Portage & Physio

On Wednesday Alastair had his regular weekly "Portage" visit. Portage is a service funded by the council that provides education through play at home for children with special needs. We've been having Portage for about 8 months. The lady, Clair, comes for an hour and brings with her an array of toys all packed into a large holdall. Alastair gets very excited when she arrives and can't wait for her to open the bag. More recently, Clair has been joined by other therapists, such as occupational and physio. We also get visited by a speech and language therapist and a dietician. Annie the physio joined Clair for this session. Exceptionally, Gregor was also present. I usually try and keep him distracted elsewhere for at least half the session so that Alastair has our undivided attention.



This is why. Already fighting over the trucks book.



Annie got Gregor involved by asking him to put the book on the stairs and watched Alastair climb to get it.



Here, Alastair is doing a simple posting task. Actually, for him it's not at all simple, and we've been plugging away at this for about 8 months. He seems finally to have got it, standing up to do it too. He even grasped a bit of cause & effect by trying to open the lid to get the cube out.



Alastair clearly not very impressed with dissecting frogs so early in the morning.