A list of things we always need more of...

Puzzles: 100 piece - 250 piece puzzles in Nature Girl themes.

Threading beads: ones that are big enough for the focus to be on sequencing not on threading. Melissa and Doug make all sorts and she loves novelty but we need to be able to do repeating patterns so kits need lots of basics in multiple colours/shapes.

Plastercine: Seemed ubiquitous as a child, but is hard to find brands that don't smell like vomit!!!

Board Games and Active Memory Games: Cranium puts out a bunch that are great. She doesn't do that well with competitive games, but theirs are too much fun to worry about who is winning. They combine memory and sequencing and active movement, theatre etc. I wish we still had our "Simon" game.

Outdoor toys: sidewalk chalk, alternatives to a plain old skipping rope (she needs to skip every day), wobble boards, those stilt blocks you walk on, moon boots (do they still make those things???) Not that we have a place for it yet, but man oh man could she use a zipline. The one in the Acadia Woods is too high for her.

Good alphabet books: We just got Neil Gaiman's Dangerous Alphabet book. We need alphabet books that don't insult the intelligence of a brilliant 8 yr old, but will help her with the sequence of the alphabet and letter sounds.

Beginner friendly knitting and crochet supplies: super bulky yarn, large wooden needles and crochet hooks. We're going to learn crochet together and simple patterns for toys would be appreciated - there are all sorts of amigurumi she would love to do!
To be honest DARKMIRROR would love it if she took up crocheting toys! Go check out this book: Creepy Cute Crochet: Zombies, Ninjas, Robots, and More!

Craft project kits that involve following directions - Klutz puts out great ones and she just outgrew the Chicken Socks junior version they have.

BOOKS ON TAPE: This is a huge one! She needs GOOD LITERATURE - UNABRIDGED on tape/cd. The kinds of books you'd love to see her able to read right now. Movie versions don't cut it. She needs to hear the vocabulary, sentence structure, and grammar being used, even if she isn't ready to read it. This is vital to maintaining and growing her vocabulary right now and frankly, expensive. All that quiet time you'd like to see her with her nose in a good book? well she can spend that LISTENING and get the same value from it.

We are thinking about getting a membership with the organization that provides books on tape to the blind and dyslexic. The problem is that while libraries have audiobooks, very few are geared towards children who are past early readers but not ready for teen content. We can get Harry Potter, but very little CLASSIC literature. The reason we've been advised to get her listening to quality audiobooks is that her comprehension is at a 7th grade level but her reading ability is at the beginning of 2nd grade. Without being exposed to the content of good books - the sentence structure, the vocabulary, the advanced grammar, she won't keep developing and growing in her comprehension level. Her reading deficit will stunt her intellectual growth. The readers sold by the blind/dyslexic audio book organization are EXPENSIVE (they guard against copyright infringement) and it is out of our budget right now.

Using Movement and Music to Address Learning Difficulties

For the first while in our homeschool we're going to lay off the academics and focus on finding our feet. Well, not just our feet, our whole body and all 12 (yes 12!) senses.

Touch
Life
Self-Movement
Balance
Smell
Taste
Sight
Temperature/Warmth
Hearing
Language
Concept
Ego

We're going to do an intensive two week long "Extra Lesson" with lots of movement exercises, relaxation techniques, making sounds (which handily enough happens when you sing!) and curative drawing, painting, and modelling.

I'm working on a circle time that can address all of Nature Girl's needs while being unselfconscious enough to involve Wild Thing and Sprout if they want to be involved.

Circle was a disaster with Darkmirror. As a preschooler he was so disruptive in playgroup circle time that we were often asked to leave. His kindergarten teachers pulled out their hair and started going grey dealing with his outbursts. When it came to homeschooling there was no way he was going to be subjected to more circle time work! So I had to sneak in these things in different ways. It was a constantly evolving process, sometimes successful, sometimes not.

Nature Girl is so very different, and the dynamic in our house is different. She loves group activities and gentle cooperative games. She loves helping Wild Thing and Sprout learn to do things, and her unselfconscious patient teaching personality will bve a great help in what we need to do.

We need to go back and give her the experiences she missed in kindergarten and grade one. Things she missed in an academic program that kept a pace she couldn't follow.

There are 5 books living on my bedside table right now

The Extra Lesson: Movement, Drawing and Painting Exercises to Help Children with Difficulties in Writing, Reading and Arithmetic by Audrey McAllen

Take Time: Movement Exercises for Parents, Teachers and Therapists of Children with Difficulties in Speaking, Reading, Writing and Spelling by Mary Nash Wortham & Jean Hunt

Putting the Heart back into Teaching by Stanford Maher & Yvonne Bleach

Enki Education's Kindergarten Circle Materials (sensory integration in game form)

and my childhood tome of Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes