We had a child who had autism, this child was using little language and
understanding, and had complex needs as more that two areas of development
were affected. We supported the child by modelling everyday objects, and used
identiplay with a script. We also used special time, which is for 3 minutes each
day, and in those three minutes you have a box with the child’s picture in it,
some toys and resources the child has an interest in but are not available all the
time and a mat. The child came to special time, but didn’t stay the full 3
minutes, I narrated everything the child did during special time “ xxxx picked
up the helicopter, xxxx span the wheels of the helicopter with his hands, xxxx
span the propeller with this finger, spin spin, round and round” “xxxx picked
up the police car, xxxx push the police car around the floor” xxxx then left the
special time box and went to role play kitchen, I packed the items away and
said special time has finished. I them recorded what xxxx has done, how long
he stayed for special time and that no language was used, and no eye contact
given, the aim of special time is that the child may be listening indirectly, and
may start to repeat language. We also support the child by introducing P.E.C`S,
the child took really well to P.E.C`s and we quickly moved to travelling with
the card. This was introduced as a way of communication, so the child could
communicate a choice of activities or a choice of food. We also used sign
support but this didn’t work for the child, as at the time we were not getting
allot of eye contact. The child is now progressing really well in a Special
Education Setting, and is still using and progressing with P.E.C`s.
We also had a child, who had a stammer, and we worked with mum to
provide him with activities such as clapping out words such as his friend’s
names, and this helped him to slow down his words, and gave him time to
process what he wanted to say. I took two children xxxx and another child to
do some syllable clapping as it was one of xxxx IEP targets.. We clapped out
xxxx and the other child’s names on our claves, I then asked xxxx what else he
would like us to clap out today, xxxx was very into superheros and wanted to
clap out iron man, spider man, and hulk. We clapped out the words together “Ion-man, spi-der-man, hulk” we also clapped out “di-no-saur, and cro-ca-dile”.
We read the Mr Sunny story sack which is fun to do and used props to follow
Mr Sunny on a sound walk, where he hears sounds such as the rain t,t,t or a ball
b,b,b, and a baby g,g,g and so on. We worked on the child’s confidence playing
Simon says, and gave lots of encouragement and support. We also supported
the child heavily with extra transitions to school. Now the child is doing really
well, and has been signed of speech and language support as he is meeting his
targets, and expected development.
We currently have a child in the setting who is missing a lot of sounds, we
think it is due to having a dummy, and she is sometimes really difficult to
understand. Her key worker has spoke to her parents about working with them
on some activities to support her sounds. She has been at the setting since
September her sounds are improving, we focus a lot on letters and sounds due
to the amount of children we get entering the setting with speech and language
difficulties. We do “pass the puppet around” which is an activity where we pass
Louis around whilst we sing a song, and when he lands on you u make a sound,
each week we do this activity we work on a different sound, we also have a
song which goes “Hickety Tickety bumble bee can u clap your name for me”
where we syllable clap everyone’s name around the circle with claves. We also
have sound tubs where it contains items what begin with a letter, we look at the
items with the child and model back to the child what the item is. If the child is
telling us something and were not sure what she is saying we ask her to “show
me?” We read the Mr Sunny story sack which is fun to do and used props to
follow Mr Sunny on a sound walk, where he hears sounds such as the rain t,t,t
or a ball b,b,b, and a baby g,g,g. I did the Mr Sunny story sack with xxxx and 2
other children, we used the props to help Mr Sunny go on his Sound walk. The
children all had a try at making the sounds, and xxx made some of the sounds
from the story correctly, xxxx was able to make the sss, t and d sounds from
the story, but when xxxx made the fff, b and g sounds she made the b sound.
What the Mr Sunny story sack helps us do is identify which sounds the child
need support with.