Today was probably the first day since the break that I feel really good about. Tony really made an effort today with all of his activities. It was still challenging to redirect him at first, but once we got started he was great. Tony came in and manded to go for a “walk” and “side” (for outside). On the walk, we did his usual: tacting “tree,” “leaf” and “ball,” asking “what’s this?” to various yard objects, and making sounds for bird (he was looking at the parrot flag in the front yard). We also did “do this” and run and Tony manded for swing and said “all done” after swinging for a few minutes in the hammock.

Inside we worked on animal imitation and working on the A,B,Cs and 1, 2,3s interverbals. I also did “roll” ball with Tony while he was laying on the floor and rolled the large yoga ball over him. He manded for “roll” each time before I would roll. For tacting Tony did well shapes. He labeled different block shapes and later I would draw a shape and Tony would label it. He did this with “circle” “heart” “star” “square” (triangle is a little more difficult). For objects, he only tacted “shoe” on the first time. Receptives were another challenge today, but I did hand over hand with “ball” “book” and “shoe.”

I brought a few new toys today: a sing along CD, a stuffed monkey, a toy cell phone, and a bunch of “spare parts” used for IDing body parts. He really loved the cell phone using it to say “hello” and the spare parts. The spare parts consisted of ears, fingers, teeth and noses that you can put on your own parts. Tony thought these were really funny when I put them on and became very engaged with echoing the parts and touching some of his own parts as we went along. After this, we worked on “do this” and draw and while he was on the floor I slipped in the Fun with shapes game and even managed to work in the matching colors with the shapes. Tony also did well with echoics as well with “ball” “roll” “toe” “ear” and “choochoo.” For interverbals Tony followed along with “head, shoulders, knees and toes” and “twinke, twinkle.” He didn’t respond to the sing along today, but I will definitely try it again.

Near the end of the session, I used the puppets to work on some imaginary play. We played with the little people dolls, talking about their body parts and their clothing and Tony also really enjoyed the dragon puppet. I had the dragon steal Tony’s cup and pretend to drink out of it (Tony thought this was pretty funny). He retrieved his cup and 15 minutes later when Jill came in he was playing with the dragon and feeding it his cup on his own. How cute is that! Today was awesome…he was focused and really seemed to enjoy everything we did.