Week 4 - Now We're Getting Serious

The last few weeks have flown by so fast it feels like I stepped onto a treadmill and some joker cranked it up to ludicrous speed. But just over a week ago, I was happily curled up on the sofa watching TV with hubby when I began to feel 'odd'. Unfortunately, I knew the feeling only too well. I immediately sat up and began to take deep, slow breaths. It was the dreaded panic, or anxiety attack.

 

I first had one a few years ago. It was in the middle of the night. I suddenly woke up with an overwhelming feeling of panic and dread. I honestly thought I was having a heart attack and could not breath. It scared the crap out of me. Luckily my husband had experienced a few when he was younger and talked me through it. I have not had one that bad since that night, but when I am stressed and a bit over loaded I still have moments where I just feel...wrong. It's my body's way of telling me "Lady, slow the hell down or we are going to have a serious problem!"

 

On a positive note, Sam is doing incredibly well.  As I said in my last post, it has taken a few weeks to get into the swing of things, but by week four I had the lesson schedule refined and my new lesson plan template has made planning and organising my daily lessons for Sam much easier and quicker. A big chunk of our week is dedicated to English and Maths, but I also include sessions for Science, History/Geography, Visual Arts/Technology, Music and Health each week. Sam also has a weekly Speech Therapy session and a Gymnastics class. We have all the bases covered. I also try to multi task in our lessons, for example writing skills are included in a number of subjects and I have used Art sessions to practice sight words by turning sight words into a painting exercise.

 

One of my best teaching tools however, has been the use of You Tube learning videos in conjunction with our activities. In almost every session I will use a learning video to introduce a new topic or skill. I also use them to reinforce skills or information we are learning. My biggest success has been using them to help Sam learn his sight words. Sam had previously struggled recognising and retaining sight words, but with a combination of learning tools, Sam is now learning four new sight words each week. This is really exciting!

 

So what did we get up to in week four? Well, in addition to English and Maths activities, we learnt about how plants grow and the parts of a flower in Science, we created works of art with sight words in Art, we made a rubber band car in Technology and we were introduced to the Five Senses in our Health (and Physical Education) session. Not bad huh?

 

Our new sight words for the week. We also practice writing them using this fun app called 'Talking ABC'.

I'm also introducing Sam to simple sentence structure. I used our sight words (in red) and added a selection of other words to help us create different stories.

Practicing our number recognition. Sam has got 1 to 20 down pat, although he struggles with saying '13' when verbally expressing the numbers.

Learning about how plants grow and their different parts. Sam loved this You Tube clip that showed how a plant grows from a seed using clay motion.

Sam's lovely flower creation. We not only learnt about flowers and their parts, but we got in some cutting and colouring skills.

Maths is a definite strength. He has picked up addition and subtraction concepts very quickly.

We introduced subtraction this week. We used poker chips to calculate our answers.

Sam at his gymnastics class.

Here is where I turned our sight words into art. Sam had the four words and could choose from a variety of mediums and craft items to create his pictures.

Here are the finished masterpieces. He opted for felt tip pens, paint, collage and little post it notes. I'm really pleased with his colouring skills and attention to detail. They have improved so much in the last twelve months.

 

Here Sam finished his subtraction activity sheet. His hand had started to get tired earlier in the week, so we only made it to number five. Once I had shown him how to do the first couple, he was working the answers out himself.

 

All set up for our Technology session - making a rubber band car. Great exercise for following instructions with a fun outcome.

It wasn't super fast, but it did go.

Practicing his sight words using a great You Tube video I found by ELF Learning called Sight Words #1. Sam loves it and here he was dancing along while repeating the sight words.

More practice making sentences using our sight words of the week.

These activity sheets were from his speech session. We are working on beginning sounds with 's' and another consonant, like in these examples - s + mug and s + nail. I use the speech homework in our English lessons.

Sam was struggling with one of his sight words - 'and'. I found some activity sheets online focusing on the word 'and' and we did these as part of our English lessons. Worked a treat.

Learning about the 'Five Senses'. Of course I had a cool You Tube music video to go with this lesson. I'm planning on doing some experiments in our next Health session about the senses.

It had been a good week and Sam had worked well, so we finished off by playing with Lego. Great fine motor skills activity and of course learning to following instructions.

Great for exercising those fingers. Sam is a whizz at putting Lego together.

Sam put this together all by himself. I just helped find the pieces in the Lego box.