Saturday, July 10, 2010

In Which We Make Connor An Activity Board

Today Jeremy cleaned our entire house.  I'm talking from top to bottom-- he even mopped the floors

Do I have the best husband in the world, or what? 

I spent most of the day out playing, but I did get one slightly organizational thing done-- I made Connor an activity board.  Pictures tomorrow (Connor is asleep in his room right now so I can't take any) but basically it's a magnetic white board with two large rectangles drawn on it in permanent marker, labeled "today" and "tomorrow."  I considered drawing out an entire week, but Connor's sense of time isn't so hot, so I figured we'd stick with just those two days for now.  Connor has a hard time with deviations from routine and he likes to know what to expect, so I figure this board will be really helpful for him; especially during the summer months when his days don't have the reassuring routine of school.  I have a number of picture cards that have symbols for different activities, and also a trusty black non-permanent marker to draw pictures directly on the board of things outside our norm.  I've hung the board at wheelchair eye-level for Connor so that he can see what I've posted on it every day, and we'll add changing the board and going over the day's activities to our morning routine.  In the evening we'll go over the next day's activities so he knows what to expect. 

Hopefully this will help him with some of the transitions he's been having difficulty with.  I think that even if we do end up changing our plans he'll at least have the comfortable knowledge that the basic parts of his daily routines will stay the same.  It's worth a shot, anyway.

The other half of the board is a brown bulletin board, which I bought some colorful push pins for.  I'll have to think of something else to use when Sylvie gets here-- probably I'll just get a full white board-- but for now I'm not too worried about the push pins, as Connor isn't going to bother them.  I've hung up some of Connor's latest artwork on the board at his eye level so that he can see how proud we are of his creations.  He seemed to like that quite a bit; he kept eyeing the large finger painting he did last week and smiling. 

I think anything we can do to nurture his creative side is a good thing!

~Jess

6 comments:

Julia O'C said...

Oooh, an activity board! What a great idea. I can't wait to see the pictures. I need to do something like that for Emmett.

Are you worried about Sylvie messing with the push pins?

Jess said...

Yep-- that's why we'll probably switch just to a white board when she gets here. But we have A WHILE before we have to worry about that.

Julia said...

Great idea! We have something sort of like that, and it does help with transitions (upcoming trips, holidays, etc.). Also, we have a bulletin board dedicated to Ben's artwork. It's right near a bulletin board dedicated to mine, so he thinks that's pretty cool -- his work is valued on the same level as mine! (Actually, more so, but that's less apparent to him.)

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Anonymous said...

Have magnetic white board in office. No pins to stick myself or others. The magnet shapes are large, turm them over the magnet is smaller.

Cannot wait to see your board tomorrow. sg

leah said...

I tried making a felt board one, but the white board is really the best (more flexibility, since you get really tired of cutting out various little felt shapes after a while)! Once Sylvie arrives, you could use those little magnetic "push-pins" on a magnetic white board. At five or six, she's probably not going to try and eat them, so they might be OK. You could also make one of those art boards with ribbons criss-crossing the surface to hold artwork!

 
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