Yesterday on the way to speech therapy, Nathaniel was telling me about ATVs.

He said, “ATV Nathaniel orange ride out that it go that”

I showed his speech therapist, and he came out of the session an hour later with the drawing shown in this photo. Amazing, huh? Look close. The rider even has a trach. Thank you R for making these connections with Nathaniel.

Today we started a predictable chart writing exercise to work on the syntax of how to say “I like (color) ATVs.” Of course I expected Nathaniel to say that he likes orange ATVs, but today he likes white ATVs.

October is Augmentative Alternative (AAC) Awareness month. It is also the month annually that I have to resubscribe to the website building program I use to write and host this blog. The overlap strikes me as appropriate. My blog has slowly migrated into a site that focuses on Nathaniel and his need for communication; it is meaningful that I yearly recommit to sharing that journey during AAC awareness month.

This week the augmentative alternative communication (AAC) activities in our homeschool focused on the words DAY, SORRY, TOGETHER, JOB. I selected these from the PrAACtical AAC August core words list one.  This was a bit harder set of words for Nathaniel and I. All were on a second screen of his app, Speak for Yourself. I was still needing to use the app's search feature to find the words on Wednesday. Thank goodness we only have to navigate two screens to find each word.