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Saturday 27 September 2014

A week of extremes

Last Friday Seth came home with a certificate from school assembly. He had received the most stars for his work than any other child at school for that week. Very proud! But we suffered for it at home. He was shattered and at home he was struggling with the simple things - he was too tired to eat breakfast so we had to send him into school with his breakfast packaged up several mornings. We are only a couple of weeks into the new school term so hopefully he will adjust soon!

Giggles Play, the sensory and soft play centre I am setting up has been a lot of work as well. We've received some funding to purchase equipment and insurance, including £5,000 from Northamptonshire Community Foundation, which is fantastic. I have more applications pending, including a £500 grant from Skipton Building Society's Grassroots Giving. We are shortlisted and now it's down to public vote. If you haven't done so already, please vote for us by visiting our profile page. We also had a fundraising swish on Thursday and raised over £200 and it was a really fun night.

The most important news is that Giggles Play has launched a crowd fund project to raise the money for a van. It's called 'Van for Giggles Play' and if you read this blog then please visit the site and pledge. We've got £10,000 to raise in 4 weeks and if successful it will put the 'portable' in 'portable play centre'! I've had a bit of a crisis with PayPal not working properly, so I've gone from being so excited to complete despair. After I've published this post I need to go back into PayPal and work out what I need to fix. I think I'm going to have to post documents to prove we're a real organisation! In the meantime, please support us and pledge!

Monday 15 September 2014

Seth sees colours!

Seth and I were playing with a shape sorter. It's a lovely wooden toy that a friend bought for Seth a couple of years ago and every so often it comes out of the toy box. If Seth is on form he really enjoys playing with it but often he objects to it so I pick my times carefully.

Yesterday, he seemed very happy to be sitting in his chair so I brought it out. I did the usual, scattering the coloured shapes onto his tray and asking him to choose one. He then moves his right arm to nudge one and I post it into the sorter for him.

This time, however, I realised that the colour he chose was the same colour as the side of the sorter that was facing him. I praised him and turned the sorter over to show a new side. He then, in turn, chose the correct colour shape that matched the side that was facing him! At one point he even lifted up his left arm, which he rarely uses, and landed his hand on the yellow shape - correctly selecting the correct colour.

We went through it twice and I was so excited before Seth seemed to get weary of it and then ended up sleeping most of the afternoon so it obviously took it out of him. But it was amazing and he has never before shown so clearly that he can distinguish between colours. Coming after the 'severely visually impaired' diagnosis, it does show how cortical visual impairement is so changeable! I wish I had video footage to share but I wasn't going to stop playing to mess about with my camera! We'll just to do again soon!