The Bumpy Road Way: Development Delays

One of the difficulties in having a child with a diagnosis, whatever that diagnosis maybe, is that some people stop seeing the child as a person. They start seeing them as a set of deficits and differences, a problem that needs to be solved. Nurturing and encouraging the child's strengths and talents, of which there can be many, may not seem as important because all the attention and focus is on 'fixing' the issues. As a parent I have been guilty of this, but the more time I spend with Sam as an educator, rather than his mother, my focus is shifting. I'm learning to use a wide-angled lens, rather than a zoom lens.

Sam is incredibly curious and loves to know how stuff works. He is more than capable of taking in complex concepts and although he may struggle with foundation skills like reading, this does not impact on his understanding of the world around him. He is very visual and that is a strength I use to his advantage. This week we continued looking at where rain comes from - The Water Cycle - but we looked at a smaller part of the process with a very cool experiment I found online called 'Weather in a Cup'. It is a hands on activity that demonstrates the process of condensation and precipitation in a simple, but fun way. All you need is a clear plastic cup (or jar), water, shaving cream and blue food colouring. Check out the pictures below.

Development delays do not mean you have to delay learning. In fact I believe in pushing the envelope by exposing Sam to more advanced knowledge where he has a strength. When he achieves goals he feels more confident. This confidence then helps him when he tackles tasks that do take more effort.

There is no better feeling than seeing Sam overcome a learning challenge.

What got up to this week.

More new sight words this week. First we sound them out, then we write them.

And today we are feeling happy :)

Learning about vowels.

Mazes are a fun way to work on pencil grip.

Reviewing our numbers 11 to 20 with a fine motor skills activity. Good old Play Dough.

Watching a learning video on You Tube - counting 11 to 20.

We finished our work with addition using the number line method. Sam picked this up straight away.

This was our 'Weather in a Cup' experiment.

We also watched the You Tube song video 'The Water Cycle' again. It's really catchy.

Very effective isn't it?

The shaving cream represents a cloud. You simply add drops of food colouring (condensation) until the food colouring starts to go through the 'cloud' into the water below - precipitation, or rain.

We finished our experiment by recording our observations.

More sight word practise.

Creating number art with paint and cotton buds.

Another sight word activity. We wrote the words in glue, then used coloured sticks to make the letters.

Sam decided to use lower case letters for 'then', hence the broken sticks.

The muscles in Sam's hands and wrists have begun to stabilise and strengthen, so I am spending more time on writing to improve his pencil grip.

Using shells for counting practise. I wrote the numbers 1 to 20 on the back of the shells...

... then he sorted them into the correct order.

Next he used the shells to help him with his math activity sheets.

This was a really fun geography project. We built a city. I found two places online where I could download roads and building templates. And they were free.