somersaults and PECS

Sophie has been doing somersaults for a week or two.  At first it was on the bed, but now it's anywhere the fancy strikes her.  There may be objects in the way or it may be on the tile floor sometimes.  About half the time she even goes straight!

Here's Sophie using a tool called Picture Exchange Communication System, or PECS.

It was recommended by her speech therapist as another transitional step toward speech.  We made her a bunch of little pictures of things that she frequently wants, like popsicles, stickers, playdoh, etc., laminated them, put little pieces of velcro on them and made a little book with velcro to stick them in.  When she wants something, she pulls the picture out of the book and brings it to us.  We had no idea she wanted the craft box and stickers so much before!  For now it's mostly food, drinks, toys or activities, but you can also make cards for people, feelings, places, and verbs.  You start building grammar with it, too.  For example, we have a card for "I want".  So when she brings me "playdoh", I would put the two together and say "want playdoh".  I did that a few times, and the next day she brought me both "want" and "playdoh".  Pretty cool!  Of course, I haven't reinforced it enough and she hasn't done it again since, so we need to work on that.  You can build on it and do "sophie" "wants" & "playdoh", also.

Another big benefit is that she can take it with her places (once we get more pictures made), like to grandmas' houses or to school.  Sophie has a lot of signs, but not everybody knows them or knows her interpretation of them.  So this will hopefully help her communicate with everyone else for now, and not require us to translate for her.