Product Hits & Misses: Bubbly Edition

It's spring, it's spring!

We had a gorgeous day yesterday. And we started it out with a trip to Target to pick up a replacement for what has become (for us anyway) an indispensible toy. Behold today's first hit, the bubble machine:



Here's a photo from the web of how it looks in the packaging:

Joy got the first of these bubble machines for her birthday at the start of last summer. This year it's called "Amazing Bubbles Bubble Generator"; last year's model was called "Turbo Bubbles Bubble Generator", and both are from a Chinese company called Placo. Cost us about $15 at Target; they only have them during the spring months and into the summer, as far as I can tell. You pour bubble solution into the front of the machine, and then it turns both on and off by means of a single colorful push-button on the top of the machine.

Joy LOVES to turn this thing on and off, and to run around in the resulting stream of bubbles. Yesterday she was actually tracking bubbles and working on popping them, another skill that seems to come and go. The first of the above photos is the one that we use in Joy's PECS book; a highly motivating choice.

Downsides of the toy: it eats lots of bubble solution (make sure you buy an extra gallon of the stuff) and also eats AA batteries of which it takes six. It also comes with a handle on top, but if you try to pick it up with the handle while there's bubble solution in the toy, it will tip and dump out all the solution. Oops. For a cheap plastic toy, it did pretty well, lasting a whole year. Eventually the fan fell off in the back of the machine and there's no way to open the thing up to get to it. Still. You'll notice we ran right out to replace it while the getting was good!

On the MISS side of the equation last year was another battery powered bubble generator called Bubble Bellies: Manely the Lion, by Little Tikes.


Poor Manely. He was a cute idea: you operated him by grabbing a handle on his back and squeezing, which opened his mouth for the bubbles to come out and turned on the fan. Should have been good grip-manipulation practice. But he was too heavy for Joy to turn on and carry around easily, and his handle tended to stick which made him frustrating even if you worked him on a table, and he broke within weeks. Plus he didn't give nearly as good bubbles as the Bubble Generator. Manely = Miss.

So, one more bonus hit before I go today. This one is from Rose.


I first saw these "Multicultural" washable markers from Crayola last fall at Target when I was school-supply shopping for Rose. I passed them over at the time since we were spending so much money already, thinking that I could pick them up as a stocking-stuffer later. But when I went back closer to Christmas, they were nowhere to be found, and I didn't know the right search term (multicultural) to find them online. Suddenly we found them in our local craft-supply store this week. Rose was delighted, and set right in to make a rainbow of people! Wish I'd had this kind of thing back when I was a kid; the standard colors never did justice to skin tones. Heck, I bet my mama wished they had washable markers at all back when I was a kid!

There's your product roundup for the day. JoyMama out.

Knows What She Wants, Knows How to Get It

Joy had a stimmy, scattered House Blend therapy session while I was at handbells last night.

Even with a chewy-tube clipped onto her dress, she was still perseverating on stimmy toys to the extent that the barista was having a hard time getting through. The stimmy of choice was a My Little Pony, who was gettin' her pink mane intensely chewed upon.

The barista eventually hid the pony away.

Joy proceeded to go find the pony-photo in the photo binder, yank it off its velcro, and hand it over emphatically.



She got her pony back. Wish I'd been there to see it.

A House Blend Session

I think we've got enough layers in place for this to make some sense.

Besides, we had rather an amazing session with Joy's Tuesday-afternoon barista, that I'd like to share.

This was a 3pm-5pm afternoon session; the House Blend sessions are two hours long, minus 15 minutes at the end for record-keeping.

We have a consistent routine to begin and end the sessions, something that started all the way back with one of Joy's first Birth-to-Three therapists in 2006. At the beginning of the session comes a song to the tune of "Goodnight, Ladies" that goes:

Hello Joy,
Hello Joy,
Hello Joy,
It's time for us to play!

At the end of the session comes a song with three verses (I don't know a name for the tune): one verse for clapping hands, one for stomping feet, one for waving bye-bye. We have tiny reminder-notes taped to the outside and inside of the front door to help make sure that the songs happen.

The timing of the afternoon sessions is such that it generally starts with snack.


Joy has become a pro at yanking and handing over the photo cards. In fact, there was one snack over the weekend where we wanted to serve her something that wasn't on the photos, so we didn't bring the book out, and she was mildly cranky at not having her useful tool available! (She wasn't upset enough to refuse the tortilla chips... But I digress).

So after a suitable run of repeated photo requests for small servings of bunny-cracker and apple and milk, it was over to the living room for some jumps and pillow-squishes. I think that's all they had time for before our playdate guests arrived!

