Everyone needs a friend to lean on

Missy looks forward to her floor time every night with Taz after dinner. Tonight Taz fell asleep on the floor near Missy while she was crawling around. I heard a thud and turned around to find Missy had fallen down(which she does a bit) but this time onto Taz, exactly where this picture(above) was taken. Taz opened her eyes, looked who it was and went back to sleep... Ain't Love Grand.

Carcoar Cup Running Festival

In it's second year the Carcoar Cup has  doubled in entries and is a great social get together although many people put many hours of training into their run.
Us, well the kids are there to have a bit of fun and run in the Kids Cup. With 62 runners this year, H-Ho came in 39th and left her mother behind at the finish, who was only running the last 500 m with her anyway.
Missy dumped Mum as her running partner this year based on last year's performance - too slow. Dad was the choice this year and he had no worries keeping up with Missy's driving as fast as her chair would go in 4th gear. Missy came in 50th and enjoyed rounding up the kids as they tired towards the end, she gets so excited when she comes around the last bend towards the finish line and the Race Commentator is on the loud speaker saying her name.
Prime News filmed some of the race and if you go the link below you will see Missy coming across the finish line at the end of the video.
http://au.prime7.yahoo.com/n3/video/watch/c9479be3_1373_36b4_b45a_ff3e6e964273/carcoar-cup/

Kids Cup Entrants with their finishing medals.

Canberra/Thredbo Excursion

Recently Missy went on another annual 3 day excursion with school, this year they went to Canberra. On the first day, they saw Parliament House(very boring - was the report there), Capital Exhibition, Questacon(great report there) they then travelled to Cooma for the night and got prepared for their day on the snow at Thredbo. Day 2 saw them head off for a great day in the very snowy conditions, we had joined Missy up to the Disabled Wintersport Association, so she could have a sit ski lesson while the other kids had there lesson alongside her. Of course Missy's fearless attitude to speedy sports put her in good stead for a fun day. The 50 kids arrived back to Cooma after a full day on the snow fields - wet and tired. Day 3 saw them head back to Canberra via the Snowy Hydro Scheme and the AIS and were home by 5.30pm.
Missy said it was the best excursion yet, it was full-on packed of venues to see, learn and have fun at. Lots of organising goes into these excursions and our family always appreciates the teachers and aide that help pre-organise as much as possible and of course their effort throughout the excursion. Missy took three types of chairs with her, a couple of ramps for those unexpected steps, her gear filled up one whole bay under the bus while the other 49 kids had two bays under the bus.
A real special touch after this excursion was a DVD that her teacher had made for all the kids, which was packed with photos of their adventures.

These wonderful inclusive school excursions just provide such awesome peer group experiences and lifelong memories.

Anything can be adapted with some initiative

The video shown here is a snippet of Friday sport at Missy's Mainstream school on a snowy day.  Sit down Soccer is chosen at the indoor sport where the kids sit on their bottom and scoot around the floor to kick & pass to score goals.  While the kids are on the floor, Missy is still up in her chair and wants to be on the floor with the kids, the surface is too hard for her to sit unaided and moving around would be difficult. So  out comes some inclusive initiative headed up by her Aide Miss H. Her teacher's jumper is put on the polished floor, a large sports container is put on that, the kids throw their jumpers in the container and Missy sits in, a rope is thrown around the container and off she goes, one kid pulling at the front and another pushing at the back, all the time Missy is wildly kicking her legs just waiting for that soccer ball to come her way.
Inclusion is not expensive or hard just requires some thinking outside the box or in this case inside the box.

Week 1,2,3,4 of Taz's Tricks



Week 1, we taught Taz how to shake hands

 



Week 2 Taz  learnt to go and get her lead.









Week 3 we taught her to pull the door open

 



Week 4 - we didn't teach Taz this she figured out how to get the bin over all by herself.

 











Taz - Missy says "She is the best thing ever in her life"




 Well what a busy week we have had, with a school disco, musical performance night, where Missy did a group dance and H-Ho sang in the choir. Of course the highlight of the week was taking Taz to school for special news. Everyone that knows Missy at school(thats 220 kids) knew she had been waiting on her dog to arrive, so they were really excited for her to show Taz off. Taz handled all the kids really well ,  displaying her skills and beautiful nature.

