Current activities

I finally seem to have created a blog. I am really rather stupid with these things... Why did I bother? To bully myself into keeping a journal of a very special journey with a very special child. I should have started in January, but I guess one month late is not too bad.

Literacy:
In January we started to read My Secret Unicorn: she has mastered at least two hundred new sight words including words like "in particular" and "impatiently". We do it through the matching, choosing, naming, and building sentences method. This book is quite difficult for Amy, but she chose the book and is quite determined to master it. We promised ourselves that she will be able to read all of it on her own by the end of the year. At the moment she can read till page 9 on her own, but is not very fluent yet. She can read "Kathy and Mark" - a grade 3 reader on her own.
Her speech is poor and communication a problem. I find that she does not distinguish between different questions e.g. when and where. I am trying to address it through questions posed on simple sentences e.g. "Mary went to school yesterday." Amy's concentration is usually not bad (she is not ADD), but I am surprised at how poorly she responds to questions. Perhaps her hearing should be tested.


Numeracy
She is not a hundred percent sure of bonds until 10 yet, but we are getting there through lots of repetition - about 80 similar sums a day. Practice, practice, practice. She quite enjoys this. However, I try to make most numeracy activities very practical: she weighs herself nearly every day, she measures her waist in cm, reads the temperature on a big thermometre (has to count in 2's here), she writes down the weather forecast etc. Counting money is a major activity. We shop every week and she cooks part of the family meal on Thursdays. Through preparing the budget, making up the list, checking the prices of purchases, checking the till slip etc., we have made more meaningful progress than through the whole of last year.
There is also much numeracy along the road: "Amy, what does the sign say? How fast may I drive? How fast am I driving now? (What comes between 60 and 80?)"

Life Skills: Physical exercise
She watches too much television and is very inactive. How to get her to be more physically active of own accord?? When we go for a walk, she walks very slowly and when we do exercises, she quite willingly does them, but because she is overweight and has poor muscle tone, she tires quickly and so do I. Besides our usual exercises (a dance, tummy exercises, stretching and trying to achieve a crab stand), we walked for a little more than a kilometre today - we measured the distance from door to gate: 120 metres and we walked the distance 10 times!

For tomorrow I plan more comprehension, dividing in two (making halves), spelling (she types all spelling on the computer) and sewing - she has sewn little bags for valentine's day on my sewing maching.

I love my job!