This page is a 'progress report' on Oliver's development in the last 12 months to August 2007.
At 15 years -
Oliver continues to progress with his pony riding. This year he is also helping at the stables.
“I have been helping at the RDA. I have been looking after one of the ponies. I bring the pony in from the field. Then I groom him with two different brushes. I clean his hooves and paint them with hoof oil. I weigh 3kg of hay for the pony to eat at night. He is a good pony and stands still when I groom him."
I have made a pony quiz using Powerpoint. Play my pony quiz by clicking here (size: 1.7Mb).
"One job that I don’t like is picking up poo from the field. It is squishy and smelly!"
"I did a Sponsored Ride for the RDA. We went along the road, I had to do hand signals for turning left and right. Then we went along the lane and into the woods. It was very muddy in the woods."
"We were riding to get some money to pay the Vet to make a poorly pony’s foot better. I asked my family and friends to sponsor me for doing the ride."
Oliver still enjoys taking photographs of places he visits. He now uses Dad’s ‘heavy’ camera. He particularly liked photographing the animals at the zoo and entered some of his best shots in the zoo’s photography competition.
"The baby elephants were playing in their pool and under the waterfall. I think they were trying to keep cool."
Mother and baby marmot
Otter
Meerkat
Rhinoceros
The elephants are having a shower. Click the thumbnail pictures to view at full size.
Oliver attends a weekly swimming lesson where he has gained confidence in jumping into deep water and swimming on his back and front. He can also put his head under the water and is now exploring the underwater world wearing his goggles.
Oliver takes part in a variety of new sports. He plays boccia (a bowling game), new age kurling (on hall floor rather than ice), polybat (pre table tennis) and wheelchair basketball. His coordination and fitness show improvement.
Oliver can accurately carry out tasks that have repetitive actions. For example, Oliver helped to construct his ‘Interactive Advent Calendar’ by adding java code to the many html pages. Oliver opened the html source code, copy and pasted the java script at the same point in each page, labelled the images (according to the calendar date) and saved the updated file. Dad talked Oliver through the stages, step-by-step, several times before Oliver could continue the routine. Of course, Oliver did not understand the computer code. Click the button for Oliver's Interactive Advent Calendar (it has something to look at every day).