Since I have to be at home for these afternoon sessions, I'm no longer available to pick Rose up from school. Instead she comes home with neighborhood friends, a lovely family with a Rose-aged daughter and a 3-year-old son. Wonder of wonders, the mom is an early-childhood therapist (ST) herself and "gets" our situation without all the effort of edu-ma-cating on my part.

Joy's playdate was with the son. We'll call him J-Cat, short for Jellicle Cat because he is currently fascinated with the musical Cats. I could totally see him as Mr. Mistoffelees in the 2030 Broadway-revival...

As soon as boots and snowpants were shed, Rose and her pal disappeared into a back room, and J-Cat and his mom came to join Joy in the livingroom. J-Cat gravitated to a bag full of soft-blocks, so that became the first game. The barista held Joy between her legs, J-Cat sat between his mom's legs, and they took turns trying to toss a soft-block to the other. We used short verbal cues for things like "Joy's turn!" "Catch!" "Ready, set..." (wait for Joy to maybe chime in...) "GO!" And lots of encouragement & cheering & praise. Joy took a lot of support to play the game, but tolerated it -- like all things, up to a point.

When Joy started protesting, we cajoled her into "one more turn" and then it was her turn to pick the next game. The barista whipped a couple of toy photos onto the notebook, and Joy picked the Farm See-n-Say. So then the See-n-Say passed back and forth, with each kid getting a turn to pick an animal and pull the lever.


"Joy's turn!"
"Pull!"
"Duck... quack, quack."
"OK, J-Cat's turn!"
"Old McDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O!" (everybody claps along, Joy with support)

Joy didn't say much, but she made definite selections when offered choices, and took good turns with pulling or pushing or whatever the toy was. We played ring-stack, and blanket-pulls, and a train-toy, and another See-n-Say (an older bigger one with a stiffer lever, featuring baby zoo animals), and mini-trampoline jumping, and tunnel crawling. Joy needed some jump-breaks from time to time, while J-Cat needed some breaks to sing and dance for us.


After about an hour, both kids had hit their limit of such structured turn-taking. J-Cat wanted to play an imaginative game with his mom involving play-food, not one of Joy's strengths. So while they did that, somehow the very basic 3-hole shape-sorter came out as something for Joy & the barista to do.


What happened next was magical.

Joy pulled the lid off the shape-sorter, dumped the shapes, and started working to get the lid back on (accomplishing it with just a smidge of help.) The barista handed her one of the shapes, and Joy went right to work trying to get it in (again with just minimal help). Once she succeeded in getting the edges lined up correctly in the proper hole, she paused... and looked at the barista... and twinkled with anticipation.

The barista built the anticipation with a rising tone of "ahhh... ahhh..." (Imagine winding your way up to a theatrical sneeze.)

After teasing through several sounds of anticipation, Joy let the piece fall into the bucket, and began giggling like crazy, getting rewarded with praise and a tickle.

They did this again... and again... and again. They went through the entire bucketful two times, and then it was time for record keeping and the barista had to go fill in the binder. But Joy wasn't done. She went through another whole iteration of the bucket with me! And then I got up to go check on Rose, and Joy still wasn't ready to be done. She took the lid off once more all by herself, got out four pieces, got the lid back on, and ran the show all alone for two pieces' worth, looking all the way across the room to where I stood at the doorway, to make sure that I was watching and reacting appropriately.

After that we had to say goodbye to our guests, sing the ByeBye song after the report had been written so the barista could get out the door, and get ready for dinner.

There ya go. How's that for a House Blend session?

Right now we've got the playdate thing happening once a week. The rest of the sessions at our house are generally one-on-one, though Rose inserts herself into the action from time to time. Then twice a week we have sessions at Joy's daycare, with a very different dynamic among a roomful of peers (I'm never around to witness these since I'm always at work, but she's been able to do some neat things with support like join in on dress-up play.) At this point we've got 12 sessions on the schedule per week.

It's not always this awesome, by a long shot, but it's fun to share a good one!

By the way. J-Cat's mom is very pleased with these playdates too (besides being a phenomenal partner as the action is taking place). All this structured turn-taking practice is GREAT stuff for J-Cat as well as for Joy.

Product Hits and Misses, Homemade Edition

It's been a while since I've done one of these, but I've got a couple of goodies to share.

The first one is a huge hit, and has been rather a long time coming. It's a 3-ring binder full of laminated photos, for picture communication. I first talked about laminating photos back in October, in a post called "Choices". That's when we started using photos of everyday objects (mostly food and playthings) to offer an alternative to spoken language for labeling things. We've been moving toward having Joy be able to select and give someone a photo card as a form of request. But for several months, we just had the cards in loose piles at home. At daycare each card had a hole-punch in the corner, so they could be threaded onto a ring and kept together in that way.

