FUN FUN BUT STILL THERAPY

peeling and counting Matooke

Today Tuesday 13th of June, Emma and I went out home visiting, Emma works in the area of activities of daily living, in the Uk it would be called person centered planned care. The idea is all about how we can children to be able to live an Independent a life as possible in their own homes and communities. This can often by helping a child to be able to learn to peel Matooke or wash their own clothes. Sorry no washing machines here in the village, people are lucky if they get power. Often it can be teaching a child to play and interact with other children or something as simple as counting and coloring in a picture.

The first child we visited was Josephine Namitala who has Cerebral palsy, she is now around 12-14years old and spring of hope has been working with her for the last 3years.

cutting and counting the Matooke

Our aim is to spend around 1hr minimum with each child, we started with peeling matooke and then cutting the matooke into small pieces which was a great eye, hand coordination exercise. Josephine then counted the matooke and picking it up between her fingers piece by piece, the concentration on her face was amazing. She kept picking the pieces of matooke and putting into my hand and then picking it up again, even though it was challenging for her to do. We both had fun doing this together, we were counting in luganda. Unlike me she is able to count to 20 in luganda, I get stuck counting from 1 – 10 in luganda, I liked the way Josephine taught me how to count in luganda. We then did a little object recognition, Emma showed her an object and then Josephine explained what the object was. The last activity we did was coloring in some pictures. Josephine struggles to move on from one activity to another, she is great at concentrating but then becomes so carried away by the activity she doesn’t want to move onto the next activity. Before leaving Josephine we worked on the alphabet, we practiced the placing the letters in the right place and remembering how things go together.

practicing the alphabet

We then moved to visit Martin, martin lives in Nazigo which is a village a little nearer to Kangulumira than Josephine’s place so we passed their on the way back to the office. Martin is now living with his grandmother due to his mother walking out on him, his father lives near and see’s him daily. Martin was sad the day we went as the previous sat she had visited. He sadly understands what had happened, sadly as he is very angry boy towards his mum who is moved in with another man. He said that day he didn’t know his mum, as he is so hurt towards the behavior she shown towards his father.

oh what fun, therapy and playing with a car

We started with singing the alphabet, who said learning had to be boring??? From that we went on to work with the foam letters. At first we concentrated on placing three and saying three letters. A-B, by the end of this time we were able to go up to H!! Ever since Martin had his legs plastered again he has some challenges with his hands so we have been working his eye hand coordination. I sometimes forget until I am out on the field how play can be so developmental. Martin like most boys like cars, so we worked on his fine motor skills using the cars by picking them up and putting down again and rolling them along the ground. He liked the car which looked like a fire engine, I think Emma was a like disappointed Martin didn’t think it looked like a hummer. So we left with the car to practice and play with, we then moved onto working with the phone in area of hand eye coordination. Martin had fun with us that morning, and when we left he was a little happier. We see martin is now developing well, we have been talking to his grandmother about martin going to school. Martin’s grandmother feared that martin would struggle. But we see even though martin struggles with his hands he is a very bright boy who has a lot of potential and go far under the right environment. We are currently for a sponsor for martin to go to school.