Sat 4 Mar 2006
Mands: 22 Alright, Tony and I had some fun today. We went for three walks, one of them with Morgan! We also got some things accomplished. On the first walk we went to the courtyard and ran, while running, sometimes I was carrying him, sometimes he was running on his own, I got him to mand for ‘stop’ and ‘go.’ And Tony liked swinging in the swing. Tony found a rather large rock in the grass, and I bet you can guess what he wanted to do with it. That’s right! He immediately headed straight for the pond. On the way I asked him what he was going to do with the rock, and he actually answered. He said ‘thwow.’ I tried to get him to tell me where he wanted to throw the rock, but he preferred showing me. He loved it when I imitated the noise the rock made when it went in the water. Tony was very interested in some brochures and advertisements that were in a drawer in his room. While he was looking at them, I was able to sneak in some animals and animal sounds. We went over the adjectives, but I think we are still in the introductory phase with them. Tony did well with the intraverbals and then he wanted to color. Gee, maybe it was the idea planted in his head (“You color with a . . .crayon.”) that made him walk over to the giraffe and say ‘cra’ an approximation for crayon and ‘aben.’ As he has been doing lately, he pulled out almost every book on the shelves one at a time, looking at most of them quickly. He showed absolutely no interest in the dolls although I tries to introduce them numerous times. He only became interested in Mr. and Mrs. Potatohead when I brought the shopping cart into the picture. He responded very well to ‘put Mr. Potatohead’s arms (and so on) in the cart!’
March 5th, 2006 at 3:44 pm
Hi:
I’m sorry it’s been a little while since I’ve posted, but ABA world has been a bit nutty in the past week or so, and I was still checking the blog site (which was kinda confusing). I really enjoyed catching up and seeing the creative way the ABA therapists are teaching Tony particulars. For example, placing Potatohead’s body part in a cart is great! Kids learn the best when they are having fun and being reinforced (not being drilled and punished for being wrong). When he’s wrong with something, we simply need to prompt the correct reponse and heavily reinforce, then present this trial later to examine if he maintained the skill.
Whitney, I am all for more accurate and efficient ways to collect data. The two main points I have about data collection is that we can make meaningful decisions with it, and it accurately represents Tony’s skills. I’ll check it out when I’m there on Friday (March 10th,10-12).
See you then.
Keep up the good work with Tony. Things look great.
Why do kids get such a kick out of throwing sticks and rocks in water?? I guess one of life’s mysteries!!
Jay