A Breakthrough

(Maybe).

Ben finally seems to be making some progress with his occupational therapy sessions... at least, it seemed so this morning. He is still nowhere near being able to copy most letters/numbers/shapes without help, and most of his chalkboard drawings this morning still looked like jellyfish. But on the bright side, he seemed to settle on using his right hand almost exclusively this morning (although when I commented on it to the therapist he gave me an impish grin and immediately switched to his left hand). Also, she had him do some pencil activities using a pencil with a small pencil grip on it to facilitate holding the pencil correctly. He held the pencil perfectly using the pencil grip, did not complain about doing the work sheets, and paid careful attention to his work.

I ordered some of these pencil grips for him just now on Amazon -- they are smaller than usual pencil grips and have patterns on the sides to help him know which finger goes where. I hope I will be able to fit some onto his crayons so he can practice the proper grip at home doing coloring activities.

He also seems to enjoy doing connect the dots activities so I am going to see if I can find a workbook of connect the dot drawings for him to do. Not only does it help him practice his pencil skills, it also helps with number recognition and counting, as you must connect the dots in the correct order. I was surprised and pleased to see that he could do this with no help this morning, properly recognizing double-digit numbers (10,11 etc) to connect all the dots in the correct order. You go, Ben!