Pecs Children

Pecs Children

How to introduce PECS to a special needs child?

I have a three year old who can't speak. She can sign though, although is limited to what she can ask for. I have recently purchased a set of PECS, what is the best way to introduce these?
We were seeing a speach therapist until a few months ago. They have said that they can't see my daughter anymore because they have other children to see. And she's not making any progress. She hasn't in the six plus months they have been seeing her.
My daughter is under specialists at the hospial and is having genetic testing as it is believed she has a rare condition. She is not in a pre-school or nursery as I believe in home education and already teach another child at home. No stupid comments re home education please. My eldest went to school and hated it and talked about killing herself.

thats terrible that the speech therapists said that to you about your child. hopefully you can find another one that wont give up on you so easily. the easiest way for you to start is to get a small 3 ring binder with some dividers and velcro to go across the front of the divider and and the binder for her to eventually work up to sentences.
unfortunatly for me, the kids that we have gotten that use pecs have already been started on so we are just continueing and expanding on what they had learned but I will try to explain as best as I can.
start with pictures of what she eats, drinks, plays with and such. start off with saying what do you want and then giving her the picture from the book and saying 'oh, you want some water?'
after a few times that you can see she is catching on then slowly ask that she choose a picture of what she wants and always verbalize what she asked for in a complete sentence. try to work up to her choosing at least 3 different options but if she starts stressing then go back to 2 pics at a time.
the dividers in the binder is for catagorizing the pictures in sections of toys, food and activities.
eventually what you will want is to add in the symbol 'I want' and then she will learn to put that first and then what she wants. from there you can go to 'I want' 'red'( the color icon) 'cup'
that way she learns to add in more in depth sentences.
If she can sign then sounds like she should at least be able to put in the 'I want' symbol. by the way most of these icons come from
boardmaker and its a great site to use.
I hope I have helped even a little and hopefully some of the other experienced educators here will put in some ideas I cant think of at the moment but I encourage you to find another speech therapist that help with this because this is a long term goal to work towards.
good luck!

Pécs, Gyermekvasút / Pécs, Children's railway

Pecs Children

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