Some Early Learning Things

These are a couple of things suggested in Aidan's OT consult yesterday.

Cornmeal tray -- I made this a long time ago but just found it in the pantry today so I brought it out and put it with their word cards from Spell to Read and Write.

I wrote a word in the cornmeal and then Aidan and Paddy both traced over it. This was easier for them than handling a pen.






Later, in the evening, Aidan read one of the journals that we had written together a couple of weeks earlier. He did really well, actually, is recognizing far more words. Then he wanted to make another journal. I wrote it and we read it back.

Then he asked to write some words himself. Below is what the OT recommended because he tends to lose control of his pen and sprawl his letters all over the page. She thought his pencil grip, control and everything were fairly good and that he was ready to work on writing smaller and within spaces. So she made boxes and this seemed really helpful for him.

The words here are his choices. These are some of his favorite words:

























After we had written them out in the book, he wanted to cut them out.

























Here is a game he made for himself with a lid and marbles. He loves to roll them back and forth and this is actually good bilateral control because he is hemiplegic (his left side doesn't work so well after a stroke in infancy).
























Brendan brought the beautiful wooden USA puzzle out of his room and Aidan tried to do it today. Of course it was too difficult for him but he did all right. Please pay no attention to the crumbs all over the rug. That is life around here!

Weekend Focus -- Spelling

This weekend, I am focusing on the Spell to Write and Read program. It takes some looking at in order to get it in one's head enough to actually use it. On the other hand, I like the approach. It totally makes sense to me. Not so much the details of how to do it as simply the approach.

Most teachers a century or so ago recommended SHORT phonics drills once or more a day and this is the approach I tend to take -- "stealth drills".

The other thing many teachers recommended in the past was using letter and word blocks or cards rather than waiting till the child is able to write well in order to teach reading. Most of my children were ready to read far before they could control a pencil well so it makes sense to me.

I think I'm going to start working slowly through the book with Paddy and Aidan (separately, I think) about twice a week. The rest of the time I will continue to have Aidan compose and reread journals, but I may try to incorporate some of the words he is learning from SWR into what I write for him to read.

Paddy -- hmm, he is reading quite a bit though silently. I think he really only needs the occasional spelling/phonics reinforcement in order to have more diversity in his word attack skills.

I usually have Aidan write several times a week (he actually ASKS to do that, so it's more of a matter of me being open to letting him write in my notebook). Paddy doesn't do much writing. Well, actually, he does write. He types. Hmm, have to think about whether drawing would serve the purpose better than handwriting right now.

Charlotte Mason talks about spelling in the context of learning to read for younger children.
For older children (who can already read) she thinks that dictation should largely take the place of formal spelling lessons.

Aidan's Journalling 2

Embarrassing to show my messy printing, but I wanted to put up the kind of thing I try to do regularly with Aidan (he asks for this activity -- "Can we do a reading lesson?"so that helps me remember.)

He journals verbally in this way and I write it down (sometimes if he seems stuck I finish a sentence for him).

Then we read it back together. He reads the words he knows and I fill in the other ones, dragging it out phonetically so that he sees the phonetic connection since he already knows the sounds the letters make.

Then sometimes he wants me to draw a picture, or we write a couple of words together -- I guide his hand a bit because of his motor problems.

This time I was experimenting with putting some phonetic words on top to practice. Funny, I taught him those five words last year but he has forgotten them. This is a Throwing Marshmallows type of thing. The kid has to want to catch the marshmallow and be able to catch it, otherwise it just bounces off again. Since he usually has fun doing these things, it's probably not so much of a problem if they don't all stick. I think Charlotte Mason said that kids probably only permanently acquire about 10 percent of things they are given the opportunity to learn. This is why the learning itself has to be wholesome, not dried out and overprocessed, so they can take what they are ready for and are not harmed by the part they are not ready for.

My new thought is to save the sheets of paper and have him reread them. Right now they are scattered all over the house and in my various notebooks. If I saved them they would be a journal of his speech and his thought processes, plus he could read them over as he gets better at reading.

I really am working on that printing. You can see why all my kids have trouble with their handwriting. My husband is even worse than I am! Oh well... at least it's readable.