The photo communication has now become a more central part of Joy's formal House Blend goals, so over the holiday I put the binder together. It's a velcro-and-manila-folder project (see Both Hands and a Flashlight for some games based on a similar concept!) Each laminated photo gets a little square of stick-on velcro tape (the soft fuzzy side so it doesn't stick to carpet and clothes) on the back. Each page of the binder can hold four photos on a side, so four corresponding velcro bits (the prickery-burr side).

The binder pages are organized by categories: Food & Drink, Upstairs Toys, Downstairs Toys, Outdoor Toys. Next addition will be an Actions section: jumping, tickling, pillow squish, etc.

Then the front of the binder has two strips of the burr-side velcro. Here's how it looks at snack time:


As you can see, there's a lineup of three cards stuck to the binder, corresponding to the three parts of snack that are sitting before her: bunny crackers, drink, and raisins. To get a small helping of any of the three, Joy has to grab the corresponding photo, rip it off the velcro, and hand it to an adult. At the beginning of snack, I also use it with just two photos to give her a choice of which grain-option to have: bunny crackers or pretzels? Kix or Cheerios? Then once she's made that choice, we go to the three-card setup.

Joy is really shining with using the photos, particularly at snack-time. She does love her food, and will make requests again and again. Often we have to cut her off when the number of helpings gets ridiculous, which sometimes even prompts her to make a "more" sign or say a "mah" word! (Yes, we do reward her for that. One final helping before the snack goes away for real.)

I made a similar binder for daycare, velcro-ing all the photos from the rings into a binder so she'd have similar structure for photo choices. This, so far, has been a bit of a miss, in that the photos-on-a-ring were such a useful handy way of using the photos (at least for labelling), that they miss it now that I've slapped all the photos in the binder! Perhaps a duplicate set of photos is in order, at least for the most useful of the ring photos.

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Next up is a common kiddy toy, cardboard box-blocks, that we got handed down to us from a friend. Joy is still learning the whole tower-stacking thing, so these were a neat find. What makes them "home-made" was a suggestion from Joy's lead therapist, who observed that the boxes can be opened up, and if you fill them with some weight, you can get a bit more sensory bang out of them.

So here's what we did.


There are two usable compartments within each block. We filled each compartment with a ziplock sandwich baggie full of wood fuel-stove pellets, two eight-ounce baggies per block for a finished product with an extra pound of weight in a block. Rose helped me fill the baggies and weigh them on a kitchen food-scale. We had the wood-stove pellets easily available because we use them in the bunny litterboxes, but dried pinto beans or gravel or such would work well too.


Hmmm. Have I ever posted about bunnies? I may need to do that at some point.

Special Exposure Wednesday: Choices

Just lately, Joy's vocalizations are many but her words are very few.

In service of trying to get her to use SOME sort of signifier to communicate -- rather than just going to or grabbing whatever she wants -- we're making a new attempt to use photos for communication, eventually for use in making choices.

Back a couple of years ago, we did some preliminary work with PECS, which stands for Picture Exchange Communication System. It's a structured alternative to sign language in which a person communicates by selecting and handing over laminated pictures, often little line drawings like these:


Joy made some progress with initially learning just the act of handing over the pictures, but she seemed to be attaching words to objects almost as fast as we were providing the pictures, so we let it fall by the wayside.

Between then & now, alas, we've had these regressions.

After the first regression, the language did come back. This time it's not really happening the same way. It does seem to be time to give pictures another try, though this time we decided to use real photos instead of making Joy interpret the meanings of line drawings. So I went and took a bunch of shots of common items in Joy's world, and her senior therapist for the intensive autism therapy got them laminated for us.

Our first step will be using the photos in conjunction with the item or activity, eventually hoping to move to making choices. It's not a strict PECS protocol, more like just making available another avenue for communication.

Here are some of the photos. Do you suppose she'll want to play with the slide...

Or will she prefer the sandbox?


Maybe she'll want to drink some milk...

or possibly some juice instead?


Even without hearing much about these plans, Joy's older sister Rose has picked up on the idea. She's been very excited about decorating for Halloween, and is already making plans for how we'll carve the pumpkins (though we've yet to get to the pumpkin patch). At first she wanted to carve hers with the words "Happy Halloween!" but I do believe I've convinced her to go with "Boo!" instead.

Then she wondered what Joy would want on her pumpkin. And then she came up with a sisterly idea: she would draw a couple of options, and Joy could choose among the drawings! I did not prompt this in the slightest. Here is what Rose drew:


It's such a thoughtful big-sisterly thing. I hope that Joy will cooperate at least a little.

Meanwhile, I've already got the stencil picked out for my jack-o-lantern. Fair warning: it does relate to presidential politics, so don't click if you don't really wanna know... (At least I'm not planning on wearing a politically-themed costume, as I've done a time or two in the past!)
How I'm carving my pumpkin

Make your choice -- and do be sure to vote November 4, or earlier if your state allows!