Taz at the Park

Taz - our precious gift from the Guide Dogs

If you follow this blog you will know Missy has been waiting, not so patiently for her Pets as Therapy dog from the Guide Dogs for over a year.

We were thrilled to get the call to say they think they have found a dog that may suit Missy and us. Taz (short from Topaz) arrived nearly two weeks ago and we all love her to bits. She settled in really well and it's quite a change for us to have a dog in the house. Missy and H-Ho just can't get enough of her.  You wouldn't know that Missy had a real fear of dogs as a younger girl, as now she just loves to lay over Taz, cuddle her tightly so she can't get away, hold her lead, sit on the floor with her, pat her, knock off food by accident from her table to the floor, knowing Taz will do the rounds of the floor. Missy loves to have Taz come in the morning and raise her paws on the side of her bed. You can see in the photo that we quickly taught Taz to step up onto Missy's footplate, so she can get more cuddles while she is in her chair. Tonight Missy drove into the lounge room, swung her legs off the footplate, pointed down to the footplate and Taz just took the cue, walked over and jumped up for pats.
Taz is quick learner and the kids love teaching her new tricks, the first week, we got her shaking hands and this week she has learnt to go and get her lead and bring it to us.
Taz is 15 mths old and comes to us from the Guide Dogs, she was raised by a devoted puppy raising family in Sydney for which we are very grateful, she has wonderful eating manners, has all the basic obedience training, has vast travel/adventures experience and is wonderfully toilet trained. Taz came with a letter and many photos from her puppy raising family showing her growing up.

We feel very lucky to be given Taz and we really appreciate the time and love puppy raisers give to their young dogs and the wonderful work Guide Dogs do for the vision impaired and many others with disabilities, all done without any government support/funding.

Technology Set Up

Recently another Mum asked for some photos of our technology set-up in the classroom. So I have managed to do a short video in the classroom of Missy using her technology. I will attempt to break it down bit by bit. Missy is using direct access with a 40hole keyguard on her Dynavox V-Max, which is sending by infrared (using an Access It)words/number etc to the Laptop which is showing a scanned copy of the worksheet the class is working on. We use PDF Converter Professional to provide a platform to make scanned work, interactive by having text boxes and the like in the right place for answers and ease of tabbing thru questions, also writing some notes on the scanned copy showing on the laptop. Also on this video Missy is showing Text Help Read & Write Gold software that offers word prediction (amongst other features)in the blue box on the laptop, so she can shortcut words by pressing an "F button" for the word she sees instead of typing it completely.
Missy's I-Pad is not showing in the video but it is also mounted to the side of the Dynavox on the steel bar. It used for a number of visual aids, photos are taken of the teachers board which may have the instructions or key words for  writing activities, so that they can be close and at the same eye focus range, these shortcuts can help with fatigue and focus. The I-Pad is also used as an ideas chalkboard, so for a writing piece she would pick her key words or story line on the Dynavox , it's hand written on  the chalkboard app and Missy will write her story on the Dynavox but be able to stay focused on her ideas.
We use the set-up for some Maths work also, workings can be done on I-pad and entering answers on the Laptop via the Dynavox. Allot of photos are also taken of references materials(ie. Time tables) that may be around the room, so Missy then has a reference bank that is acccesibile for her with a swipe. We are lucky to have a teachers aid who is techno savy and can quickly make teachers spontaneous activities accessibility.

During meals and playground time in the school grounds Missy uses a Lingo, (lower tech) small device with eight buttons, pre-recorded voice output, for quick easy questions or news, it has some velcro on the back and can be put on the table or her pommel.

Masterchef - Meeting a Star

I know it's on the side but I tried everything and it appears portrait on my computer until you post it somewhere - anyway with the portability of devices these days shouldn't be hard to spin your device.
Missy has been obsessed with the Masterchef TV series, so when she heard about cooking classes for kids with Kate Bracks on the radio travelling to school one day, she couldn't sign fast enough that she wanted to be a part of that.
So with phone call or two to confirm access (of course) she was booked in. Missy had a chat with Kate before her class came in and she had a lovely time cooking some yummy goodies. She couldn't wait to get back to school and tell her friends about and just this week at Book Week(themed Champions), Missy went as Kate (2011 Masterchef winner).