5/10/10

The best thing about having kids is that they certainly know how to make a crappy day into a fantastic one. Let's just say Tyler was awesome at speech today. I'm not sure I've mentioned this or not but we have an assistive technology mtg. set up a school for the end of the month. ok it's coming back to me, pretty sure I have mentioned it before. I don't have much time so I'll cut to the chase. We really want to get a ipad or itouch and a touch screen computer for tyler (and the rest of us too of course). There are many many useful communication and learning apps that can help Tyler. we've already started researching touch screens on ebay and considered opening bank accounts where they are giving away free itouches.. (seriously) where there's a will there's a way, tee hee. Anyway after speech today I'm definetly much more for an ipad than an itouch due to the size of the screen, buttons, etc. would be easier for Tyler to use.  I'm gonna attach 3 videos if time allows.   We did other things other than these, there were car/animal sounds and he'd push whatever he wanted to get teh sound and then we'd make him make a certain sound to hear it again, etc. So we did use the ipad for specific speech stuff (great reinforcer) however then Carol began to test his cognitiive skills. First video will show Tyler looking at the screen, has 6 pictures on it and then a word at the bottom and there is a voice telling him what the word says adn to find it. So he touches the right picture and it will give some sort of verbal attaboy!  The next video is when she started to test his cognitive skills, she removed the verbal prompts from the options and not only do you see he starts to answer more quickly but he also is enjoying it much more, he begins to get the giggles, run around in delight and truly seem to enjoy the experience of showing us what he knows. He's so super smart. You will also see him try to make real world connectinos, i.e. he reads the word "window" on the screen with no verbal prompts and then runs to the door and touches the window within the door. Then it lists the word "door" and he runs and touches the door handle in addition to touching the picture on the screen. Started writing this yesterday and didn't have time to post it so I'll add something that happend last night. Tyler was playing with his singing time flash cards in his bedroom, I'd say about 50 of them. He wanted me to play with him, he really really seems interested right now and making sure I know he knows what he's talking about so to speak. For example, he was also playing with the cards in the kitchen while I was cookign dinner and he pulled out the sock flash card and kept pointing to his socks until I looked. Anyway, he wanted me to play with him in his room with the cards, I had went into my bathroom to change my clothes. He was pulling my hand to come with him so I said one minute, mommy has to go potty. He ran away, I went potty, then he comes running back in and handed me the "potty" flashcard! AWESOME.





Ok sorry to not really wrap things up but I gotta go, hopefully I clearly stated what's going on int he video, the quality is bad so it's hard to see what's exactly on the ipad screen but take my word for it.. my boy can read ;)