Day 83: More Aidan Pages

This weekend I'm going to go to Ambleside Online and look through trying to plan for Kieron and Paddy for the rest of the year. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I'm feeling that they need a bit more substance than they are getting right at the moment.

Paddy made another word sheet for Aidan (on the left). Also, I made a calendar for Aidan (below, center). He constantly asks: "Where are we going today?" partly probably because he is bored, and partly also I think because he wants to be prepared for things, and I think also because of intellectual curiosity (he's probably at the right stage developmentally to take an interest in time). Also, because of his PDD he tends to script.

Right now he's most interested in the pictures (which I helped him choose and which in some cases he chose himself, ie the front of the van and the light in our garage). But when he asks about our plans for the week I am hoping we can use this for a reference and to have some conversations that are more concrete to him than just verbal ones.

More information about Visual Schedules here.

If he finds this helpful I may do one where he can put cards in the right place. I did that once before but he wasn't ready for it. He's always liked me to write out the days of the week on little cards though so he can put them in order.

Starting Up Again

I think I probably will start blogging daily learning logs again, even though they will be unschooly during this more relaxed time of year. I think I'll use Leonie's unschooly logs at St Anthony Academy's as a model. ... unless I decide to go with a narrative, which sometimes works better when we aren't doing many formal things.

To start off with where we seem to be right now. First, Aidan and reading.

Aidan seems to be at a "sensitive period" for words. Every day he asks me to write down all the words he knows -- he lists them for me: zipper, zebra, quiet, queen, dog, hippo, giant, sun, bus, top, tent, etc. Then he reads them to himself. Then he says, "Can I take them to bed with me?"

He spells every word he sees in his environment. Recently he has gotten interested in 100 Easy Lessons and will spell out words "MAD" and ask me what they mean. This reminds me of what I read in The Montessori Method not too long ago:

One of our most interesting discoveries was made in the effort to devise a game through which the children might, without effort, learn to read words. We spread out upon one of the large tables a great variety of toys. Each one of them had a corresponding card upon which the name of the toy was written. We folded these little cards and mixed them up in a basket, and the children who knew how to read were allowed to take turns in drawing these cards from the basket. Each child had to carry his card back to his desk, unfold it quietly, and read it mentally, not showing it to those about him. He then had to fold it up again, so that the secret which it contained should remain unknown. Taking the folded card in his hand, he went to the table. He had then to pronounce clearly the name of a toy and present the card to the directress in order that she might verify the word he had spoken. The little card thus became current coin with which he might acquire the toy he had named. For, if he pronounced the word clearly and indicated the correct object, the directress allowed him to take the toy, and to play with it as long as he wished.

When each child had had a turn, the directress called the first child and let him draw a card from another basket. This card he read as soon as he had drawn it. It contained the name of one of his companions who did not yet know how to read, and for that reason could not have a toy. The child who had read the name then offered to his little friend the toy with which he had been playing. We taught the children to present these toys in a gracious and polite way, accompanying the act with a bow. In this way we did away with every idea of class distinction, and inspired the sentiment of kindness toward those who did not possess the same blessings as ourselves. [Page 300] This reading game proceeded in a marvellous way. The contentment of these poor children in possessing even for a little while such beautiful toys can be easily imagined.

But what was my amazement, when the children, having learned to understand the written cards, refused to take the toys! They explained that they did not wish to waste time in playing, and, with a species of insatiable desire, preferred to draw out and read the cards one after another!

I watched them, seeking to understand the secret of these souls, of whose greatness I had been so ignorant! As I stood in meditation among the eager children, the discovery that it was knowledge they loved, and not the silly game, filled me with wonder and made me think of the greatness of the human soul!

Now, where I need to catch up in my understanding of the Montessori method is in the idea that writing ought to come before reading. Certainly Aidan is "writing" in the sense that he will take his wooden or magnetic letters and form words he has memorized. Perhaps this is enough to expect of a child with motor difficulties. However, I would like to see both him and Paddy writing, and delighting in writing.

Week 15 -- the Little Ones

I've lost track of the day we're on since I stopped keeping daily logs.

This is how I worked on Paddy's schooling today... OK, not very colorful, but as a change it worked OK.

First I wrote down a little story he was telling -- that's over on the top right. I used to write out stories the older kids told when they were quite little, and then had them read them back for reading practice. They enjoyed this, and it's working quite well for Paddy and Aidan. Paddy was intrigued and read it out for himself. The last word is the only one he had trouble with and so I guided him to sounding it out.

Then I wrote out a few addition problems for him, underneath -- as you can see, just adding 2, which is review for him. He started to predict the answers --"the next one's going to be ten!!" and then I asked him to complete the question. Two plus What equals ten then? That was a little harder but he sort of got it by looking at the preceding ones.

Then I made the sheet of rimes for "at" and "it" that you can see over there on the top left. His phonics knowledge is rudimentary -- all his reading ability is sheer memorization of familiar words. He had a bit of trouble but sort of got it.

Then the middle sheet in the back -- I thought I would try some multiplication problems -- sets of two. He liked those and figured them out quickly.

Then I asked him to write a big C, which is something he did once last week. This was the only task that made him groan, but he did it. Then he asked to write an S, then he wrote another C, then he asked to try to write small letters. This is because of the OT's suggestion that big repeated motor movements are better to start with before trying to write normal size. I didn't know about this kind of thing when my older ones were little.


As for Aidan, he has been very involved with this (left).... calendar felts for the flannelboard. It looks chaotic but the last few lines actually wrap around like a snake. He still hasn't mastered number order past twenty, but that's obviously the skill that he is trying to master right now, so it was serendipitous that I was digging through supplies and found the calendar felts -- they were too advanced for him a year ago.






The OT was here today and she did:

• Wilbarger brushing and lotion massage, from center to extremities.
• Marching on mini-trampoline, then running in place, then squatting.
• Brain Gym (OT drawing X's and infinity symbols or horizontal 8's on his back while he drew them on an easel)
• Stepping on crumpled newspaper in a large ice cream bucket (to help him raise and lower his foot in place
• Throwing and catching a wiffle ball on a string (it's strung in our entrance and every boy in this house seems attracted to it as if by gravity).

She always works a bit with Paddy too and actually it is kind of nice for both of them.

Literacy Activities

I have been trying to write out things that seem to work for the little ones, partly as a form of record-keeping and partly in order to build a sort of file of activities to work on.

This is an example of one of Aidan's "journal stories" with some room below to write words, and some ideas for possible activities (mostly based on Charlotte Mason's ideas for working with nursery rhymes in order to teach reading)

Below is a sort of "album page" (I'm not sure exactly what you call these). Actually there are two pages -- one is for the story activities, and another is for variations on the "word box" activity Aidan played with me and his two older brothers last week.

I wouldn't use any of these ideas unless I thought it was something he might want to do -- I'm looking at them and sort of cringing, thinking of how I could make a fun game into torture. This is more about retrieval of possibilities when I need them ;-).

Fraction Circles

Fractions for beginners -- see here and here. Also here for other fraction activities.

I tried baking some Sculpey clay into circles -- may try it again someday, but it was a flop -- the sculpey burned and gave off toxic fumes.

So I gave that up for now, but found these soft circle shapes in my closet that I cut into fractions. Simple but hopefully will work all right for now.


Side benefit--- my young collaborator Aidan took the rest of the shapes and went to town counting, classifying and displaying them on his felt board:

Base Ten -- paper beads

I tried to make some golden beads on paper -- here in pdf, left on gif.

It doesn't go up to thousands : ( and I think sometime if I can acquire enough beads I'll try to make some "real" ones). I'm just using regular beads or some other counter for the units.

Here are some base-ten activities and paper manipulatives (using base-10 blocks rather than beads)

Here are some virtual base-10 manipulatives.

Here's an online base 10 game Paddy likes quite a bit. ... it goes up to 100's but you can start with just units, or units and 10's.

Place Value

Number Cards, pdf:

Hundreds and Tens
Thousands and Ones.

The way I understand it, they are designed so you can overlay them to form numbers.... for example, 2345 would be a 2000 on the bottom, then a 300 hundred, then a 40 then a 5. That would give children a concrete sense of place value and how it works.

