Mellow Yellow

The days are going past so quickly, it's Friday again already and we've done a great week of AVT. Isobel is still enjoying singing around the house it's mostly Incy Wincey spider, which she is very reluctant to perform on camera, See-saw, which she striving to teach all the campus kids, and lately Swish, Swish, Swish.

She is hearing high frequency sounds really well and from an increasing distance. Low frequency sounds are causing her to get a little muddled now that I am saying them more quietly. When we take her for her hearing test on Wednesday we are going to try and 'tweak' the programming of her hearing aids a little bit. Hopefully that will help her to hear those sounds at regular speech volume.

We are working on many different things these days and it is reminding me a lot of my days of teaching English. Possessive + noun, Noun + adjective, 2 nouns + adjectives and so on. She is doing a pretty good job at imitating, now we need to work on her spontaneous production of these things.

Today, we did a little bit on yellow, she can say yes with a good y sound and I think we got somewhere with yellow.

It wasn't until afterwards that I thought about how hard yellow is to say, and that a few of the reception kids I teach don't say it properly yet (and they hear perfectly). So silly Mummy, probably done something that is miles away yet, pushing her too hard...

In going through this process with Isobel, it has made me quite conscious about not giving her too many visual clues. Sometimes it is so difficult not to show her the shape I am making with my mouth. It is so important that she hears the sounds and speaks them from hearing rather than seeing. A friend of mine came across this video and it explains what I mean rather well.

Interesting!

Handy AVT

The last three days working with Isobel have been really enjoyable, it so much better working with her at 1 o'clock and she is much more responsive than at 4 o'clock.

We have had such a fun time together, we get our tasks out of the way and then do some artwork followed by baking. Not sure if our waistlines will be able to handle baking everyday, but so far we have made cookies and cup-cakes. Today however we made fake cakes with salt dough.

The big hit has been stamping hand prints. Trying to make the activities fun is essential and as Isobel loves art and craft so much we've been using that as an incentive. Oh and the odd chocolate treat.

This week feels so much better than last week, it's amazing the difference a few hours can make.

Incy Wincey Spider

Isobel has been singing Incy Wincey Spider on and off the last few days. She must have picked it up at school which is brilliant. This is the first thing she has really come home from school with and we are really enjoying her repeating the first line. She does the little spider actions with her hands which is super cute. We haven't been able to catch it on camera yet, but you can be sure that when we do it will be posted.

We have had some more really good news this week. I have been given the opportunity to cut down on my hours at school in order to spend the afternoons working with Isobel. After the tough week we had last week, this has been a real boost. We are really hopeful that being able to spend the morning at Pre-School and the afternoons doing activities with me in the afternoon that her language will really be able to develop.

We also got a real boost during our AVT session this weekend, our therapist said that the possibility that Isobel will have caught up with her peers in 18 months is a totally realistic goal.

So, for us at the moment, the sun has dried up all the rain, and we'll be heading up that drainpipe...

Matching Pair

This week we celebrated Isobel's 4th Birthday. We had a little tea party and had lots of fun playing games and crafts. Isobel was very lucky to receive so many birthday presents but one of the best had to be getting the new hearing aid for her right ear (instead of a cochlear implant) and better by far were her set of Ear Gear.

As I mentioned in a previous post, we were very concerned about the possibility of Isobel loosing her hearing aids and we used a glasses cord to hold them in place. Well, after some research on the Internet, I came across the Ear Gear website(www.gearforears.com), not only does it ensure that the aids won't get lost, they are covered in nylon/Spandex that protects the device from sweat, rain, dust, dirt and sand from the sand box at school. Plus (and this is my favourite part) they come in a range of colours and patterns. Isobel has a pink set, for showing off and a chocolate brown set for when she wants to be incognito!

Therapy has been hard going this week. It has been tough going back to school and trying to slot therapy in between school, dinner and bedtime. We are working on a strategy to deal with this and hopefully next week it will be easier and a bit more rewarding. There have still been some good moments, below are a few snippets for this week, look out for a 'meow', a short phrase and a little bit of singing. 

Story time with Spot

We have re-discovered 'Spot the Dog' by Eric Hill.

Reading 'Where's Spot?' was an activity from our first AVT session, because it has good examples of the Ling Six sounds. Trying to find this book in our apartment, led us to find numerous Spot books which we try and read one with Isobel every day before bed.

Now that she is enjoying books, she really gets involved with what is happening in the story and likes to get involved in the story telling. She points out characters and objects and has opinions about different things that she sees.

This is just a snippet of tonights story time with Spot.

Brilliant News

We are having such a fabulous time with Isobel and the progress of her hearing. After our great AVT session last Friday, we had a quick discussion with our therapist about just how well Isobel was doing and what could she actually hear. She felt that because Isobel's progress has been so good in only 3 weeks of wearing hearing aids we should schedule a hearing test.

So, on Monday, we took Isobel to have a hearing test in the sound booth. Our hard work and practice really paid off, she was able to perform the test and did a great job. Today we met with Isobel's doctor who was able to tell us that with the hearing aids in Isobel can hear 35db in her right ear and 40db in her left. Unaided, she is 80/85db respectively. This is a dramatic improvement, enough he said, for the cochlear implant surgery not to be urgent. We have time!

What does this mean for us?

Well, it means that Isobel does not need to have any surgery at this current time. She is doing so well, that we will return the borrowed hearing aid, and purchase the matching 'ReSound' to replace it. We get this fitted on Wednesday, then she will have another hearing test in 3 weeks time to see how she is doing with them. They will continue to be tuned and altered to give her the best programme for hearing and speaking.

So, things will slow down for a spell, we have felt like everything has been going at break neck speed. Now with this news, we get a moment to breathe and be still for a little while.

AVT will continue each week, and our daily activities will take place, and hopefully Isobel will continue to show the same amount of progress as she has in the last few weeks. She may still have to have the implant, but the doctor says we have a year to see the progress she can make.

As I said, brilliant news! We couldn't be more happy...

Threading Vowels and Singing Songs

We had a great AVT session last Friday. Isobel sat for almost 50 minutes and worked through her known tasks and tried out a few new ones. She is listening really well and is making great progress with speaking lots of new words and sounds.

She is doing so well with the Ling Six sounds that we don't need to say them long and with intonation. We have to keep them short and say them at a regular speaking volume.

We have lots of new activities, one of them is to do with the three vowel sounds, a, o and e. They make up part of what is called the vowel triangle which charts vowels according to the position of the part of the tongue that is highest when they are said. Isobel has to hear and imitate a combination of 2 vowel sounds together.

We adapted our activity from earning jig-saw pieces and building a jig-saw to earning beads and threading them onto cords. It's still early days with this activity but she loves the beads and is making a good go at imitating the different vowel combinations.

We are continuing with our song 'Naughty Pussy Cat' and now we have 'See-Saw'.



'Naughty Pussy Cat,
You are very fat!
You have butter on your whiskers,
Naughty Pussy Cat!'


'See-saw,
Up and down,
In the sky,
And on the ground!'

We have also got a bit more organised with all of our activities that we need to do each day. Being the teachers that we are, Nick and I have written ourselves a lesson plan for the week with a tick box we can proudly tick off when we have done that activity each day.


It's always nice to see a column of ticks at the end of the day.