All is well here for Ava, who is now 5 and a half and has been hearing for nearly 5 years (April). Her senior kindergarten year has been smooth sailing; especially since she received her personal FM system last year. She is seeing her TOD twice a week and with her TOD she has been working on developing a brochure that demonstrates the steps to attach her receivers and activate her personal FM system. At this stage, Ava is learning how to identify the various parts of her cochlear implant and indicate when her cochlear implant and FM system are not giving a clear signal. Self-advocacy is a very important skill to have and it is practiced over and over at school. This will give her the confidence to speak up when she cannot hear something at school. She is also creating a power point presentation "All about Me" which will be presented to her classmates in April. She is very excited about her projects and enjoys her time with Mrs. Manocchio, her wonderful TOD. Ava is enjoying a very active social life, attending numerous birthday parties, ballet and hip-hop classes as well as a weekly gymnastics class. And we just signed her up for summer soccer!
Ava just received her latest progress report card and I am proud to announce that she has met ALL expectations for a kindergartener. Even better, she is reading well above grade level. I find that many of our CI kiddoes who were identified early and implanted at a young age, do extremely well in reading. This gives them a great foundation to carry through-out their school age years. In addition, her TOD reports that she continues to have developmentally appropriate speech and language. Yippee!
I notice that most of my other CI momma friends are also blogging much less frequently. Most likely due to the normalcy of our lives, which was what we all hoped and prayed for when we first received our child's diagnosis of profound deafness. I honestly could not be happier with Ava's continued successes and she has exceeded all of my expectations.
Cheers!
