Chicago is a tough place to be from. Does every and any opportunity to make a buck spawn corruption? Is everyone on the take? If there is a time to storm the heavens, it is now and it is to beg and pray that our new president is indeed above the fray. I would hate to even think that he is part of the ol' boy network in Chicago. It would disappoint a newly empowered electorate at a time when our electorate needs to believe in heros and hope. It would disappoint all of us who believe.
Julia and I have increased out home work time in the evenings. She is working hard because each work day brings another sticker to "show" to Santa in the hope that he will leave a Little Pet Shop Fitness Center (yeah, really.). We are doing dictation together. One of us makes up a simple sentence -- Julia is very excited about making up the sentence although many of hers are very long and rambling (yeah, she is my kid.) -- and she sounds out the words with my help and writes it. Her spelling can be all over the place but she is writing both vowels and consonents and remembers a capital in the beginning and a period at the end. Last night, I had her put a finger between words to separate them and make them easier to read and I think she was happy with the result. It is amazing to thing that last spring -- April or May -- I was trying to get her to trace a page of strokes, shapes, and letters, all of which meant very little to her, and now she is trying to write sentences.
She has also learned 15 sight words and we are adding more. We make felt flash cards on which I make raised letters. Julia likes to feel them as well as see them and I think this extra sensory element has kept her interest in learning them. She is very proud of herself for this work and work it is. I have finally found the knack for making flash cards a game, something that I wish I had when Cheshire was trying to learn her "word within a word" cards in 7th and 8th grade. Sorry, Ches. I was trying.
We have been using the Dr. Suess Kindergarten Games every night for a little while. As a big Suess fan, Julia never tires of the songs and silly rhymes. Last night, she spent about 20 minutes doing an addition game. It is not quite addition yet -- she puts the assigned number of fruit in each of two wheelbarrels and then counts up the number of fruit and clicks on the number on a number line. Doing this, it is clear that she understand counting (at least up to 15), that there is a one to one relationship between an item and the number assigned to it (I am not be explaining this clearly but it has been hard for Julia to realize this), and that she can recognize and use the written numbers. All hail silly games!
Two things that Julia needs to work on and I have not found the key to working on it -- putting things in order and patterns. I will ask Annie next week when we see her and hopefully we can work on these things in OT beginning again in January.
3 comments:
Have you seen the beading kits that have cards showing sequences and designs. The idea is to put the beads on the string to match the sequence on the card. Probably available at educational toy stores if that sounds like something that could work for Julia's order and sequence practice.
Another way to practice sequencing is with simple hand-drawn story cards, i.e.:
1. Picture of a bunch of oranges - We bought oranges at the store
2. Picture of an orange being cut in half - To make juice, we cut the orange in half.
3. Picture of orange being juiced - Then we squeeze out the juice
4. Picture of glass of orange juice - We pour the juice into a glass. It is ready for drinking.
You then follow this up by actually making juice and talking through the steps (or better yet making the juice first if she's unfamiliar with the process and then using the cards to explain what you just did).
You can do the same for lots of household processes that Julia is already familiar with ("the shirt is dirty, we put it in the washing machine, it comes out clean"). Both of my daughter's speech therapists (in-school and private) have been using this technique with her this year with excellent results. As it was explained to me it helps with ordering thought as well as with conversation and storytelling skills.
I'm with you on the Chicago thing. I'm from the suburbs and remember politics being crooked from the time I was a little kid. I hope Obama stays clean in this mess, too.
I was going to suggest the beading kits and cards that the first poster mentioned. I also have a tub of different colored plastic bears that we use from time to time. I think those came from the teacher store.
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