Building with Recycled Items

One Saturday morning, on 10th February 2018, Daddy did an incredulous project with J - Building an apartment using recycled materials such as boxes, containers, ice cream sticks, etc. Of course, this project includes his one main motivation - Lifts.

Daddy guided J in the planning, sourcing of items,
pasting and building

As I was looking at the teamwork between Daddy and J, I witnessed how J participated in this project, I realized that we have come a long, long way. I am so thankful!

He is now willing to participate and accept new ideas, being a team player, J asking for help, interactions between the 2 of them and seeing J being flexible at his best. And he was able to work on his fine motor skills from the cutting of papers, pulling the masking tape and pasting with masking tape. I also see his creative juices running. I literally can see his brain juice churning inside him. This activity helped him to be flexible, to be creative and to think things out of the box.

The Final Structure

But, all these didn't come overnight. It wasn't a natural instinct for J. If we were to do this 1 or 2 years ago, it might have been very challenging. I could remember how hard it was to ask J to say "Help" if he needs help instead of screaming or crying at where he was at. I could remember just 6 months ago, he could not even hold his scissors properly. Just 2 years ago, he would not even build upwards. Just 2.5 years ago, he would not play beyond his 4 train set blocks and 4 big red megablocks. Looking at his interactions with Daddy while building the structure, it involved a number of spontaneous speeches. He was able to say and describe which area he would like to put the parts. Just 2.5 years ago, he was still into 3 words maximum only and echolelia, tjen slowly moved into sentences, 1-loop conversation in 2016, then moved on to 2-loops conversation. His spontaneous speech started only exactly 1 year ago in March 2017. We have indeed come so far!

J happily playing his works

I thank God for the home-based program that we are in. He has improve tremendously. Even though he still need facilitation in peer-to-peer group work, I hope one day, he will be able to work with his peers and while working with them, they would interact together, laugh together and complete the project together.

For now, we celebrate these little achievements!

Building with Lego

J finally started playing with Lego. He has been playing his Duplo (Medium Sized Lego Blocks) for the past 4 years. It has been hard for him to handle Lego because the size is just too small for his hands. He could not "feel" those little blocks with his fingers. Hence, he don't really play them.

He built this structure himself,

with a little help from Daddy.

The amazing thing is he is now willing to build with these small little pieces. Even though he still has some difficulty in putting the little pieces together and pulling these little pieces out. To me, this is an achievement! As compared to the initial years when he did not even want to touch Duplo to just wanting to build with Duplo and now building with Lego. It is indeed an achievement.

J still has some difficulty handling the little pieces.

Taken on 19th Nov 2017. 

Having a Special Needs child, we celebrate every little achievements.

A building with lift.

Lego promotes fine motor skills, creativity, problem solving skills, etc. Fine motor skills helps in writing, which he is still working on. Hopefully, one day, he could also be interested to assemble Lego from instructions, which helps in focus and attention to details.