Ellie's ever expanding horizons

Thanks to Kristin, Ellie's teacher extrodinaire at New School for these great pics. For those of you who understand Ellie, you will know that getting her to participate in anything of this sort is nothing short of a complete and utter triumph. Ellie has been outright refusing to do any sort of craft thing that involves touching anything even slightly gooy since she was about 2.5. I am so delighted to see her participating in that quintessential kid activity of getting one's hands dirty in glue and paint. Here you can also see pictures of her playing with a tamborine - another first. Ellie has huge auditory aversion issues. The fact that she is now participating in music classes though she still has auditory defensiveness is a big improvement. She even gets mad when the song ends and has been using her "more" button to let everyone know they should sing it again, thankyouverymuch.

Thanks to everyone at New School for all the wonderful things you do for Ellie. It is opening her world in the most profound ways!

Image descriptions from top then left to right:

1. Ellie doing vestibular work

2. Ellie doing tissue art and touching the 'sticky' board

3. I. helping Ellie work with the tissue paper by first touching it and using hand-under-hand technique - take note Sapna as to what hand-under-hand looks like!

4. Ellie enjoying playing with the tamborine during music

5. Elie picking an animal

6. Ellie laughing at her egg

7. Ellie and her classmate learning to share the wiggles. He is also the same little boy who occasionally will pull Ellie's pigtails and take her toys as well as get mad if she doesn't pick him during circle time. Needless to say, we adore X.

8. Glue touching girl

9. Worn out from all that learning and doing catching a cat nap.