Day 33

Emily at Real Learning has lesson plans for a Math Main Lesson -- to last about 3 weeks -- I would like to do something like this sometime so am filing it for future reference.

Today we have several errands plus a visit from the Occupational Therapist, so it was a quick schoolday.

I am going to type out the checklist I gave Kieron for today -- there is an asterix beside the ones he did:

Monday

Math *
Greek *
Handwriting *
Latin *
Thinking Skills *

Weekly Jobs -- #3 *

Choose one and check off:
Drawing Book *
Coloring Reptiles
Coloring in HIstory of Swords

Choose two and check off
Following Christ *
Columbus *
Knights of Our Lady

Sean did the usual basics and his weeklies -- no extra reading.

For Aidan, I took the first lesson for Alphaphonics: am, ax, an, at
I wrote them down on cards and did the second period of a Montessori 3-period lesson -- asking him to pick the right one -- so, I'd say "at" and he chose. At first I'd only give him 2 choices, then I started giving him all four. He did great! I tried to have him use the moveable alphabet to form the words. That is more difficult, presumably because of his motor processing issues -- always much better at reception than at expression.

He loved the choosing game so we will keep doing that. It was a bit of a breakthrough, the first in reading for some time.

I think I could try having him write out the words -- my hand guiding his, at first, or maybe have him trace the letters from a grayscale?

Learning to Read --LD

I am stuck on teaching reading to Aidan using 100EZ lessons. He has been able to identify letters by their sounds for a couple of years now but is not getting blending. Part of this, I realize, is because he isn't segmenting sounds or being able to put them together again. So when I sound out "d-o-g" it has nothing in common to him with "dog". It might as well be "man on the moon".

So I'm reading different books trying to figure out ways to get him comfortable with decoding and blending. Here are some resources I found this weekend:

Montessori Mom -- Learning to Read.
--Lots of good information about the pink cards and how to use them. One advantage for this approach with Aidan is that (1) he needs lots of repetition (2) he loves doing things he can do by himself.

Some ideas for Teaching Blending and Decoding
There are some visuals for phonics manipulatives here.

Here is some information on teaching LD students Phonological Skills.
Aidan has been able to recognize rhyme and generate it for a long long time -- probably because of the ongoing music immersion in this house. But there's a step from there to being able to produce it on call. With him, there is a big step between producing something spontaneously, and being able to produce it on call. This is showing up in all different areas of his life.

This site does give a progression for teaching to discern broken-up words, which is something Aidan has gotten stuck on both in 100EZ and in Reading Reflex.

(A thought! Get Aidan's SLP involved in this -- it does seem like an aspect of speech and langauge therapy and most therapists seem to settle in more productively when they have something concrete to work on -- probably because unavoidably, they know the therapy better than the individual child).

Finally, I am thinking that teaching the signing alphabet might help him segment. When he was struggling to learn to talk, he made huge strides once I figured out a "combination" approach. He had DK-type realistic picture books which he loved. I found that pointing to the picture and slooowlly, emphatically saying the word, and then talking about it (because his receptive skills were way above his expressive ones) was effective, and so was signing the word and saying it slowly at the same time. After a while he took off on verbalizing and I dropped the picture and sign talk because they became cumbersome. But thinking about that, maybe writing out the letters, signing them, laying down cards and so on might help him in the same way.