20 August 2021

Nathaniel is remembering more and more and is becoming more dexterous. In fact, he has been working for months on playing the beginning notes of Hatikva. He can now do it. What a perfect song (Hatikva means “The Hope”). In order to play these notes, he must be able to move each finger independently, starting with the pinky and ending with the thumb (2x). It takes a lot of coordination and memory.

We are working on him recognizing and writing letters and numbers. As he was right handed before, writing is even more difficult for him to have to use his left hand. Still, he is plugging along. We are showing him to start writing on the right side of the page (Hebrew is written/read from right to left). First, we told him to practice tracing some words. Then we told him to write whatever he wanted. He proceeded to write a "sentence" from one end of the white board to the next, including the period at the end. I’m not sure what he wrote, but I think I could make out his name and the words שמח (happy) and גבר (man). Maybe it means that he is a happy man? Nevertheless, the fact that he is trying to write and knew to put a period at the end of a sentence is remarkable progress.