Scouts!

Back in July Lamb not only got his bronze scouting award, which is the highest award a beaver can get, but he also won a trophy at the end of the term for effort. The Beavers had been having their own Olympics at the time so medals and trophies were all the rage.
Oh how pleased he was with himself! What this trophy doesn't show though is the flood of tears which preceeded it. 9 Beavers scouts had just had their official leaving ceremony to go up to Cub scouts and Lamb was very sad that his friends would no longer be Beavers. Lamb should have gone up to Scouts some months ago but we decided to keep him back in Beavers not only because developmentally he is behind, but because physically he is so small. We're thinking that we're now going to need to think about moving him along to Cub scouts. A few of the boys he was so sad to see go are children that he used to go to school with before we started to home-ed, and though he might never talk about it (indeed the boys in question probably would never know it) it seems he has formed some attatchments that genuinely mean something to him. However difficult Cub scouts might be I think it must be out weighed by the importance of friendship.

1000 calories

OK, so it's been a long while. I know. But as far as excuses go... I forgot not only my password for this blog but also the email address it's attached to. Yeah, I really am that flakey.

I'm going to work on catching up!

After a chance conversation with Lamb's speech therapist she came out to the house to do a feeding assessment for Lamb. Feeding has been difficult since day 1. Hour 1 even. All through toddler hood he vomited everyday. Frequently more than once a day. The old health visitor would make me feel terrible every check up because my baby just wasn't putting on enough weight. If she'd had her way I would have been force feeding him. It wasn't a particularly fun stage of childhood or parenthood. It started to get better by the time Lamb had turned 3 but it was still a pretty nervey experience taking him some place like McDonalds. The doctor told me it was behavioural, nothing wrong. Well 6 years later and the speech therapist says something most definitely is wrong, was always wrong and should have been looked at as soon as Lamb was taken to the doctor about it all those years ago.  The good news is that food seems to be going to the place it is supposed to go to, rather than into his lungs but we need to keep an eye on it. Less than good news is that Lamb's oral muscle strength is incredibly weak, and may or may not improve. Which accounts for his poor speech and feeding problems. The SP says it's surprising that he's even managing the little food that his does get down as his muscles really are that weak. A feeding tube is an option, but not one that we're going to follow up on unless things get really bad. Facial massage is something that the SP wants us to give a go, but with the sensory issues no one is sure how that one is going to go! But good news... He is coping. Despite the challenge of having a mouth that doesn't really work very well, he is coping!
So what's the 1000 calories a day all about? Aha, that's the milkshakes! 400 calories everyday with fresubin 2cal vitamin shakes, and 600 calories a day in the calshake supplimentary nutrition. Though Lamb eats so little I doubt he's getting his recommended calories even with the1000 boost, and even the milkshakes are not something he enjoys having. I feel a beast hassling him to drink his milkshakes but feeling a beast is better than him getting poorly because he isn't eating.
That's the eating news...

speech therapy and sensory play

The speech therapy has hit a bit of a stumbling block in its infancy. The SLT doesn't believe traditional speech therapy is going to work for Lamb and so while we will still be keeping out appointments she is going to go back to the drawing board and is researching methods used specifically with autistic kids. She's been great listening to my concerns about Moo generally and is keeping notes on him as well for when his referal does go through.

I finally remembered to snap some pics with JT in the sensory room. Honestly this woman is fabulous, she really cannot do enough for you. Not only is she doing sessions in their sensory room with us to help Lamb out with his sensory integration problems (it doesn't compensate for an OT assessment, but it's a whole lot better than being left alone to try to help Lamb) but when I mentioned how I had really wanted to find a gymnastics group for Lamb (The only one in our town is a girls only group) she told us she was a kids gymnastics instructor in the next town over and that she would take us over to the gym and do a few sessions with the boys. Honestly this women is an angel!

clever daddy

Lamb's behaviour had deteriorated over the last month or so, his focus too being all over the place. We needed something GOOD to get him interested again! So we decided to start our 'cars and racing' topic earlier than intended. Daddy is pretty clever. He made us some nifty tracing and handwriting sheets of various F1 race tracks. Lamb is F1 mad - it went down well! 

We're also trying to conquer number sequencing for both of the boys. Dot-to-dots are perfect but there's always the problem of the numbers either going too high or not high enough. So daddy has been making us custom made dot-to-dots of F1 race tracks and characters from Cars the movie. They've gone down so well that the boys keep asking for more! Both of the boys did really well. I had thought Moo was still shakey with his number recognition upto 10 but not so. And I had thought Lamb was still very uncertain upto 20 but he coped really well.

impromptu aeroplane crafts

making tally charts to record what type of vehicles passed the house

experimenting with floating and sinking

Was nice for Lamb to try to explain his previous knowledge to Moo and made him feel very grown up!

sweet literacy...

We're continuing with the analytical phonics but we've slowed the pace considerably. Mumma was pushing things along too quickly and the change in behaviour was a sure communication that I was getting it wrong. 

These pictures were made using icecream sprinkles. Both Lamb and Moo have really embraced the multi sensory learning :)

Never by halves

I couldn't coax Lamb into doing some foot prints, but Moo really did thow himself into the task in hand!