Jun 26, 2008

Picked a PEC of Pickled Peppers

Just kidding but that may as well be what I'm saying as far as some of you are concerned I'm sure you've never heard of PECS (Picture Exchange Communication System). It's a communication system for people that can't speak. Our speech therapist started using them awhile back. They are pictures cards that a non-verbal person uses to communicate and request items in their environment such as toys and activities. Back in May I took a bunch of pictures of things that Ainsley is familiar with and printed them onto cards. They laminated them for us at Boyer and we got them back today. I tried them out and Ainsley was able to identify the correct one 3 times when presented with 2 pictures! I was amazed to find that she can identify items in pictures. I'm very excited to start working on this with her and I suspect she will learn quite a lot if we start pairing everyday activities with the pictures. The next step is to put it into a binder with velcro attached to the cards and pages so she can look through the book and make choices. It's great for her since her motor skills make it difficult for her to do sign language and the advantage is that anyone (who can see, grandparents get out the bi-focals, ha ha) can use them to communicate with her, not just people know know ASL. It's a long process so look for updates on how this is going over the coming months.

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