rigid in his sentence structure and only uses sentences that he has heard repeatedly.

Masinja also had his 33rd ECI session this week. We put the picture schedule together and talked about how best to utilize it. We also talked about the progress he has made with the adaptable spoon as well as some of the other skills that he has been working on during OT.

That's all for now.

Peace,
T.M.M.