DISNEYLAND PARIS, JUNE 1999

All the photograph captions are Oliver's own words.

This year was our best family holiday ever at Disneyland Paris.  Oliver was very well behaved for the entire week and was relaxed and confident in the park.

"Ride on tea cups, goes round and round"

He remembered his way around (much to Dad's relief!) and knew exactly which rides he wanted to go on.  Oliver developed a daily order / routine for his favourite five rides.  After he had been on these, he was 'open to suggestions', but we always had at least four goes on Big Thunder Mountain each day!

"Eating potato chips, Dad and Oliver"

We were overjoyed when Oliver wanted to participate in the daily parade with other children.  He smiled and waved so enthusiastically that cast members noticed Oliver and took him into the parade.  On Monday, he played the jungle drums on the Lion King float.  After that experience, he was keen to join in again each day.  Amazingly enough, on Thursday he was chosen a second time and skipped off quite happily with a sweep to clean the chimney and go 'over the rooftops' to meet Mary Poppins (his current No. 1 Disney character).

This year Oliver also had the courage to take part in some of the additional activities outside of the main theme park.  On one evening he skippered a boat on Lake Buena Vista and was adamant in the queue that he wanted to sail the red fire boat (Dad would have preferred the yellow speedboat!).  Oliver was even happy to let a stranger put a 'weird' life jacket on him.

"Oliver and Dad in the fire-boat"

Oliver rode a cowboy pony in the Wild West town.  He was excited and really wanted to do this because he has been having riding therapy with Riding for the Disabled.

"Riding on Nougat"

Oliver, using Clicker 3 software as a starting point produced the following writing -

I like Disneyland Paris

I went on Pirates of the Caribbean in Adventureland .

Then Big Thunder Mountain in Frontierland .

Next I went on Casey Junior Train and It's A Small World in Fantasyland .    I like to go on Star Tours after that in Discoveryland.

It was good on the rides at Disneyland Paris.    I like The Wonderful World of Disney Parade.    I went in the parade I played the jungle drums in the Lion King and I cleaned the chimney for Mary Poppins.

Clicker allows words to be copied from grid cells at the bottom of the screen onto the WP program above.  We are using Clicker to help Oliver develop simple sentence structure.  The cell text provide ideas for Oliver, preventing him from being faced with a blank screen when writing.  Grids are easy to make and pictures and sounds can also be added.  Clicker even reads aloud the writing.