More pictures than words

Busy, busy day. Lots of flour everywhere to write words and stick toes into. Walking through the nature reserve. Another session with Norfolk Wildlife Trust (great fun!) camouflaging caterpillars and making nests, making bug homes, planting seeds with songs and stories. Lastly a short session with the utterly brilliant Janet over in the sensory room. Lamb cannot access any O.T resources currently so this offer of sessions in the SureStart sensory room has been a blessing.

I'll leave the photos to talk for themselves today because if I'm honest I'm knackered and can't be bothered to write too much today!

Sensory bugs and beasties

We had been invited by the surestart team to a sensory session with the Norfolk Wildlife Trust.

The kids had loads of fun with stories and crafts and treasure hunts.

Moo was first in there answering the questions and getting his hands in the feely bag.

Lamb has been in a very peculiar mood today and it took him some time to really get into the event. He really wasn't too sure about touching...

This was pretty cool. Lamb was reluctant to have a feel but Moo was more than happy to have a feel of the snakes skin.

When they started the bug hunt Lamb was much happier. Bashing trees with sticks? Much more his kinda thing!

Not many bugs around though!

We also had another appointment with the paediatrician today to review medication dosage. We'll wait and see how that goes. We had a little bit of a talk about what the future might hold...

It's been difficult accepting that in the future Lamb may continue to need considerable support. Once accepted though, it's almost a relief. The paediatrician has said that he'll have a chat with the special needs nursing team and see if they might have some strategies to help Lamb learn some more self-care skills.

Every step is a step in the right direction. The surestart team were also fabulous today, giving advice on how to fill out the disability living allowance form for Lamb. It's been declined once but the paediatrician is definite that Lamb should be entitled to it. The form is a little more friendly to fill out than this time last year, but it's still an enormous form to fill out. Fingers crossed this time Lamb will be awarded the benefit.

Poppy seed pictures and hairy models

Yesterday poppies were the subject of our crafts once again. It is clear to me (and thankfully also to the new paediatrician who actually listens) that Lamb has quite a few sensory integration issues. Unfortunately the Occupational Therapists are so overstretched that they are taken on only the most extreme cases with most children not getting any help. This is the situation we, and many other families in the area, find ourselves in. Sensory integration is a broad subject and I know only a little, but I've been trying to provide controlled circumstances for Lamb to work on some of his sensory issues.

This is one such activity and it went surprisingly well.

The boys used glue to create a picture of a poppy. The glue had a tiny splodge of red paint in to help them see where they were putting the glue. They then had a whale of a time shaking and sprinkling poppy seeds all over their pictures and Lamb didn't mind touching the poppy seeds one bit. Result!

Later, when the pictures were dry, the boys used the textured pictures to make prints with lots of bright red paint.

Other fun for the day included the making of a hair model (from Easy Make and Do Projects: Human Body). This activity was more aimed at working on scissor and paper folding skills than learning about hair.

Moo is getting much better at controlling the scissors, and Lamb is improving his control when trying to fold to a specific line on the paper. Lamb enjoyed giving his hair a cut more than anything :)

We also made some posters about digestion for our body topic and spent some more time with Nina and her neurons learning about digestion. Both kids grasp the basic concept of why we eat and where our food goes, if not all of the finer details, which for their ages and stages is plenty enough!