... Units are in green, tens in blue, hundreds in red and thousands in green again because thousands are the "units" of the thousands period (1 thousand, 10 thousands, 100 thousands). I got this information from Elizabeth Hainstock's Montessori in the Home.

More Math

Addition Beads (PDF) to demonstrate the teens.

Addition Strips (grey-scale PDF) -- these go with the addition board. I read somewhere that once you get past ten with addition, you can demonstrate grouping by replacing, say 9 + 6 with a ten and a five.

It is the same as these, except in black and white, but I realize I didn't picture them previously as gifs, because they didn't look good that way.

Here they are in laminated, file folder form:

Aidan's Journalling

This is what Aidan did for a long time one evening. He was watching me write in my journal and then said he wanted to do a "reading lesson". That meant telling me stories that I could write down. It evolved to Aidan "writing" what he wanted to write (he is the one who was writing the long straight up and down lines) and then I would transcribe what he said it said.

I think this journalling is quite charming and it will be a nice record someday of what was on his mind. He actually filled about 10 pages that night -- has only asked to do it a couple of times since then so maybe it satisfied the need for the time being : ).

Game Cards for File Folders

I was researching file folder games yesterday -- and made these two very simple board game cards, just to get the hang of it:

Travel-theme Game Board (pdf)
New World Discovery Theme Game Board (pdf)

The way I understand it, from this site, you can just get a set of cards for things you want the child to remember -- vocabulary, etc. -- a die, markers and then go.

Here are a couple of sets of cards I've made for geography and discovery:

Vocabulary for Empires of the Americas
Geography Cards (pdf)



Enchanted Learning has file folder games, and they seem to be popular for use with autistic children.

more links.....

I forgot to mention these in the last post:

• Montessori Tray Ideas for Young and Old -- from Garden of Roses and Lilies
• My Montessori Journey -- free downloads
• Theresa's Montessori ideas

Also, I made a "work plan" form in doc. It looks terrible in gif so I'm not picturing it.

Word Cards for Aidan

I made some word cards for Aidan. Paddy worked at them too. They are below in gif. They are short vowel sound CVC's, except for "eel" and "bell" and "egg" which Aidan wanted me to put in near the end since he knows how to read those.

Picture Cards -- pdf
Words for Picture Cards -- pdf.









Aidan helped me type in the words and then hovered around anxiously waiting for me to cut them. He is really enjoying all these projects. Later I am going to back them with posterboard and cover them with clear contact paper so they will be sturdier. I wasn't going to cut the pictures out, but he wanted me to, so I did.

Paddy did them too.

Next, I will try some sentence strips, and possibly sight word match-ups. . This might work well with the simple stories we were writing together during the summer.

Numbers and Matching

Perhaps you've noticed I haven't been posting daily logs. The honest truth is that my brain thinks that Exam Week is planning week. And I've been trying to rethink how I do my logs, anyway. Do I really need daily logs? In the past, when I've tried alternatives I've found that I DO need them to keep my brain from free-floating off into planning-land and forgetting about the inconvenient necessity of actually DOING my plans. But I am considering alternatives, still.

I mentioned that I wanted to think through what I'm doing with the little ones during this week. Aidan is a natural Montessori child. Not only is he special needs (I wish I had a better term than delayed and more targeted than special needs), which puts him in Montessori's original target classroom, but he LOVES matching, sorting, and that kind of thing. I suspect he loves it because it fills a developmental need. He is working hard to transition from straight concrete to concrete-operational, and he seems to find symbol-based manipulatives a valuable transition device.

We have an old bingo calling board from a multiplication bingo game and Aidan has been matching the numbers to the spaces on the board.... so much so that the calling board is getting shredded. So I decided to make him some numbers on Monday. I used to have a pdf set of numbers from 1-100 that I downloaded from somewhere but I couldn't find it online this time. Anyway, I did want to color-code them by tens to give him visual clues. So I made my own -- number cards up to 100 (PDF). I also made a set in grayscale.

