Nuffield

Have been doing a lot more drill type speech activities - often with hannah. She is amazing - so tired but still complying as she yawns through just '2 more' sheets. I think it is already helping a bit. Drill and practise - seems to be the key strategy that works for her -as well as using as many visuals/cues as I can.

So she is doing great on the drillsheets - bee/bow and boy/bow. She has almost mastered pea/bee/me. Still working on two/tea/tie and bee/knee/dee. With Ants in the Apple I have been getting her to 'slow down' so that she is being drilled in 'possums peeping' and 'apple' rather than getting away with 'po, pee' and 'pple' which she has been doing a lot of the time. Her use of the individual sounds in Ants is pretty good on the ones we have been doing - a, b, l, k, h, o, u, d, n etc.

We ready Maisy Big, Maisy Small - and I have been clapping out 'Mai/sy' so that she pronounces both parts of the name. Then trying to get her to say all parts of the describing words - like 'Maisy spots' and 'Maisy wet'

Her ST has done some powerpoints - one of action words where I have been emphasising (using cued articulation) the 'ing' sound at the end of the word - trying to help it sound more rhythymic for Hannah. There is also an 'f' word one which she is doing better on and a end sounds one which she has really improved on some of them - to the point where she doens't need to 'fix it up' after a couple of them - like 'be-d' and 'ba-g' or slee-p etc. I also made up a presentation story for her - took photoes of Hannah with an apple - for I am: getting, holding, washing, cutting, eating which she really enjoys doing.

On the weekend she was playing with lego - which she loves - and I worked out that she was telling me that she'd made a robot - although her approximation was more like 'obo' which is very hard to work out without context!! Today she came in carrying a box of made up lego - to show me what she'd made and much more clearly she said 'ro-bot' Yay!! so it seems (fingers crossed) that this is the way to go with her. It is a pot pourri of strategies - I use signed english, cued articulation, signs, pecs and anything else I can think of - but it is working.

She has also been practising her piano - just her right hand but she understands what to do - and needs to just practise so that she can get more fluent. Adding in the left hand was just too much for her - next year.

On the health front - T and A surgery happens on the second day of kindy - a bugger but hopefully it will help maximise her potential at school so worth it in the long term.