It's Week 3 - and very hot!I

Today was a stinker! I don't mean the 'smelly' kind of stinker, I mean the hot, hot, hot kind of stinker. Do you want to know how hot it was? Robyn Williams as Adrian Cronauer in 'Good Morning Vietnam' (1987) says it so eloquently I think. Check out this clip.

It is Spring in South East Queensland, but today we hit 40 degrees celsius in our area. This does not bode well for our Summer. I am originally from the UK, but my parents immigrated to Australia when I was nine. I grew up not too far from where I live now. Back then, when the temperature hit 40 degrees celsius we were sent home from school. We didn't have the benefits of air conditioning, not even ceiling fans! 

This morning, instead of a playing in the park to start off our day, Sam and I headed to our local library. As we were driving my daughter Zoe to school, the temperature was already 27 degrees celsius. The park has shade structures, but I knew it would still be very hot. As it turned out, the library was a great choice. Firstly, it is air conditioned. Secondly, I discovered they have free charging stations for mobile devices and as it happened, my iPhone needed charging because I had forgotten to do it last night. Thirdly, and most importantly, you can use the library's computers to access a whole range of websites, including kids' learning sites! You log in using your library card number and then you have a 45 minute session. Sam chose a website called 'Literacy Planet'. They use it in schools and I had been looking at it for him to use at home, but there is a cost involved. At the library, we can use it for FREE! Great. They have a mixture of activities - learning, stories and games. So we used the 'one for me, one for you' method. Sam got to play a game, but first he had to do a 'learning game' of Mummy's choosing. We also read lots of stories.

When we got home, I let him have some chill time while I set up for our next lesson session. Like last week, I headed out to our entertainment area. Sam grumbled and protested for a few minutes, but I got him to work with me and considering how hot it was, he did really well. I decided that our next session, which was Maths, would be inside. Thankfully my home office renovation is 90% complete and all the desks and computers are set up. Sam loves Math activities, so this always goes a lot smoother.

We finished the day with a swim session. Thank goodness for the pool!

Today working with Sam confirmed my concerns with Sam's learning. Sam really struggles with letter recognition. He also finds it hard to connect the letter and its 'sound'. This really impacts on his ability to read. He is also very weak retaining his 'Sight Words'. I did note that he seems to connect letters with pictures E.g. if I show him the letter 'A' with a picture of an 'ant' and ask him what the letter is, he says 'ant'. Numbers come much easier to Sam and there are less protests from him when we do Math activities. He can match the numerical version of a number, E.g. 4, to the word 'four' very easily. He is picking up the concept of 'addition' quite well too. I really need to look at different types of language activities that will engage Sam and improve his understanding so that we can advance his reading.

I know Sam's speech and language delays have a huge impact on his ability to learn and communicate his understanding. He knows more than he is able to show us. 

Today we practiced our Sight Words.

And we read this book.

Sam playing on a Shapes' app.

Working on our Maths inside the house. Today we practiced our numbers 11 to 15.

 

Then we did some 'Addition' exercises. 



I let him play with the calculator and he loved finding the numbers.

Our last Math activity was a kind of number bingo.

Sam picked ping pong balls with numbers 1 to 20 out of a bowl. He then had to match them with the written word in the cupcake and say the number. He got 100%.