my cup-a-joe: It's a BIG DEAL!

First, let me give you a little history. For the last year, one of Joey's challenges that needed to be worked on in occupational therapy is developing hand strength. It was brought up to me & D back in early September by his Pre-K teacher. She had brought it up to Joey's OT and since then, they've been working on it. Little did I know that in order for you to gain strength in your hand -- you need to gain strength in the shoulder area and work the exercises down his arm and then to his hands.

I then realized how he couldn't grasp his pencil or marker or crayon very well. He would write his name very lightly on paper. So, between having therapy and his teacher working on activities that encourage hand strength and gymnastics -- we have been seeing the progress. Seeing the progress when he writes his name -- it's very confident. When he's drawing or using scissors -- there is definitely more control.

So when his interest in coloring heightened... Daddy found a teaching moment! Joey resorts to using markers versus crayons because it "writes and colors" much easier than crayons; very true. Well, yesterday he started to use construction paper crayons...its glides somewhere in between regular crayons and markers. Now, he would use these construction paper crayons at school and his teacher gave me some to have at home... this was about 3 months ago. He has never wanted to use them at home. I keep them out in a mason jar in the dining room (just in case)...and it was only yesterday did he find interest in using them.

Love how our day started this way!!!

We took out his Lightning McQueen coloring book and the best thing happened! Daddy found a teaching moment for Joey. About 10 months ago, if you were to ask Joey to color a page that had Lightning McQueen and Mater in it, he would take several different colors and just scribble all over the page. About 6 months ago, he finally adapted to color in a concentrated area...Joey is very literal, if you tell him to color inside that space, he will take a marker and saturate the paper only to pierce through and make a hole. Then, they started to have him color "by numbers" -- he then started to color within the area and fill it out. This morning, Daddy taught him to outline and then, color it in. I know it sounds so simple and his teacher has shown him in the past but he still wouldn't. This morning when Daddy was showing him how to outline -- the light bulb turned on and it just clicked!