This Is a Test

For Wade, freedom of speech comes at a high price.  He has had many hours of therapy invested in acquiring the verbal skills other children seem to pluck from the air.  We've been working especially hard on teaching him to speak slowly and clearly.  Without frequent reminders, he tends to rush through his sentences as though he were speaking in shorthand.

Part of his language disorder is cognitive, i.e. lacking the ability to express complex thoughts in ways that make sense to others.  But another part of his language delay stems from a mild muscle weakness in his tongue, lips, and jaw, making proper articulation more difficult to achieve.  When you think about what very minute changes your tongue and lips make to produce each separate vowel sound, for example, it is easier to understand how a slight muscle weakness could significantly garble the clarity of your words.

Sometimes I wish someone would invent little speech bubbles that would automatically float up above his head any time he would speak.  What an amazing technology that would be for the language impaired!  The possibilities would be stunning.*

In the meantime, however, my measuring stick for whether Wade's language is really improving has been to observe how well other people outside of the family can comprehend what he is saying.

So here is a test of your interpretive skills.  This is a video clip during one of Wade's speech therapy sessions this week. Can you understand what he reads from the paper in this clip?

*(After the therapeutic usefulness of the Auto-Bubble Speech Clouds had been thoroughly explored, then you could branch out to other realms such as making your own speech bubbles float above someone else's head.  Imagine what interesting things I could make Nevin say that he never thought, for example.  It would be written ventriloquism.)

Practice Makes...Better

I like the discipline that piano lessons teach Wade.  Many processes are going on simultaneously when he is reading notes and translating that information into isolating the proper fingers on the right keys, while, at the same time, trying to count the rhythm.

Here are two videos taken about a week apart.  It's encouraging to see progress in his ability to focus on a difficult task with only minimal prompting.

He loves music and the piano, but sometimes he tries to shut down if a new concept seems to be too hard.  It takes some perseverance to help him learn and then to sit beside him daily making him focus until the end of the song.  But it really doesn't take long each day to do and learning new skills gives him the confidence that will be the springboard to perfecting further skills, both musically and otherwise.  There is, after all, something to be said for the (significantly modified) Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.

And this week for the first time, he chose to sit down at the piano during his free time, and he played all four of his newest songs completely by himself without taking a break.

In the first video he is counting aloud:  ta for the quarter notes, ta-ah for the half notes, ta-ah-ah-ah for the whole notes, shuh for the quarter rests, shuh-uh for half rests, shuh-uh-uh-uh for the whole rests.

In the second one he is trying to sing the words while keeping the rhythm.  It isn't perfect, but it is one step in that direction!

Adapted Learning

You've heard the statement:  When all else fails, read the directions.

When teaching Wade, however, I've learned that when all else fails, I need to write the directions.

We can tell him something over and over, but sometimes it just doesn't seem to sink in unless he sees it written out.

For instance, he's very good about getting up by himself in the morning (early!), dressing himself, and putting his p.j.'s away.  But for a long time he would forget to take himself to the bathroom until he was doing the Barely Holding It In Dance.  Reminders didn't seem to do any good even though he could dutifully repeat them back to me.

But then I had an idea.  Every evening when I laid out his clothes, I put a note on top that said: "First go potty.  Then get dressed."

 Voila!  It has worked like a charm!

Now when I lay out his clothes, he is religious about putting the sign on top.

Cutting with scissors has also been a difficult skill to perfect.  The last several months though we've been listening to classical music while he cuts and he is doing much better with attending to task and cutting a variety of shapes.   Whether the music is calming to him or whether it just provides a pleasant distraction to a tedious task, I don't know.  But it always has to be Beethoven.

Wade:  Beethoven!
Me: Oh, come on.  How about some Chopin or Mozart today?
Wade:  No, Beethoven!

So Beethoven it is.

I think we're entering a new era in the Cutting with Scissors department (not to be confused with Running with Scissors).  Two times recently he's been quietly busy all by himself in the morning Cutting Things Out.

This time it was his Go Potty First sign all cut out and arranged nicely on top of a pile of four shirts.

We hope this fervor won't digress into Cutting Up Valuable Documents Left Unattended.

And lately, he's been packing a bag every morning in hopes that he will get to stay overnight at Grandma's house.  He remembered p.j.'s, glasses, shoes, socks, shirt, pants, toothbrush and toothpaste, and the First Go Potty sign!  But he forgot to put in any underwear.

That must be why Chris found him that evening dancing outside his bedroom door wearing his pajamas and three pair of his brother's underwear.  

And that's all I've got to say about that.

Simplifying the Learning Process

It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn't use long, difficult words but rather short, easy ones like, "What about lunch?" --Winnie the Pooh

                                                                                                                                                                            

One of the things I've been learning as I work with Wade is how to simplify a learning experience into more manageable tasks.  In other words, we might take seven steps to get up the stairs instead of only two.

Here's what that looks like for memorizing his Sunday school verses.

 We begin Monday morning by writing the verse and reference on flashcards.  I used to write one word per card, but we have now graduated to chunking the words two or three at a time.

We read over the cards several times and then begin turning one card over at a time to leave a blank spot for him to say by memory.  He can peek under the card at any time to check if he forgets the word.  As soon as he can read the verse along with filling in the blank card from memory, then we turn the next card over and he has to say the verse with two blank cards, etc.

We practice every day and when he knows the verse, he gets to call Grandma and say it to her over the telephone.

And now he's got it!

The Graduate

Wade graduated from his Bible Play School Pre-K class last week.

Next in line!

Posing with teachers.

  Celebrating with his best friend Bryan.

Performing at the program.  Wade is the letter S in J-E-S-U-S.

Back home.  Big brother swiped the outfit.

Phantom of the opera...or something.

Summer schedule coming up!  Stay tuned.

Montessori and More

I really never met Maria Montessori until I stumbled into her one day while absorbing massive amounts of information relating to the education of Wade.

I only wish I had met her years ago.

Science is just now beginning to document and verify what Maria learned 100 years ago from simply observing the way children learn best.  She had no brain imaging, no way of seeing inside those little heads and yet she taught the children who were considered to be the unteachable and then applied her learning to all children everywhere.  Brilliant.

I don't believe in rigid adherence to her pedagogy, but her methods can be applied anywhere there are children, parents, and teachers.

Practical life learning

Movement and balance awareness

Can you carry the bell without ringing it?

Can you balance the marble on the tee?

Hands-on learning and creating order by categorizing

Finding order through sequencing

Simplifying  the variables

Early implementation of fine motor activities 

(This picture, Wade says, is a robot holding his ears.)

Visuals, lots of visuals

This is a terrific way to teach odd and even numbers.  Line up your counters (pennies, buttons, or whatever) two by two.  For the odd ones, put the leftover counter at the bottom center.  Then run your finger down the center column while saying odd or even for each number.  On the odd numbers your finger has to stop before hitting the number because it runs into the penny.  On the even numbers, your finger can continue down the path to the number.  What a great illustration for visual learners!

Okay, okay, this is not Montessori!

But it could fall under the category of "prepared environment".

*Links to further reading concerning Montessori learning

Top 10 Montessori Principles for Natural Learning

Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius

Mommy Teach Me: Preparing Your Preschool Child for a Lifetime of Learning

Mommy Teach Me to Read: A Complete and Easy-to-Use Home Reading Program

Mommy's Vocabulary Lesson

Drink until you hear a sneezle and then go show me something with a handle.

He drinks...

...he hears the sneezle (you can only hear sneezles at the bottom of your cup)

...he goes off in search of a handle....

Oh! 

Well.......yes, Wade.  I guess you're right.

That is a... 

...........Handel.

On the Calendar: Friday

Schoolwork with Mrs. Lovett, special ed teacher

Practicing listening skills with Earobics

The other boys had the day off school, so we ran some errands and went to the library where Wade was delighted to find Winnie the Pooh.  They had a nice little conversation right there among the books. 

"Pink, pink, pink," said Wade, patting Pooh's paw against his head (meaning, "think, think, think")

Then, nose to nose with Pooh, he lovingly said, "Good-bye, Winnie the Pooh," and put him back up on the shelf.

And then, what do you know, Randall and Christopher found some Winnie the Pooh DVD's! 

"Winnie the Pooh! I take it home!"

Wade was also delighted to find all by himself the book Let's Go, Froggy which is on one of his Kindermusik CD's.  He sat right down and read it out loud to anyone in the library who wanted to listen.

And then he read it again at home.  

And again. 

And again.

And now we're all done with Friday!

On the Calendar: Thursday

....Bible Play School again all morning

...music therapy in the afternoon...singing songs

...making sentences

...play the tambourine up high

...play the tambourine down low

...sleep up high

...sleep down low

Some people sleep on their pillows;

Wade's pillow sleeps on him.

On the Calendar: Wednesday

Wednesday's schedule is the same as Tuesday's with OT, speech, and Bible Play School.

Then it's time to take a nap.

Speech homework today was practicing matching things that belong.  Sometimes the answers get interesting.

"What likes to eat carrots?"  He's supposed to say, "A rabbit."
Instead he says, beaming,  "I do!"

"What do you do with a nail?"
"Eat it!"

So we went out to Daddy to have a practical life lesson on hammers and nails and saws.

Show me a nail, Daddy!

Here they are in the box marked "nails"!

We do not eat nails!

We hammer nails!

Wade can do it too!

Does a saw cut paper?

No, a saw cuts wood.

See Wade saw!

Now back inside to finish the homework from Bible Play School.

Then it's time to help Chris study spelling words.  Wade loves to call out the words for Chris.  It helps Wade to practice enunciating the words clearly enough that Chris can understand them.  Wade says the word and then Chris is supposed to say the word, spell it out, and then say it again.  And Wade is very, very impressed with this say, spell, say thing.  In fact, one evening he was so excited he couldn't wait for Chris to spell the word.  He said, "Play, S-P-E-R-T, play!"

And then there are the fill in the blank sentences to practice like "You sleep in a _______."

Today I had given him several open-ended sentences in which he did well.  Then I said, "Mommy drives a _________."

And Wade said, "Balloon!"

And Nevin said, "I thought he said 'broom'."

(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

And I think I just saw a prince turn into a frog.