Activities to Help Attention and Listening

With the history of “glue ear” (otitis media) and ear infections, it is no surprise to me that listening is one of LM’s biggest challenges. She was deprived in this important area of sensory stimulation very early in her life, which may explain her current auditory difficulties. So this is one of my most important focus areas.

The ability to pay attention and to listen is a vital skill for encouraging good communication skills. It is more than simply “hearing sounds” as the child needs to learn to filter sounds, to sort out which sounds are important, what they mean, to remember and to act on the new information. It is necessary for having two-way conversations. Here are some easy listening activities I have found, which are appropriate for young children:

“LM, LM, what do you hear?”

This is a simple activity we have been doing on the way to LM’s school, which is a good 15 minute walk. I ask LM to listen carefully to the sounds around and tell me what she can hear (e.g. card driving on the road, a plane flying, wind blowing, birds singing, etc.)

Copying Sounds

I have filled a variety of containers with rice, pasta, beads, etc. I put them on the table in front of LM and sit opposite her. I then ask her to turn away and listen. I pick a container and shake it while she is not looking. I then ask her to turn back and find the container I have just used and make the same sound. I recently started to make it more complicated by making a sequence of sounds and asking LM to make the sounds in the same order.

Songs and Stories

Quite often when I am reading a book for LM, her attention starts drifting off. When that happens, I give her a rattle and ask her to shake it every time a particular character or action is mentioned (e.g. “wolf” in “Three Little Pigs”). To make it more difficult, you can ask to do different sounds for different characters.

Drumming

I play a pattern of beats on the table with chop sticks and get LM to repeat it. I vary the strength and the rhythm of the sounds. To make it more difficult, you could use a variety of surfaces to bang on (e.g. different saucepan lids), a variety of sound-makers (shakers, rattles).

I will probably be updating this post if I find more activities of this sort.

Bye for now!

Speech and Language Therapy - Another DIY Project

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have been searching different resources for some games and activities to help LM with her speech and language. Sadly, the UK National Health System has cut down on individual speech and language therapy system (if there was an “angry” font, I would have used it for writing this!) and we can't afford hiring professional help. As much as I understand that one needs to be qualified to help a speech-delayed child, I guess doing something about it is better than nothing.

I have found a few interesting activities and I will be writing these up here as I go. My plan at this stage is to focus primarily on language development, but I will be doing some work on speech and articulation too.

I can’t remember if I mentioned that LM is being raised in a tri-lingual environment, not because she has overly ambitious parents, but simply by the nature of our family composition. While my first language is Russian, her dad’s is Catalan, and, since we don’t speak each other’s languages, we have to communicate in English, which is also the language of the environment we live in. I can’t do much to help LM’s Catalan, but apart from Russian and may be even more than on Russian, I will certainly focus on English, which will be the language of instruction once LM starts school.

My current target areas are:

1.    Attention and Listening

2.    Comprehension

3.    Vocabulary Building

4.    Expanding Sentences

5.    Grammar

6.    Telling Stories

7.    Interaction

I will be using these to label my posts to make search easier for those who may be interested in this information.

Just a Quick Update

I have been quite busy recently and I haven’t updated my blog in a long time, so I decided to write a quick post just to show I am still around!

First of all, thank you Reei for becoming my follower! I am very excited and flattered! Reei has her own blog which is a great read and very insightful.

I am currently doing some research on the different ways to help kids’ speech and language development and will be writing about my findings soon. This is LM’s biggest challenge at the moment and as we have been generally let down by the National Health System, who have introduced further cuts to the funding and have cancelled all individual S&L sessions, I will need to do a lot of DIY work here.

For now, I just wanted to thank all those who visited and commented on my blog.

LM’s Mum

Egg Carton Math

I would like to vary LM’s experience with numbers and, inspired by Numicon, I came up with this idea of recycling egg cartons:

As you can tell, omelettes have featured extensively on our family menu recently!

Well, although these are far from the nice and sleek Numicon shapes, and they certainly do have limitations, I think they can do the job of providing a mental reference for numbers. There are a few activities I am going to do with LM and, if these go well, I may splash on the real thing.

My current list of activities, starting with the most basic, are:

1.   Sequencing the “shapes” from 1 to 10 and backwards;

2.   Matching number symbols to “shapes”;

3.   Odd/even numbers;

4.   Larger/smaller numbers;

5.   Understanding two-digit numbers (place value);

6.   Exploring number bonds for different numbers, e.g. 10 can be made of 1 and 9, 2 and 8, etc;

7.   Basic arithmetic, e.g. adding one more to each “shape” to get the consecutive one, or doing subtractions by covering some of the cups.

8.   Using the "shapes" as frames and practicing counting and arythmetic with small objects (placing them in the individual cups).

I suppose, I could stretch these further. If you have more ideas, let me know!

LM's Mum

New Challenges with Old Puzzles

Completing jigsaw puzzles are a great educational activity, which helps to develop manual dexterity, hand-eye coordination, memory, reasoning, concentration, etc., and I am happy it has been one of LM’s favourite activities. However, after completing any given puzzle a couple of times, she seems to start losing interest in it, so I have been looking for ways to “challenge up” her old puzzles. Here are a couple tricks I have learned:

1.   You can mix two or more different puzzles, depending on the difficulty, for example two 50-piece puzzles or three 30-piece ones are fine for LM for now as she is comfortable with 100-piece puzzles.

2.   Another way is to ask your child to do the puzzle upside-down with the pictures facing the table and with the shapes of the cuts as the only guide. LM quite liked this new approach!

If you know any other way to make a puzzle a bit more challenging, please let me know.

Music for Little Mozarts - Music for LM?

Although teaching playing music to LM is by far not the biggest priority for me at this stage, I would hate not to give her some sort of introduction to it. Besides, it is suggested that “playing a musical instrument significantly enhances the brain's sensitivity to speech sounds” and “could help normal children as well as those with developmental problems”.

So after some research and thanks to the brillkids forum (which, by the way, is indeed a brilliant forum!), I have been pointed in the direction of “Music for Little Mozarts” series by Alfred Publishing. There is a free downloadable sampler at http://www.mflm.com/ which gives a bit more detail about the programme.

This programme can be purchased as a deluxe package (containing Level 1 only), but coming at a fairly steep £45, this, unfortunately, was not an option for me. So as much as I would like the whole kit, I decided to limit myself to a Level 1 Lesson Book, Level 1 Workbook and a set of Flashcards (the plush characters could become potential Christmas gifts though!). The set arrived yesterday and I already laminated some of the flashcards (the laminating maniac I am!).

I have gone through the first few pages and will need to think how to adjust it to LM’s peculiar learning style. Quite incidentally, and again on the same forum, I also learned about a series of “How to Teach Piano to Kids” lessons by Expert Village on YouTube, which ties up nicely with the “Music for Little Mozarts” approach and which is something I will definitely be referring to. (By some reason the lessons do not appear listed in order, so in case you, like me, get lost among the videos on the playlist, here is the order I think they should have been listed: the lesson, appearing as the last one, is, in fact, Lesson 1, the first one is Lesson 2, eighth – Lesson 3, fifth – Lesson 4, seventh – Lesson 5, ninth – Lesson 6, fourth – Lesson 7, third – Lesson 8, second – Lesson 9, sixth – Lesson 10.)

Sadly, I can’t afford buying or even hiring a piano at this stage, so I am hoping to go as far as I can with a little electronic piano LM got as a present from her relatives, and see where it takes us (wish me luck!).

Anyhow, I am not going to rush it at all and will only offer it to LM every so often, as the much more imperative staff we need to go thought with her on a daily basis leaves hardly any time for anything “extracurricular”.

I do hope she takes to it and likes it just like I do!

Calendar Time – October 2010

Here is a short update on our calendar time (you can read my previous calendar post here).

Apart from the new header, I have now added cards with the words “yesterday”, “today” and “tomorrow”, which we attach to the bottom of the corresponding number card with the help of tiny decorative pegs.

It was LM who gave me the idea: the first couple of times after we had put up a new number on the board, she would take the next one from the hook at the bottom of the board and attempt to pin it in the following cell. I explained to her that that was something we would do “tomorrow”. So now every time we put up the new date, she would point to the following card on the hook and say, “That’s tomorrow!”

This month I also started using our calendar time for doing some simple math activities. We count forward all the number cards we have so far put up and then, more importantly, we count them backwards, as it is something I haven’t done with LM so far. This has been quite painless so far as we have started with just a few numbers and will be gradually increasing them to 30.

I also decided to let LM choose the colour of the pin with which we attach the card to the board to create a pattern. For example, this month we have started with the easiest ABAB pattern and we alternate red and green pins.

That’s all for now but I will be adding more activities to our calendar time as it has so far been a big hit with LM.

DIY Pattern Blocks

I managed to procure a few magnetic foam sheets quite cheaply at HobbyCraft and made a set of pattern blocks. These are a great math activity and help strengthen visual skills, shape and pattern recognition. LM is now using these to build patterns and to recreate images on a baking sheet:

The magnetic backing is very helpful as it stops the blocks from moving around, so LM does not get frustrated and can show the end result to her daddy!

There are many pattern block mats available for free downloading on the web. I have printed and laminated the above and a few more from http://www.prekinders.com/ (by the way, you can find many more great ideas there!). Each mat can be printed either as an outline or in colour for a younger learner.

LM is very confident playing with these so I removed all the lines inside the images and gave her only the silhouettes, just to make it a bit more of a challenge. So this now also became a great activity to develop logic and spatial reasoning.

I guess, tangrams would be a good next step from here!

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to” (Cheshire Cat, “Alice in Wonderland”)

Last week I finally sat down and thought through all the areas I would like to cover in my “home-school” and made my current priority list. I felt that I was starting to lose the sight of the big picture as I easily get carried away by my and LM’s current favourite activities, which may not be necessarily the most important for LM at this stage.

The free X-Mind software came in handy as I could actually map out the main areas of focus and, as a result, I can now have my plan all on one page! It is not a curriculum, as this is all a bit too raw, it is simply a mind-map of the various areas which I would like to help my daughter develop. I have assigned a priority to each area to keep on track of what is most important.

My “map” so far covers (in the order of importance):

1.     Speech and Language Development;

2.     Social and Emotional Development;

3.     Play and Creative Development;

4.     Pre-Academic and Academic Learning;

5.     Motor Movement and Coordination;

6.     Right-Brain Development;

7.     Music;

8.     Art;

9.     Science.

I then broke each area into sub-areas, and then each sub-area into further specific lessons which we are currently working on and the lessons to be started soon.

This is far from being finished and is not set in stone, so I will be changing it as we go and as priorities change. But it is good to see where we want to get to!

So Do I!

We had an appointment with a paediatrician this week to assess LM’s development. Although the doctor was overall pleased with LM’s progress, her speech, language and communication are still severely delayed.

She is roughly where she should be or slightly delayed on most of the other criteria. I was not surprised to hear that LM is quite advanced in her visual skills and, according to the doctor, this is her way to compensate for the weakness in her auditory skills, which is what often happens with children with early chronic ear infections.

Overall it was a more positive meeting, as this time round a “multidisciplinary assessment” to exclude autism did not dominate the discussion as it happened a year ago. The paediatrician thinks at this stage it is not necessary and would like to see LM again in 9 months. She commented on how interactive LM was and her good eye contact, as well as her "very good concentration". She seems to have noticed a lot of potential in LM and, in her own words, she wants “to see even more results in nine months’ time”.

Well, so do I!

Calendar Time - September 2010

Somehow I always feel that September is a great month to start something new – to make a new resolution, sign up for a new course, refresh the CV, bin that clutter, etc. I guess it must have something to do with the end of summer holidays and the start of the new academic year, which after many years of attending numerous schools and a few years of working as a teacher, has been firmly ingrained in me.

This September, I am celebrating the beginning of the new academic year with the start of this blog, which is something I have wanted to do for a while, and this little DIY project:

My daughter is a visual learner and I hope this will help her grasp some temporal concepts, such as dates, months of the year, days of the week, and seasons. Our mornings now start with fixing the new date on the board and saying out loud what it is. We then change the day of the week to the current one. I also make LM look out of the window and decide what the weather is like outside and change the sticker as necessary. She seems to be enjoying this new routine.

I spent a few hours trying to find a ready-made board calendar set online and was quite surprised at the very limited choice available to the UK. So I decided to make one myself. I must say it has been quite a time-consuming process, but I am pleased with the result and I know LM will be using this calendar for a while.

I used a cork board and yellow sticky tape to create the calendar outline. I also printed out the month header and the numbers, stuck them on cheap stripy wrapping paper and laminated each piece to make them last. I then punched holes in each number and hang them on a hook under the calendar (I used the hook from one of LM’s broken hangers and stuck it to the back of the board). I use coloured pins to attach the numbers to the board (although LM is old enough to handle these, she only does it under my supervision, so if you have a very young child and would like to do this activity, you may consider using some alternatives, such as Velcro).

The pieces under the calendar are:

1.   An envelope (laminated) with days of the week – I made these the same way I made the month header and the numbers. There are pieces of Velcro attached to the back of each card and there is another piece on the front of the envelope to hold the current day card;

2.   A weather envelope little holding pictures of different weather conditions with a piece of Velcro on the back to go on the front of the envelope – all laminated;

3.   A seasons chart with a little arrow – also laminated and hung on the number hook.

I used free Microsoft clipart and tweaked it a bit to design the printable pieces. If anyone would like to use these and commit to this project, please let me know, I will be happy to share the files.

This is still very much a work-in-progress and I am planning to add a few more things to it in the nearest future. I think LM is ready for some more calendar activities. I will post about them separately.

Bye for now,

LM’s Mum

First Post

I guess a few lines about myself and LM would be in place...

I am currently out of work and the biggest part of my life right now is raising my daughter who has just turned four. LM is not a typically developing child and there is no agreed professional opinion regarding her. There is a wide range of labels of varying degree of optimism, which could probably stick to my daughter, ranging from “speech impaired”, to “ASD”, to “late bloomer”, to “visual-spatial learner”, etc. All of these labels would probably give some truth about her, with a bit of tweaking, but at the same time would neither fully, nor entirely correctly describe her.

Lables, even the most optimistic, are large-stroke, confining and static. My daughter is unique, limitless and changing - just like any other child. And just like any other child’s, her path will be different from anybody else’s. My job is to help her start it confidently and firmly, and work on her strengths and her challenges while taking into account her learning style .

I have shifted my focus away from looking for a label, particularly since at least at this stage and within the area covered by our post code, the practical benefit of it is close to nil. I have been doing quite a bit of research and, with the help of some prefessional advice, started my own “DIY home-based intervention”, and I learn as I go. LM is a bright child and a quick learner provided she is given the opportunity to learn her way. She has been doing great and she has kept surprising me with the things she can do.

I decided to start this blog to keep some sort of a record of the different things we are doing. I hope this will keep me better organised and will give me a sense of direction. LM is a very visual learner, which is why I create a lot of DIY props as I cannot always find what I need at an affordable price. I have been taking a lot of inspiration from the blogs of other homeschooling mums and have also come up with a few ideas of my own, which I will be sharing here too.

I will be happy to meet other like-minded people online – you are welcome to my blog!

LM’s Mum