I printed them out and backed them with posterboard and sealed them with clear contact paper (my laminator broke and anyway, I find I like the feel of contact paper so much better than laminating plastic). Aidan hovered over me the whole time I was making them and set right to work. But I need to make a board that shows him where to put them properly. I just gave him the rest of the poster-board for the time being -- he likes to have a board to frame his work.

He took this picture himself.

Now if you look at the gif below that shows what the PDF looks like, you will see how differently Paddy learns from Aidan. Paddy saw me making the numbers on a Word document, and wanted to try it. So I emptied the Microsoft template, leaving only the frame, and he built it up again from scratch. Not only did he type in the numbers in order from 1 to about 40 (before he got bored) but he color-coded them by tens just as I had done.

If I did Montessori with Paddy I would have to focus on creative things, like this, and on sensorial/practical life activities, because he can use some help with those types of things. He could probably benefit from some tracing activities, too. His fine motor lags behind his conceptual thinking as it tends to with all my kids.


Resources for the Future:

I found this neat Practical Homeschooling site with explanations of the Pink Level that made sense to me, and some visuals and even downloads.

I am so NOT a Montessori type mother so it is a bit of a stretch for me to wrap my brain around these things, but Aidan gets a lot of use out of the things I find and make for him so I'm trying.

Occupational Therapy plans and follow-up 2008

A summary of what Aidan's OT and I talked about in planning for this upcoming year..... basically just for my records.

Getting Aidan's IEP materials up to speed for the year

A partial list of goals for Aidan. Yesterday I finally forced myself to go through all the paperwork from his IEP last spring (was it really that long ago?). Basically, I just looked through the listed goals, rewrote them a bit to make them more like my own, then typed them onto a form where there is room to write notes on HOW to work on the goals (as you see, haven't done that part yet).

Here is a blank goal form in doc. Also, these gifs with Aidan's goals, in docx too.

Also, I rather liked these sample IEP goals. ...the format, I mean, the way the problem is stated and then possible solutions listed, along with improvements made.

I have to write out occupational and physical therapy regimen, too. It is too easy for me to let those things slip, so writing them out gives me ownership and helps shortcircuit my rebellious instincts.

Household Forms, and More

I wasn't sure whether to put these over here or at House and Hold, but I decided that since they are links to forms, they would be better over here.

Flylady Control Journals
Including ones for home maintenance, teachers, students, office, vacation, etc

Also -- when I was going through some household notebooks of past years, I found this PDF booklet of forms for a control journal. Here are also some pdf tips for getting your house sale-ready.

DIY also has a pdf booklet based on Flylady's routines.

More pretty forms for a household notebook: With the Fruit of Her Hands.

And one more list of links. I haven't checked them all out yet, which is why I'm linking to it.

One more printable booklet is on this site... .specialized medical forms for children with special needs. It is the parent notebook (doc). Someone linked to it on a list I was on for medically fragile children and it was extremely helpful especially when Aidan had multiple issues and I needed lots of info at my fingertips. More recently, I've been more casual, but I am thinking of updating again because there have been several times in the last year when I've had to reconstruct information for new agencies and it would have been helpful to have it all right there. There is another Caregiver Notebook here, in PDF, with some information about how to build one.

I guess you can probably tell I am busy trying to organize for next year. What I've been doing recently is going through lots of old papers and trying to streamline the paper system. If I find a resource I would like to use again, I try to take a picture of it or find the original online, or sometimes compile it into a notebook, but only as a last resort.

The goal is to have fewer stacks of paper, so what IS unique and necessary is easier to find quickly. You can build up a LOT of papers in 23 years of married life and 15 years homeschooling. I weed every year, but there are some papers I've had for years -- I hate to get rid of them, so photographing or transferring them to blog or doc form is a good alternative.

This project will probably take all year, but it is quite relaxing and easy to pick up in odd moments of the day or week.

Therapy Sheet for Aidan

This is from Spring 2007 so it is out of date. Therapy Checklist for Aidan (PDF).

Here is a form I'm going to try to use as a planner for next year. Therapy Planner (doc)

I had a more complex one last year and it was TOO complex. This one might be too, but I'm going to try to work with it at least until I get into the habit of it.