April 6, 2012.
This month Ian attends the lessons during 4 morning sessions each week. The lessons include holistic development with therapy. I have seen that Ian is now more focused and will finish a task before proceeding to another task.
The tunnel in the garden
In the morning, Ian will play with the other toddler in the garden. In the garden I have a tunnel. Inside the tunnel there is an outlet hole for water to drain out after cleaning the tunnel. Ian has been walking into the tunnel to put things into the drain hole. I wonder why? As in the play pool I have also a fountain with a little hole. On one occasion out of curiosity I walk into the tunnel to see what he is doing. Ian is playing with the outlet which contains a little water. Instead of using water to wash the tunnel I now sweep it with a broom and Ian walks less into the tunnel to play with the hole. The tunnel is fun as one can see thru the window of the tunnel and and through a hole on the top the sun shines in. It is like a play house.
Ian used to be very much on his own, but since last week I noticed he is increasingly able to interact with others. He engages them to play, Ruth leads the team. With the pretend play to sit on the pool beam with hands holding the fountain and pretending to fall down into the pool and screaming for help. Ian imitates the action and says “help”. The toddlers engage in the dry play pool for a period. They walk on the beam of the pool for balancing and come down into the pool and pretend swimming.
Much effort is put in therapy for Ian. He will now start talking and use single words like, tiger, fox, elephant, open, giraffe and apple. Apart from using English, on one day while we were doing rebound therapy with him, I was counting in Mandarin. Ian remembered it and counted in Mandarin at home. His mother was amazed to hear that her son was counting in mandarin, as at their home they speak English.