Andrew's Fine Motor Skills

I rarely post about Andrew since he is in school, but I am so darn proud of this kids' newfound abilities. His writing and drawing has really improved in the year and a half since we did HBOT therapy. The other morning, he decided that he wanted to draw on the dry-erase board. It is not common for him to actually ask to draw something, so I even let him use my best dry-erase markers to make his masterpiece. I always take pictures of the kids' drawings on the easel. That way, I have a record of some of their best drawings.

It's a carwash! There are rollers and sprayers, cars, and a truck with 1,000 wheels (he says he counted them to make sure :-)  ). 

Before last year's HBOT therapy, Andrew could not draw anything recognizable. His letters and numbers were all the size of a half sheet of paper. Now, he is attempting to draw his favorite things and his letters and numbers fit into small boxes on his math homework. He is making words and short sentences. He still has a long way to go to have good handwriting and it takes him a lot longer to write than his peers. However, he is also learning to use a word processor in school so that he can keep up 

easier. 

These pictures show just how far Andrew's writing came from the start of our second round of HBOT. This picture is an EXCELLENT example of his writing in August, 2010, about a month before starting HBOT. Numbers and letters were all that big and words and sentences didn't ever happen.

This next picture is a sample of Andrew's writing in a letter written to Santa. Notice that the letters are much smaller and that he is beginning to put together letters in words and words into sentences. That is huge progress in just a few short months. This picture was taken at the beginning of December, 2010, not long after the end of our second round of HBOT.

And, this is a sample of Andrew's writing taken just a couple of months ago. He has continued to improve thanks to the hard work of his outstanding teachers. They push and encourage him to be the best that he can be. This was an assignment that I did with him one day that he had off of school, but I was incredibly proud of his writing on it.