I Can't Do It!

"I can't do it," cries Sam as he looks at a math activity sheet I had copied for one of his lessons. "Next week." Meaning, that looks really hard and I don't want to deal with it. Let's leave it until next week and then maybe you will forget about it.

 

This may surprise you, but these words are music to my ears.

 

Twelve months ago, when Sam started Prep, he had very little expressive language. He could understand a lot more than most people realised, but he was not able to verbalise his feelings and needs very well. This lead to frustration and behavioural problems. He would cry and physically try to avoid situations he found difficult. Today, he can tell me how he is feeling and I can help him with my words and actions. I tell him that I know it may seem difficult at first, but I am here to help him and we will do it together... and we do.

 

Last week Sam worked really hard. I was very proud of him and wanted to acknowledge his effort. At school, students' efforts and achievements are recognised with rewards, e.g. Student of the Week awards. I see parents posting pictures of their kids holding their awards, beaming and a little part of me feels sad. Sam misses out on that. So I decided to create my own reward system and last week Sam received my 'Star Student' award for 'Being a Great Learner'. He was chuffed.

 

Here is what we did last week.

 

More sentence building. I found this activity online. The coloured words make creating sentences easy and fun.

We practised matching our number words and numerals.

 

We spent time practising our addition skills (and writing.)

Shape activity sheets also helps with our writing skills.

 

We learnt about where rain comes from. Sam loves the You Tube video and song I found called 'The Water Cycle'. He can sing along with it now.

This week we started looking at shape patterns.

And in History, we looked at Sam's Story. Then...

 

...and Now. We talked about how he has grown and changed. Each year of his life had a story and a picture. Sam cut out the pictures and we matched them to the correct story to create a picture book.

His sister was off school sick one day so she joined in this activity. We created more art from our weekly sight words.

 

Beautiful.

 

This was a really fun art activity I found online - marble painting. You drop a couple of marbles into different coloured paint.

 

You drop the marbles onto a piece of paper in a baking tray...

... then you roll them around.

 

Marble masterpieces! Easy.

More sight word practise. This time he wrote them on the chalk board.

I wanted to assess Sam's understanding of letters and the sounds they make. His speech difficulties affect how he responds when I ask him what sound a particular letter makes, so I made an accommodation and turned the activity around. Each line had three sets of letters. I asked him to circle the letter that makes the sound....E.g. 'ah' for ant. Doing it this way, Sam was able to correctly match the sound and letter for each letter of the alphabet.

More number recognition practise. I shuffled the plates, placed number '1' on the ground, then asked Sam to find the next number as I sorted through all the plates in my hand. When I came across the correct one, he shouted out 'Yes', pulled it out and put it on the floor. Whilst he still has difficult pronouncing '13', he recognises all the numbers and knows what order they follow.

Making patterns a bit more interesting. We had toy soldiers and blocks to play with. I would start the pattern and then ask Sam would finish it. This meant he had to identify the pattern first. Not a problem.

Sam then decided I had to play too. He created patterns for me to follow.

I created a simple template with six circles and laminated it.

More patterns with coloured pegs. Bonus - fine motor skills get a work out.



 

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.

 

 

Getting My Groove On - Home School Style





It has taken me a few weeks to get back into the groove after the school holidays. This year Sam is in Grade One. We are officially registered with the Education department, which I must admit made me a little nervous as I began preparing his lesson schedule and initial lesson plans for Term One. "This is it", I thought. "This is serious. You can't mess this up." After my momentary panic, I told myself to get on with it and use what I had learnt at the end of last year. Keep it simple and make it fun.

 

I've now developed a lesson schedule for Term One that I am happy with. Actually, it has sort of evolved. A bit of tinkering here, a little modification there. Sam has weekly speech therapy sessions and he has also started gymnastics, which is very exciting, so I had to work these into our lesson schedule too. I have also gone back to my studies, Certificate in Education Support (new name for Teacher Aide), and that takes up a Friday. Life is one big schedule!

 

I eased Sam back  into lessons slowly. We spent the first few weeks reviewing lessons and activities from last year and it has been great to see how much he has remembered. I've also found that he appears more interested in learning. It is easier to engage him and his ability to focus on tasks has improved dramatically. Yes, he still gets a little anxious if we do something new, or if he finds the task difficult, but as his expressive language is developing more and more, he can now tell me how he is feeling. This is a huge step forward in Sam's overall development and as a result, there is a noticeable difference in his behaviour. As his ability to communicate improves, his levels of frustration and anxiety reduces, which means less emotional outbursts. Now when Sam tells me, or I can see, that he is struggling, I let him know that it is OK. It will be hard at first, but am here to help him. We will take it slowly together and it will get easier with practise.

 

And it does.

 

So what have we been up to?

Getting reacquainted with our numbers and number words.

A bit of jumping to strengthen those leg muscles.

Lining up the shot...

Looks like it's going in.





Colouring Minecraft pictures. Sam wanted to get the colours right, so he is copying from the Minecraft X-box cover.



The big circle needed a happy face.

Sam working on our Geography project. He is typing labels under the pictures for our map.

Sam helping me print off pictures for our Geography map activity.



Cutting skills practise as we worked on our Geography project.



 

And the finished product. We made a map of our garden. Sam took all the photos, so it was also a lesson on photography! Love cross learning.

