Bobby's World: Homework Time

"Bobby, come here. It's time to do your homework." Words that I never thought that I would say. Tonight's homework assignment is really no big deal in the educational sense, but when I look back at the amount of hard work that Bobby has completed to get to the point where he has any type of homework is just plain awesome. I know that I have been saying it a lot lately, but I am just so proud of his accomplishments.

After receiving occupational therapy weekly since he was 2 years old, first in Birth To Three, then weekly in school and privately at PlayWorks, not to mention working in the classroom, Bobby is able to cut with scissors and squeeze glue out of the tube. His scissor work is very basic, but he is starting to get it and lately Bobby has been coming home with worksheets that he completed in school. For the first time in 7 years of school, he is doing worksheets!!

I went in the classroom to get him a few days ago and his teacher was so excited. She handed me a worksheet and said that Bobby did it all by himself. She cut the number strip off of the worksheet but he had to cut the boxes apart and then figure out where they went and glue them on and finally color, his least favorite part of the assignment. I can tear up at the drop of a hat, so I was standing there with her telling myself, "don't cry!!"

He has been coming home with work in his folder almost every day now that he actually did!!

Cut the squares off of a strip, put them in order and glued them on.

Paint, color and glue. These were just a couple of examples from today's folder!!

So for tonight's homework, we had to help a turkey hide out so that it wouldn't be eaten for Thanksgiving dinner. I know that this is a common assignment because I have had friends talk about this particular one and I have seen bulletin boards in the school with the decorated turkeys.

I decided that Bobby's turkey would disguise himself as a snowman because Bobby knows the word "snow" and Bobby likes to glue cotton balls to paper. Since I haven't had to do this type of stuff with Bobby I had to stop at the store and get some cotton balls and glue. When did glue become glittered?? I couldn't find plain old Elmer's glue at Wal-mart, it was all colored and sparkly. So we used so of Mommy's craft glue. I cut some snowman embellishments out of some felt and got them set out so that Bobby could see how they were going to go on the snowman. I even got a couple of sticks to use for arms.

I cut the turkey shape out so that Bobby would know exactly what area needed glued. He sat down and got to work.

I was hoping to keep the eyes uncovered so that our turkey could see out of the snowman cover, but Bobby got a little glue happy, so the turkey got completely snow covered and Bobby even helped me pat all of the cotton balls down to make sure that they stuck. Then he played in the left over cotton balls for a couple of minutes.