The gains continue.  This week Alex started to do real addition.  After a day or so using manipulatives, he started to read the number sentences himself and complete them.  This afternoon his therapist began to do subtraction with him.  He got the idea right away.

More than that, just a few minutes ago his therapist came into my office to show me the following work:  she put out 3 sheets of paper on the table, each with a letter on the top, B, D, and M.  She then handed him stickers with pictures on them and asked him to put the stickers on the page that matched their initial sounds.  He did this with 100% accuracy.

The reading continues as well.  He is picking up new sight words daily.  Absolutely amazing.

Ok, now things are getting…well…amazing, I guess is the word.

In his afternoon therapy session yesterday afternoon:

a.  Workbook page.  In the left column was a picture of a die with let’s say, 3 dots on it.  To its right were three or so other die, with maybe 1 dot, 3 dots and 5 dots.  Independently, Alex was able to identify which die had more and which had less than the given one.

b.  He was able to identify words that began with the initial consonants P, M and F.

c.  Most amazing of all, he read out loud the book I made for him last week called “My Brother.”  This is not a repetitive language book like we were making for him.  These were real, natural sentences. 

“My brother is named Liam.  He is 3 years younger than me.  He likes to do a lot of things.  He loves to play different sports.  One thing we both love to do is swim!  Liam loves dogs and horses a lot.    Liam loves goin on vacations almost as much as I do.  We have so much fun together!” etc.

His therapist, who is not prone to excitement, said that he was “amazing” and “unbelievable” and that she was “blown away.”  She told me that his attempts to articulate the words in the book were just beyond anything she had ever seen.

Hookworms combined with SCD.  The two things that have made my son get better combined…