What to do when a jackhammer evicts you from your house:

Go to the park and read.. inbetween racing about playing on the play structure - The Wise Enchanter and Paddle to the Sea. 
Live the dream, pirate ship (actually  its the Kipawo - the old ferry that used to run from here)

Then go visit the miniature horses at Noggin's Farm.

Working with the alphabet

GREAT A

little a

This is pancake day! (formdrawing actually!)

FESTIVAL UPDATE

Hooray for Nature Girl's School!  Her choir won  GOLD!

Now to focus on other spring things...swimming, growing things, the weather, reading, and probability!

Rain Pictures that Go with the Poetry below

 

 

Can you guess who did each?

ADD and the aural learner

Yesterday we visited Nature Girl's doctor at the ADD Clinic. Her EEG did not show any absence seizures so her diagnosis of ADD (inattentive type) stands.

Nature Girl's learning style is aural - her ability to retain information this way is beyond phenomenal actually. Because she is so aural though, noise distraction is a HUGE issue for her, given her inattentiveness. She needs to learn in a quiet environment - no ambient sound distractions. At home, no television, no radio. Soft instrumental music or open windows that let in the sounds of nature are not an issue - they serve to help focus attention apparently. Her doctor wants Nature Girl to try muffling noise distractions in the classroom by wearing headphones in class. So this weekend we're going to go look for earbuds so they don't stand out.

I need to find her an MP3 player for audiobooks so that'll be part of the search too.

The Water Cycle and Poetry Month

We've been studying the water cycle. We live in a fabulous place for it because within a thirty minute drive we can experience EVERYTHING from a mountain stream to lakes, to winding rivers, to waterfalls, to the ocean, and the world's strongest highest tides. It's very concrete.


Thomas Locker has written some of the most beautiful poetic books that combine science with art. Nature Girl has been POURING over, BATHING in the beauty of his book - WATER DANCE (and CLOUD DANCE).

Yesterday she and Wild Thing wrote and illustrated rain poems.

Wild Thing's poem:

RAIN TOYS!

bow and arrows
water guns
swords
puddles
my yellow booties
rain in my mouth
rain in my bucket
MUD!

Nature Girl's poem:

Rainy days in the city are boring:

You fight
You cry
You snarl
You're bored

You can't go outside:

It's wet
People can't see you on the street
The deck is slippery
There are no puddles you can play in
You might splash someone

I wish it was sunny.

Once I upload them I'll post their drawings.

It's Festival Season!

Life suddenly gets interesting and full of concerts to attend and white shirts to keep clean and Mary Janes to "please don't scuff the toes right through like last year!" and a schedule to not lose, and lots of musical theatre this year as the competition pieces are from Annie and The Sound of Music. And we start swimming lessons on Sunday too. And this weekend is the gardening workshop at the farmer's market. But this weekend we're still going to make time to rent out Annie and The Sound of Music and West Side Story for good measure. Fill the bucket with the things she loves!

Reading Aloud and the Magic of Poetry

Shel Silverstein, Ogden Nash, Edward Lear, AA Milne, Dennis Lee .... who can read good poetry and NOT want to read it aloud?

Right now Nature Girl and I are doing an "I'll Read, You Read" walk through Where The Sidewalk Ends (and she'll be firm on pointing out it is the anniversary edition with the poem "The Truth about Turtles")

If anyone ever doubts the power and benefit of social stories or curative storytelling with inattentive children have them present that child with Shel Silverstein's poem THE LOSER

The Loser Mama said I'd lose my head If it wasn't fastened on. Today I guess it wasn't 'Cause while playing with my cousin It fell off and rolled away And now it's gone. And I can't look for it, 'cause my eyes are in it And I can't call to it Cause my mouth is on it (Couldn't hear me anyway 'Cause my ears are on it), Can't even think about it 'Cause my brain is in it. So I guess I'll sit down On this rock And rest for just a minute....

I got to this poem and was affronted by the title and wasn't going to read it but Nature Girl grabbed the book and said "I love this one! I'M going to read it!"

Wild Thing Island

An issue here is how to involve Wild Thing in the homeschooling groove without making him feel he has to DO anything.

So far he takes part in a few circle games that involve the sea, he paints with us and he LOVED making a Wild Thing tracing. His contains no vital organs, lots of pirates, and dinosaurs and buried treasure though. He's always up for drawing cutting and pasting so handwork is an inclusive activity. He's taking an interest in letters and numbers and he has made attempts to write "pirate". The more academic stuff we cover in circle doesn't interest him at all and he'd rather play with the Sprout then.

Body Geography - Nature Girl Land

Nature Girl Land

One of our body geography lessons is to do tracings of yourself and then itemize your parts and identify them. This was a tough job for Nature Girl. She avoided getting down to it by making an elaborate game of Nature Girl Land and all those crosses? Those are airplanes. She flitted from part to part. Finally I said " start by identifying your left and right side." (and while it looks reversed - she was right - she was identifying HER parts as we traced them onto the paper.

It took two days of gently prodding for her to label things. We'll return to this one in a couple of months time and I think we'll do it in a less permanent medium - sidewalk chalk!

The rationale behind this exercise is like playing simon says - it helps you identify any issues with left and right, and you also get a clear idea of how in touch they are with their body.

Working with Modelling Beeswax

Beeswax is a great modelling material for children 5 and up.

Before the age of five it is not really pliable enough for very young children. Before age 5 I fully endorse the use of MANY different play dough recipes (Maryann Kohl's book Mudworks is constantly being pulled out to find something new to try), real clay (dig it up yourself if you can!) and nice smelling plastercine.

At 5 a child is settled enough and has the finger strength necessary to use the beeswax.

If you buy a box of it you, and your child, will be frustrated by the slabs. I prepare my beeswax for the kids by tearing it into small pieces (1 inch by 2 inch pieces and making discs, I warm the torn pieces on a ricebag, then roll it into balls and squish the balls flat. We keep our beeswax basket on a table in the sun.

When you give it to a child tell them to warm it in their hand until they can roll it into a ball again. Once it is warmed enough to roll into a ball they can start pulling out shapes from the ball. It is great for delicate natural items like sprouts and leaves. As you pull it out it transforms in your hands from a fiddlehead, to a fern, or a bean to a beansprout, to a young bean plant.

I've planned lessons on the alphabet sounds to do with Nature Girl and I want to make sure she is fully engaged in them and not at all self conscious about this return to first grade work. So while I tell our alphabet stories I will create icons from the stories out of beeswax then transform them into the letter. She can watch, she can copy me if she wants, but it is far enough away from "This is the letter A. Lets start the alphabet all over again" that I know she'll be interested.

We'll be using modelling materials a lot to work with letters and letter formation. The beeswax letters will be sturdy enough to put aside to use again (unlike the plastercine)

Natural Science Class meets the Nature Walk

A commenter on my family blog, Wild Culture, gave me a link to The Woodland Trust for printable activity booklets for nature walks. I made the kids Nature Bags and these are great additions!

The best one I've found so far is the Woodland Log which is a great starter for nature journalling.

The PLAY booklets give seasonally appropriate activities you can include on your walks (things like making storytelling devices, bringing home a fallen twig with leaf buds to put in water to watch it burst into leaf).

I've also printed up their weather diary and found a little weather station to put up in the backyard it has a thermometer, a wind gauge, and a rain gauge.

Slowly but surely we will get our outdoor classroom set up.

What exactly does dyslexia look like?

Nature Girl engrossed in a book

It does not mean a child can't decode the alphabet. It does not mean a child can't decode words.


It means reading is at times painstakingly slow. It means words are missed and text is jumped around in. It means decoding the same little words over and over again no matter how many times you've seen them. It means things that need to be decoded quickly are often missed. It means when text is out of context it can't be easily understood.

The side effect of this does not have to mean a child who doesn't read for pleasure.

Nature Girl reads to gather information and she reads for entertainment, but not if she feels under pressure. When her anxiety about reading mounts her ability to read drops even further. In the classroom she always feels under pressure. At home she doesn't have that pressure and there is a stack of about 20 books in her bed.

Remedial lessons are going to be a big part of our homeschooling, but providing that pressure free environment is the most important thing we can do for her.

She's reading a book on natural science above. I know her comprehension was excellent because she explained several animal behaviours to me afterwards. Yesterday she asked me what M-A-T spelt because it was seen out of context to her. We were at the carwash and a clip for mats was on the wall. I expect that my explanation of what the clip was for will provide enough context for her to remember the sign as well.

Our first set of sight words is "survival" words - things like EXIT, DANGER, HOT, WASHROOM. We have flashwords of them and are playing a kind of word bingo where she gets points for finding them in the environment. I think we'll photograph them in the environment next, so she recognizes the most common signs for them (like lighted EXIT signs).

Another big project is writing her name. She can spell her first name (actually her middle name) but not her last name, or her actual first name. She's quite resistant to this, no one at school has ever asked her to.

I considered asking her to write letters to people but she balks at it because the task seems so big every time I've tried. Maybe I'll transcribe the letter and she can JUST copy the address information on the envelopes.

SUCCESS - We have the days of the week down!

It only took 13 days.

We made up a game of doing the sequence of days as a round, "Sunday, Monday, Tuesday Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday STOP" then "Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday STOP" through until we got to Saturday as the start day again.

We traced the words with our fingers each day too.

Today I took down the days of the week and shuffled them and asked her to turn over a card and put it in it's place (so she couldn't simply rely on putting them in order in her hand, she needed to read each card and actually understand where in the week on the calendar it belonged.) Friday went up , then Monday, then Sunday, then she paused holding Thursday and after about 4 seconds she put it up in the correct place and looked at me over her shoulder with a big smile. I gave her a big thumbs up then she quickly put up Saturday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

I asked her how she had remembered where Thursday went and she said "I knew there were two T days and I knew the first T day had a u after the T So when I saw the H I knew this card was the second word and that meant it was Thursday and Thursday was right before Friday."

Why Nature Girl is called Nature Girl

I firmly believe that we need to honour our children's interests. I'll admit I'm glad no one so far has been into hockey because I would be an awful hockey mom, it would really be feigned interest.

Since Nature Girl was a wee mite she has absolutely loved the forest. She has been able to identify plants since before she could talk. At four she would lose herself completely in digging in the undergrowth exploring fungi below the surface of mushrooms.

Nature Girl is learning to read with small chunks of writing. Field Guides, both those for children and those for adults, have been a God send for her.

While we make tons of time for free exploration in the woods, I'm happy to hang back while they splash through streams and turn over logs, she is at the age now where information gathering is important too.

For this The Harriet Irving Botanical Gardens and KC Irving Environmental Science Centre is an awesome resource. Luckily for us, it's a 5 minute walk through the woods from our house. It also helps that the woman who runs programming there, Melanie Priesnitz, was unschooled throughout her childhood, so has a soft spot for homeschoolers!









One of the resources we'll be using for cross curricular activities is The Private Eye. It really is a great resource for anyone looking for inclusive multi- sensory curricula. This works for a preschooler like Wild Thing all the way to an inquisitive adult like myself. And, ahem, if you ever have to deal with a lice infestation the jewellers loupes are great!

One of the things that belongs on our wish list is a pond box and a few of these specimen boxes with magnifier lids - so they don't need to hold bugs and other crawlers to look at them.

The Extra Lesson Painting Lesson "Yellow sun Blue sky"

Yellow Sun in Blue Sky

This is a wet on wet watercolour painting exercise so you start by soaking your watercolour paper, lay it on a painting board and use a clean sponge to press it town to the board pushing out any air bubbles and taking off any pools of water on the paper.

The child starts by painting a ball of golden yellow in the centre of the page. They should have the centre be deep yellow and have it lighten as it reaches the edge of the ball.

Then they use ultramarine blue and starting on the edges of the paper draw the blue into the centre without touching the yellow. They should have a deep blue at the edge and gradually becoming lighter as it reaches the yellow sun.

The next painting lesson you have them reverse the order - blue sky reaching in first, then paint the sun.

You repeat this lesson until the child can create that balanced colour graded image. After they can do that you move onto using a cool and warm yellow and a cool and warm blue, then they can add another motif along with the sun, then create a whole composition.

Now this is their Extra Lesson work - by all means let them just paint at other times!

This painting exercise is about balance - it is therapy for anxiety. "It allows the child to let go and draw themselves together" There is a lot in The Extra Lesson, and all sensory integration work about expansion and contraction.

Nature Girl LOVES doing this.

The dominance form AKA The Snail Trail

It has come to my attention that I am getting a number of curious visitors to this particular entry. I want to say that I do not advertise this blog, it was set up to keep in touch with far flung family with regards to our homeschooling journey. My regular readers include my children's father, their stepmother, their aunts, uncle, and grandparents. Looking at the traffic on my site, there are 12-19 visits a month to this blog. My family accounts for just about all of that. You'd have to be hunting pretty hard to find this blog in a search engine, it simply doesn't get enough traffic to warrant it. The discussion in the comments up until this "controversy" started, was entirely with family members. I have no intention of making my homeschool blog a private by invitation only blog because frankly, there are family members who would not ask for a permission and I still want them to read here even if they wouldn't feel comfortable asking. I asked KP if I should take down my posts about the work we are doing using The Extra Lesson and offered to do so. However, this is the simplest and most direct way for me to communicate with family regarding our homeschool journey and this kind of therapy is part of what we do. It is important that I share it with my family.

This is the dominance form

How this works...I kinda feel funny explaining this, if you've watched Mystery Men you know when the guy who can bend spoons has them all doing exercises to hone their skills and Roy is balancing a hammer on his head while wearing watermelons on his feet? I kinda think people look at this and think it's equally bizarre. So I'll explain it, but please reserve judgement until you try to DO this exercise.

It's like that with all Extra Lesson work - especially the rod exercises and bean bag exercises. If you don't understand where the difficulty is in coordinating these actions, the level of thought and body awareness necessary to do them without actively thinking - TRY THEM YOURSELF.

Okay, the dominance form....

First YOU draw the dominance form on bristol board or heavy cardstock. It is supposed to be 20x30 inches If I remember correctly. The Extra Lesson specifies that you do it in RED.

You place this form (drawn on a large piece of bristol board) against the wall at floor level (tape it in place) then have the child sit in front of the form close enough that they can reach it with bent legs.

The child draws/traces the form WITH THE BODY PART INDICATED - NOT WITH CRAYONS! working left to right in a sequence (right handed children work with the right and left handed children with the left)

You work up to repeating the sequence with each form 3 times with a settled rest between each time drawing

1. both feet together

2. right foot

3. right foot and hand together

4. right foot, right eye together (cup left eye or close it if possible)

5. right foot, right eye, right hand together

6. both hands held together

7. right hand

8. right hand right eye

9. right eye

10. your choice of body part - we go for laughs - a nose, a tongue, a bum

Don't let the child collapse backwards during the exercise, they can lean back on hands only for things like two feet, or foot and hand, but stop them if they try to lie down, or lean back on elbows.

This is part diagnostic and part curative - it readily shows poor body geography - confusion with directions. It points to memory blocks - difficulty following the motion despite repetition. Doing the exercise helps with body geography by reinforcing their dominant side with the constant repetiton of that side in the exercise, they must cross the midline frequently in executing the motions. They must train their eyes to follow the form with the hand and foot motions which helps with tracking ability. It helps with memory by it's very routine and rhythm.

I'm sure there's a whole lot of anthroposophical information on moving from the physical to the etheric body...but I'm not well read on the subject.

What I know is that Nature Girl rolls her eyes at this exercise but really gets into it. She finds it physically challenging, and really has to think when she working with hand and foot. She's been doing this exercise a few times a week since November and I've seen a huge improvement in that time with this exercise and her ability to track text.

Nature Walk: Every Single Day

This should be written on a prescription pad from our doctor. It is the key to healthy children.

"Our woods aren't frozened up anymore!" - Wild Thing

Stone steps...

Inside the forest hut....

Getting reacquainted with an old tree friend.

APRIL Circle

Group forming (sing til everyone joins together and is in circle)

Round and round the earth is turning
Always turning round to morning
And from morning round to night

Speech - seasonally appropriate songs (all have movement involved too)

Drip drip drop
Little April showers
We're getting wet
And we don't care at all
Drip, drop, drip drip drop

Use fingers to tap drops on head and arms, whole body! - this develops tactile sense)

It rains on Sprout
It rains on Wild Thing
It rains and rains on Mummy!
But it didn't rain on Nature Girl
She has a HUGE UMBRELLA!

(repeat so everyone gets a chance to make the big umbrella - a big body X or Y stretch)

Its raining its pouring (hands drum on head)
The roots are getting wet (touch your toes)
The rain will help the flowers grow (grow back upright)
It quickly melts away the snow (sink back down)
Its raining, its pouring (stand up while fingers drum on head)
My boots are getting wet (touch your toes again!)

March in circle with the classic for silly kids:

It's raining, its pouring
The old man is snoring
He went to bed with a bump on his head
And didn't get up til morning.

ENKI action verse: Tall stand the Sailor Men

(ENKI materials are copyrighted, so I won't post the whole thing but this is a verse for Lateral midline crossing, and heavy on the Proprioceptive system work)

Looking glass EYE SPY - right now we're focussing on looking with the right eye for Nature Girl - she's the only one who gets that instruction. For now it's just looking - as we go on we'll combine this with out phoneme work.

ENKI action verse: Waters

(Crossing the midline repeatedly in different ways - right/left, horizontally, and forward and back)


Rolly polly rolly polly up up up!
Rolly polly rolly polly down down down!
Rolly polly rolly polly out out out!
Rolly polly rolly polly in in in!

Rolling the hands round in a spiral following instructions - Proprioceptive system - naval radiation)

12345
Once I caught a fish alive
678910
But I let him go again
Why did you let him go?
Because he bit my finger so!
Which finger did he bite?
My little finger on the (?)

Act it out grasping up with 12345 and down with 678910 - helps with body awareness (lateral midline crossing and quickly identifying left or right)

EXTRA LESSON Body Geography Simon Says

In this exercise you give instructions to the child without acting anything out yourself. At 8 I have Nature Girl using the terms right and left, with a younger child you start with right, and then move on to left after a few months. Nature Girl is nearly 9 so we are crossing the midline and having her touch her left side with her right side and vice versa. You build up to a verbal sequence of three (Nature Girl can't handle more than one at a time right now) "take your right hand and touch your left ear, then touch your right knee, and your left big toe"

Nature Girl does not have a firmly developed right dominance yet. This usually happens between ages 6 and 7. Why is this important? Firmly developed dominance happens at the same time that there is a growth spurt in the left hemisphere of the brain and both hemispheres have developed localized and holistic functions. - as a result concentration span increases, language development is in sync with the imagination, and the individual has more control over visual perception - able to perceive the switch between 2 and 3 dimensions instantaneously. This is necessary for learning to be done at a subconscious - comfortable level.

Dance thumbkin dance
Dance ye merrymen everyone
Thumbkin can dance alone, thumbkin can dance alone
Dance merrymen dance
Dance ye merrymen everyone

Dance foreman dance
Dance longman dance
Dance ringman dance (ringman cannot dance alone)
Dance little man dance

hand and finger coordination fingerplay (necessary for handwriting)

ENKI Action Verse: RAIN

Tactile and auditory - this one involves running the fingers over the entire body tapping, pounding, dancing lightly and in big washing rubdown movements head to toe.

Clap, Snap, Stomp sequence game

This is another sequencing game and Nature Girl has a hard time with following right now. It's an Extra Lesson game from Take Time. Make a rhythm sequence to follow clap clap snap stamp stamp (for instance) Nature Girl is more likely to engage if she gets to lead to. So go back and forth leading the sequence.

Verse for formdrawing forms

Little drops of water (vertical lines)
Little grains of sand (scoop a curved line)
Make the mighty ocean (curving running wave form)
And the pleasant land (smooth hillock running form)

Great A little a (body makes a large A quickly crouch to make little a)
Today is pancake day (clap with beat)
Toss the ball high (catch ball tossed)
Throw the ball low (throw the ball back)
Those that come after (salute)
Can sing heigh ho! (canter round circle while next child gets turn)

This is my right hand I'll raise it up high
This is my left hand I'll touch the sky
Right hand left hand
Roll them around
Left hand, right hand
Pound, pound, pound!

Bean bags or balls tossing games according to frustration level

The rainbow toss:

Bean bag in right hand toss in arc over head to catch in left - feet planted
Pass bag back to right across midline in front
Practice doing it without losing balance or looking up.
Switch sides (start with bag in left hand)

Crawling toss

Throw balls into basket
Crawl to retrieve

Relaxation exercises

Yoga - salute the sun
shaking out hands left hand then right hand
shoulder roll
Head drop
Deep relaxed belly breathing - remind child to pause!
Low sounding - MMMMMMMM
Sing vowels (short vowel sounds)

Listening game: listen intently to natural sounds and list (its nice to lie down for this, heads together making a spoked wheel - in our case a peace symbol)

Focusing verse

I am a star
From heaven I came - point above
To earth below - point down
My friends to meet - hands to sides
To be truthful in deed - right hand over heart
To love all I know - left hand crosses right
To walk with my angel - hands behind shoulders
To shine like a
STAR! - jump into star form

Closing verse (sing)

Birds in the air (hands link and fly through air)
Fish in the water (hands swim through ocean)
Stones on the land (fist on flattened hand)
I'm in God's hand (both hands cupped gently then together upright as to pray)

Namaste!

For those of you reading to get an idea about circle time - this is NOT your average circle! In a kindergarten you'd have a circle calling song (same all year) , a group forming action verse, one verse for balance and rhythm, 1 for midline crossing, 1 for music prep, one for spinning (proprioceptive) and one for closing (same all year) 7 verses - 2 you use all the time, 5 new ones to learn each season, and you'd work up to that!

Because Nature Girl is doing Extra Lesson therapy I have incorporated as much of that therapy as possible into circle so it stays playful and fun. She has anxiety issues and I need to keep this moving quickly so she doesn't get caught up in something she perceives as difficult - our circle has 22 parts! AND I've been doing these verses for a long time - I had 5 to learn new in this whole big thing. Learning 5 verses is a lot of work! It really is. I practice in the shower!

First Day - finding our groove

I met Nature Girl at the top of the hill and we walked the second half of her walk home together. Through the Acadia University Woods. We made a mental list of things we wanted to remember to write down when we got home.

But as soon as we got home we did circle, outside under the cloudy sky. Wild Thing joined in exuberantly. Sprout played around us and joined in for a few finger rhymes he found interesting.

Thoughts on circle?

There's some real skill work in our circle on sequencing, repeating patterns, and quickly moving back and forth between two patterns and she got quite agitated if she felt she couldn't do it. I was very mellow and simply repeated the pattern if she needed and dropped the activity and moved on if she was too frustrated. It was a good 45 minutes of activity followed by 15 minutes of skipping and donkey kicks. By the end she was physically spent.

That's when we went inside, lit our candle, said our opening verse and started our work for the day. First we updated the calendar. Then we made our list of remembered things from the walk home. I only intended to write down the list but Nature Girl's poem sprang out of that list. She insisted on working on it until "everything made sense". She was deeply engaged and articulate and mellow.

After the poem was as she wanted it (I transcribed her notes, and she read it to give approval) we read a poem on April from Elsa Beskow's book Around the Year.

I like Nature Girl's poem better. Elsa Beskow's poems don't necessarily translate well but the illustrations and her feeling for each month match our weather perfectly - April is BROWN, and full of dead leaves with little sparks of green. That's what she captures.

We did some formdrawing - straight lines and curves, an infinity symbol which became a butterfly and she did some of her own symetrical forms. She was really relaxed and didn't get at all upset when things weren't perfect.

Then we did the Snail's Path from the Extra Lesson.

I printed up her final poem and she illustrated it.

We put out the candle and called it a day.

Then she plunked herself down with some picture books are read while we made dinner!

The pie is in the oven for dessert right now.

The Walk Home - a poem by Nature Girl

The Walk Home

I hear white rushing waterfall

And see red stream bubbling and giggling

A mountain view and snowy secret path

I feel a mossy spot and see a fairy mound

Songbirds peep and crows caw

Caterpillar crawls and ants go marching one by one

Yellow and purple crocuses bloom in gardens

Tides in, black boat on the sea

I think I found a great solution to the audiobook issue!

I've set up an account for Naturegirl at Kids Audible.com. I'm going to get her an MP3 player and big headphones (that are safer for her hearing than ear buds) for her birthday.

Then, instead of Scholastic (which is NOT what it was when we were kids, it's now full of crappy toy mass marketing tie ins, and a battle every time the catalogues come home), I'll put her book allowance into audio books. People can also get her gift certificates.

It looks to be about half the price of buying cd's for large novels and there are a ton of less expensive books available too (all those classics that aren't under an author's copyright any more).

