Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Notes from school, and video from the library

Today's blog update is brought to you not by me, but by Maya's preschool teacher (ok, I'll chime in, too, because I can't help myself).  These are notes from Maya's communication notebook (a book that travels to and from school and contains notes from me-to-the-teacher and vice versa.

From Tuesday:

"I think the app is great & she is doing well.  I def(initely) think you don't need to send in the book anymore.  She doesn't look for it really."

The app is great! She's doing well! I should stop sending the Word Book into school, and she's not looking for it anyway!  Woo hoo!  We had been wondering how to phase out the Word Book, since now that we've found Speak for Yourself (aka the perfect app) we want to focus on using solely that for communication.  As it turns out, Maya's not that attached to using the Word Book to communicate.  It's fantastic . . . and a little sad.  Our feeding therapist looked slightly horrified when I told her today, "Don't mention the w-o-r-d b-o-o-k, it's at home, we're phasing it out."  She was all, "Omg, you put so much work into that thing, and now it's done?!"  Well, yeah.  But we're moving on to something better. (And Maya still sleeps with the Word Book and will play with it at home, it's just becoming relegated to the status of security blanket, not communication tool.)

Today:

This one needs a little background. Maya's boyfriend just moved to the other side of the globe.
She had a major crush on a former classmate, and the feeling was mutual.  They gravitated towards each other, and it was seriously adorable.  Unfortunately, his family just moved clear across the planet . . . and we were all worried that she would take it hard.  She's been asking about him in the morning . . . I talk about who she'll see at school and she says, "Ah?  Ah!!!" (that's what she calls him).  She pulls his picture out of the Word Book.  It's a little sad. 

But then I got this note:

"Maya had a GREAT day.  Did such good listening & following directions.  Her & (blue tape blocks a boy's name) now hold hands while walking down (the hall)."

My girl apparently knows how to work a room.  Her former BFF has been gone for all of three days and she's already found a new partner in crime (well, for this week, at least).  I guess she'll never be lonely :)

And just for fun, here's a video from this afternoon.  After therapy we went to the library (a book of mine had come in).  It was a surprise---she didn't know we were going there.  And wow, was she excited:



You might remember that she's library-crazy, although we didn't know that until she got her hands on the Word Book and had words at her disposal for the first time (in the video at the bottom of this post, about 1 min in). All that she wanted to tell us was library-library-library.

 

8 comments:

rameelin said...

First of all, I'm so glad the app is working! You're giving me so much insight that I will hopefully be able to use with Mabel in the future! Secondly, I cannot HANDLE that video of her sweet giggle and smiles! She is just wonderful.

Nancy Cavillones said...

She is adorable. It's no wonder she doesn't lack for boyfriends.
And hold on to those notebooks forever. My mom still has mine and I love to look through them. She used to draw little pictures in them describing my day, to my teachers.

Amanda said...

That is the happiest and smiliest library smile I've ever seen!

julia n said...

What?! This is "ah"'s Mother from clear across the globe. Good thing I'm not as fickle with reading your blog! . Replaced?! ;). I'm certainly not going to share this information with "ah". He'll be devastated. That little communicating vixen! :)))

Dana said...

Lol, Julia!

This morning we found her in the crib, awake, with the word book open to her people page. When we said "Are you looking at your friends?" she pulled off his picture and said "Ah!". Don't worry, he's not so easily put out of mind :)

Foxxy One said...

So yesterday I'm chatting with one of the speech therapists at my son's speech therapy office. They are very much into technology and even have a list of apps that they've tried and liked. I was telling her about Maya and the new app and as it turns out... it was a friend of hers that was responsible for developing the software (they are with a college here in NJ). Small World!

Dana said...

Foxxy-small world indeed! We are loving SfY :)

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