Weekly Speech Goal 6 - 13 Oct

Straight into it!   Edit 13 Oct

1.  to find out which body parts that Matai can say spontaneously (ie. without imitation needed).

• I will use the drill toy which he likes to drill against himself to encourage him to touch different parts of his and my body, trying to elicit labelling as we go.
• I will get him to wash his own face after meals and try to elicit labels.
• In the bath/shower Aaron will try to elicit labels.

Yes. We got 'hair', 'ears', toe' clear enough to understand. More were said, but not all were understandable. 

We know that Matai understands these words and can imitate them, but the idea is to find out which he can initiate of his own accord.


2.  Understand  - 'pants'

We know that Matai can understand 'trousers' and often imitates it.  However does he understand 'pants'?  My guess is yes.  This is a word that I have heard Aaron and preschool use so I want to check.

• Ask him to fetch his pants
• Ask him to put his pants away
• 'Pull your pants up'
• Read 'Buster' focussing on pants instead of trousers.

Yes - he's all over it, we found this out in just a few minutes!

3. Produce - 'Hello'
Matai says Hello, usually with a wave, however I don't know whether he can say 'Hello' because of imitation or whether he is able to produce it of his own accord.

• Greet him with a wave and wait for a verbal

Well we got a bit of imitating but its not so easy to understand, especially as he doesn't have the 'H' sound yet.  All the focus however has brought out a really loud and obvious 'HI' all the time!!

Highlights this week:

• Matai initiated 'that one'.  He was passing me a book to read to him.
• 'awa' - if you hear this, it means 'stop' or 'no' in Samoan, and apparently it is part of Matai's repertoire now :)