She can make a list of books she wants and organize it by priority too.

Sensory Integration - Weeding through the Lingo and Finding Good Resources

There's so many BRANDS of programs that deal with the importance of sensory integration in addressing learning disabilities.

Brain Gym
The Extra Lesson
Enki Education's Sensory Integration Program
Ayres
Therapeutic Movement
The SAVE Program (Sensory-motor Auditory Visual Education)

What they all have in common is a belief in the need to look at the whole child and address them as individuals first and then to look at what we all need to have hardwired in to make learning...a comfortable experience.

I have always been drawn to the holistic vision that Waldorf Education is based on. They have almost a hundred years of experience in addressing the needs of children, all children, and their goal is a WHOLE person. Their approach and attitudes towards learning difficulties and differently abled people is amazing.

Over the past 15 years that I've been researching Waldorf Education I've watched the movement become more and more approachable. However when people start digging in to the underlying anthroposophy they're often confounded by the "spiritual science" that is tightly woven into the fabric of their belief in human and planetary potential. I'm finally at a point where I can read Steiner without rolling my eyes in frustration or having an inner voice mocking things as I read along. I understand those that do hear that mocking voice though.

So I was really happy when I found the book Take Time, which is an approachable "accepted" mainstream look at Extra Lesson work. The book was written for parents as well as therapists and there isn't any spiritual science to wade through while you absorb all the practical advise. It's too bad it's so hard to find! It started out as a book by a non-waldorf speech and language pathologist. A few years after it was published she did a revised edition with a curative eurythmist (Waldorf Movement Therapy). Educational books don't often cross international borders and this is a British book. I had to get my copy from the United States! Bob and Nancy's is a great bookstore to deal with though.

Enki Education is, well, simply amazing and if they had packaged curricula for third grade I'd buy it in a heartbeat. They address sensory integration throughout the day. I'm utilizing what I have - their kindergarten materials - and I'll be purchasing their grade 1&2 materials when I can afford to. I find it difficult to take all the technical stuff I've learned regarding movement and turn it into activities we actually want to do without being self conscious about it being "therapy". It is one thing for the curative teacher to get Nature Girl to do exercises for her in an evaluation, it's another thing to seamlessly integrate those movements into our daily life. Enki's materials are just chock full of those exact activities - and they write above every finger rhyme. verse, or game what kind of sensory integration activity it is so you can look at the things you are grouping together and check off that you're hitting all your pointers - tactile, vestibular, balance system, and proprioceptive.

If you find other resources make sure to pass them along!

The Calendar

Just what are we looking at here? How much do we need to cover in the next few months? How much do we need to cover in the next year?

We started today by making a perpetual calendar. Nature Girl and I made season and month and day of the week cards. We made a disc for each day of the month. We made illustrated weather cards and season cards. She could read all the weather cards and the months and the days of the week. She could count confidently from 1 to 31.

She could not put the days of the week in order except for Friday - Saturday - Sunday.

She could not say that the year started with January and ended with December. She couldn't group the months by season. She couldn't sequence the months at all, suggesting that December followed July. She did know that June followed May and July followed June.

She has looked at and worked with a perpetual calendar in the classroom for four years now. I wonder what standards I'm going to be held to. If she still mixes up the months a year from now will I be a failure as a teacher? Does it matter that four elementary teachers have already failed to teach her the order of the days of the week?

I had fantasies of having her reading at grade level in a year's time. But really, that isn't fair to either of us.

On Monday we start at the beginning. We're going to go back to fill in the gaps. Starting with crawling, the most basic set of whole body sequencing movements we ever need to coordinate. Nature Girl skipped crawling and went right to running.

Pray for decent weather because I'd like to spend as much time outside as possible. Rain or shine, I'd like to avoid BLIZZARD like conditions though.

An excellent article on the importance of crawling.

Because he's home, and hovering over my shoulder now, Darkmirror was quick to point out he still can't sequence the months of the year! In fact he still doesn't have his birthday committed to memory. He stumbled over the days of the week. He'll be 16 in 16 days - YOU do the math there. This has nothing to do with intelligence, it has to do with learning differences. He's got the self confidence to accept that, Nature Girl needs to develop it...and hopefully get the sequence down and stored to long term memory!