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Collaborations June 2008 Update
CONGRATULATIONS to the winner of our
Early Intervention Week ESSAY CONTEST:
Marilyn Feliciano of Lodi, New Jersey! Here is her entry:
The most rewarding experience for my child and family as a part of the New
Jersey Early Intervention system is how my son has developed and enhanced
his language and developmental skills. It is a very positive, gratifying and
fulfilling experience for our family.
The strategies that I have learned that helped my son’s development are lots
of vocal play, making imitations of simple sounds, encouraging him how to look
at my mouth and to pair sounds with movement and play. Additional strategies
are producing sounds and vocalizations such as moo, baa, sss, and ribbit, ribbit
by playing with the farm animals. Also, working on a lot of pretend play activities
to elicit language and label objects. While playing in the kitchen my son was able
to repeat spoon, cookie, banana, plate and egg. These strategies have been
beneficial to his language skills.
Our New Jersey Service Coordinator supported our family by coordinating
meetings that dealt with learning more about the Northeast Regional Early
Intervention Collaborative program, giving us more information on support
resources based on early intervention and answering our questions and
concerns about our child and her role as our service coordinator. She explained
the early intervention philosophy and our family rights. Family involvement is a
key component with our service coordinator. It involves us in determining early
intervention services that our child will receive within the program.
In closure, we are so thankful and grateful to the New Jersey Early
Intervention System because the developmental teacher, speech therapist,
service coordinator and our family became a team and began to develop skills
that my son will need to communicate and learn to reach the appropriate
developmental milestones for his age level. The main goal is that our son was
able to get services at the beginning of the early years of his life. Our son has
definitely become an inspiration to all of us.
New Jersey Early Intervention Week was a huge success…
THANK YOU to all who helped us celebrate!
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