 

Sam has started gymnastics this year. He has low muscle tone so this is an ideal activity for him. It covers gross and fine motor skills, will help to strengthen his muscles and improve his co-ordination. We are very lucky to have the head coach of the gymnastics club doing one to one sessions with Sam. Once he has developed basic skills and is more confident, we hope to ease him into a class with other young children. The most important thing...he loves it!

 

The Many Shades of 22Q - It's Not Black and White (or Grey)

There is an uproar within the 22Q community all around the world right now. In a recent episode of the US medical drama Grey's Anatomy, they portray 22Q incorrectly. Understandably, it has caused a great deal of upset for parents of 22Q children.

 

This is the excerpt from the show that is making news.

 

Two doctors are reviewing patient charts.

 

First doctor says "This Mom's been pregnant 3 times, the first two were stillborn."

Second doctor replies "Well, this one will be too. 22q11 deletion.... She should just adopt.

 

My son Sam has 22Q 11.2, but his symptoms are largely developmental. We do need regular scans for a particular type of tumour, but we are fortunate that he does not, at this stage, have any of the complicated medical issues other 22Q'ers have. There are also people who have 22Q and you would never realise... they may not even know themselves. That's the thing with 22Q - the symptoms are so incredibly diverse. Within the 22Q community, we are united by our diagnosis (or our child's diagnosis), but our individual life journey's are, just like 22Q itself, incredibly diverse.

 

The issue I personally have with what Grey's did, is depicting only one aspect and outcome of 22Q. Yes, a sad and real outcome for many, but not for everyone. A person on one of the Facebook threads that I've read this morning said, "It is just a TV show." Yes, you're  right, it is just a TV show, but a lot of people believe what highly respected long running TV dramas like Grey's Anatomy portray.

 

As a 22Q parent, I know all too well that few people outside of our community have even heard of 22Q, let alone understand it. Goodness, even a lot of the medical professionals we deal with don't understand it, so it is not surprising that the Grey's Medical Advisor got it wrong too.

 

The storyline in Grey's is not a true representation of the whole 22Q picture, but we as a 22Q community can use it to highlight the lack of awareness and understanding of 22Q. So, to the Grey's Anatomy script writers, Medical Advisor and all of you who would like to know more...Google 22Q 11.2.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf3mKfDDzZI

 

Home Schooling - Understand It Before You Criticise It

Sam with his sister. All ready
for his first day at school.

I would never have thought about home schooling if it were not for my son's 22Q 11.2. Most parents naturally assume their children will go to school and that is just the way it is. My daughter took to school like a fish to water. She will be starting Year 4 next week, has lots of lovely friends, an awesome teacher and she really loves school. My son is a completely different kettle of fish.

 

How we got to where we are now is a story in itself, but suffice to say, his first year at school was an up and down affair. By term three, he was continually sick and spent more time at home than he did at school. His anxiety levels went through the roof and it was clear that the situation was not the best one for him. He was stressed, I was stressed and it was breaking my heart. My happy, outgoing and bright little boy had all but disappeared. Something had to be done.

The idea of home schooling had been flitting around in my mind, but it wasn't until another mum at the school withdrew her children due to health reasons, that I began to take the idea seriously. I had a chat to her and began reading up on the internet about home schooling, or home education. I had been helping out in Sam's class since the beginning of the year, so I had a reasonable understanding of the work the children were doing and how the teacher's put together lessons and activities. I had also enrolled and started an Education Support (the new term for a Teacher Aide) course because I enjoyed working with the kids so much and wanted to move into the role as a career. Maybe, just maybe I could do it.

 

As it turned out, yes I could. I had given up working a year earlier because of Sam's situation. I wanted to spend more time with him and my daughter and we had already made the financial adjustment of living with just my husband's wage. Not easy, but we manage. There is also a wealth of resources out there for parent teacher's to access. Whether you opt for enrolling with a distance education school such as Brisbane School of Distance Education and follow their approved learning programs, or register as a home educator through the Home Education Unit, which is part of the Department of Education, Training and Employment in Queensland, your children have access to a wonderful world of learning.

Sam and his sister at a school holiday Lego event.

One of the biggest challenges home educator's face however, is not the actual 'doing' of home educating, but the incorrect perceptions that other people have about it. I read so many posts on home school support group pages from parents that are being criticised, and in some cases even ostracised, because of their decision to home educate their children. Sadly, most of this negativity comes from their own family and friends, the very people they need the most support and understanding from.

 

More and more parents around the world are choosing to home school and the reasons are varied. In my case it is because Sam needs a very different and tailored approach to his learning and we need more flexibility because of hospital visits and therapy sessions. Whatever the reason a parent may have, the decision to home school is not taken lightly and it requires a lot of dedication and work on the part of the parent teacher.

 

I'll leave you with a link to another blog about home schooling that I read this morning on the Home Education Association's Facebook page. It looks at one of the biggest issues people who do not understand home schooling seem to have... socialisation. Yet this issue is usually the least of a parent teacher's worries, because we know it is not an issue.

 

Yes, home education is different, but different is good. What a boring world it would be if we were all the same.

 

http://happinessishereblog.com/2015/01/socialization-look-like-homeschooled-kids/