I haven't shared much about Dima's delays, other than to say that he is in OT. He has a lot of fine and gross motor skill delays due to his background. One of the things he really struggled with when we first got home was anything having to do with writing--coloring, tracing...he couldn't do any of it. And he was 5 and a half years old. So here's a picture of some of his work from March 2008 (4 months ago):
The paper on the right is representative of his independent coloring skills at that time. The paper on the left was done with significant help (i.e., holding his hand) while coloring.And here's some coloring from the end of July, done entirely independently:
We have several pre-school and kindergarten workbooks at home that the boys like to do. They're great for rainy or cold days when we can't go outside. Monday night after dinner we did some work in the workbooks, and Dima was finally starting to get the idea of writing letters independently. He's been doing really well at tracing for quite a while, but I've had a hard time convincing him to try the letters on his own on blank lines. So Monday we were working on "A", and he did really well (and got LOTS of praise for it!). Today at OT, this is what he did:
Notice the note from his OT at the top--he did these independently with verbal cues as to the letters and how to form them! "Boy" "Dima" is making some great progress. :)
8 comments:
Isn't it so much fun to see the light bulbs finally go on? I love it! Joseph is FINALLY starting to read. He was working on some books today and all of the sudden started struggling with some of the letter sounds and started getting really frustrated. He knew what the picture was, but couldn't figure out why the word he was trying to pronounce wasn't matching up with it. It took me a little while to figure out why, too. But when I did, my own little light bulb went on. He had all of the sudden reverted back to the Ukrainian sounds for similar looking letters, even though he didn't even know the full Ukrainian alphabet when we adopted him! But obviously the memory of them is still there.
"Boy Dima" That sounds like a nice title to a book some day :-)
That is wonderful - so excited for Boy Dima!
The progress is amazing! My older son (almost 7 now) wasn't much better when he started kindergarten, and it took him a fair bit longer to make the same progress. He wasn't even institutionalized, just born with not-so-great fine motor skills. (Gross motor - just fine, just have Mark ask his Auntie Brenda!) Dima looks like he's only a few months behind him, so I'd say he's doing pretty well! We even still get circular bodies, though now the head is a circle on a stick separate from the body, which is an improvement. It's pretty amazing to watch them grow!
Bethany
pabstadventure.blogspot.com
YAY!! That is so exciting! How I miss being there to see all the progress and growing up they are doing! love you and miss you all!
YEA!! Way to go Dima! :)
Love "Boy Dima"! What a great illustration of how far he's come.
Excellent!! That's really good.
and the pics above are adorable. Your kids are so cute!
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