peacefully
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Posts posted by peacefully
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You know, I saw the pages on posture and hand position, and I was impressed. Then I saw the loops and letters and freaked out. :homy: It's a beautiful script. I would love for ds to write like that. Heck, I would love to be able to write like that, but as you said OhE, I wouldn't know how I would be able to get it all done.
Okay, so folks are looking at the body mechanics more than the lettering exercises. I think I got it now. I'll take another peek and see if there's something that I can incorporate with ds's cursive practice.
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I am fascinated by this thread. I'm not sure that I understand what is the benefit of starting at the bottom though. Cursive First also teaches cursive letter formation this way. We just started, and ds is having a pretty easy time of learning formation so far. I've got my fingers crossed.
I have to tell you guys, I took a look at those Palmer programs, and frankly, they scare me. I don't think that I could do those Palmer exercises, much less ds. I just want him to have a nice, legible hand that's fast enough for note taking (not that he'll ever take extensive notes by hand, but still).
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One more thing. I tend not to have ds learn little bits of isolated information. It just doesn't stick that way. It's a little counter-intuitive, but he needs rather elaborate webs of information that are rich with meaning and connections and experiences, and then the little pieces tend to stick better.
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Sorry, but what sort of things are you wanting her to commit to memory? Are you asking about math facts, specific names and dates, new vocabulary, poetry? Are you concerned about discrete bits of information or procedures and broader concepts? The brain stores different types of information and experiences in different areas and uses different modes to process, store, and retrieve... Different strategies are going to be more useful to you, depending on the learning task.
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I use the CK Sequence, Teacher Handbooks and other resources (everything in their starter kit), but only very loosely. I've used a few of the BCP and Colorado units too. I tend to use all the CK materials as support resources rather than the focus of how we homeschool. We did first grade last year. I think we'll have an easier time integrating CK into our homeschool this year.
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Thanks so much for posting this!
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I am no longer doing our OT homework, but we did it for over a year and they included a lot of sensory diet activities. Ds has never been what one typically thinks of as a SPD kid. He's low register, low tone and low activation. He does not really sensory-seek or avoid. He doesn't have meltdowns about sensory issues. So with that background...
We did the Wilbarger protocol (aka brushing) every two hours.
Ds did lots of breath work - blowing bubble mountains in a bowl, blowing bubbles through a tiny little bubble maker, doing blow races across our living floor, picking up pom-poms with a straw by sucking, etc.
Daily heavy work activities multiple times a day - trampoline, hauling heavy watering cans in our garden, working with our wheelbarrow, wheelbarrow walking from room to room (we did this as a silly transitional activity - "let's get our snack by wheelbarrow walking!").
Core muscle exercises with a light playground ball.
Swinging on a Twizzler (a gadget like a freely rotating trapeze bar).
Playing on a zip line.
Playing with silly putty, play dough, goop, gak and other weird feeling materials.
Various pincer-grasp activities.
I know i'm forgetting several activities, but that was the basic gist.
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My son (almost 7) loves Read, Write and Type at talkingfingers.com. It introduces one letter at a time. The letters are presented as phonograms, so it reinforces phonics and spelling. There are phonemic awareness games, sentence dictation, and opportunities to free-write "emails." The characters are all a bit silly, and my ds loves to beat the bad guy, Vexor.
After he's done with this program, he wants to do Type to Learn Agents of Information.
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Back on my laptop to post the links and bump this thread.
KarenAnne's article on dysgraphia, part 1
part 2
part 3
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The best of the science center posts is, imo, Alte Veste Academy's (post #21). Wow. Just wow.
http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=144421
You could also try a search for "math lab" or "math manipulatives."
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What about making up a homemade version of Balderdash?
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Well, this is only my second year homeschooling, but this year, I am also planning by month.
I've got my first spreadsheet that gives me a yearly overview on one page, organized by month. Each month lists birthdays, holidays, trips, and seasonal reminders in the first section, then the general topics that we will hit for each subject area. This is the document that I use to help me make a reasonable plan for the next step. Hunter, I think I got this idea from the youtube link that you posted a while back—the one about folding a sheet of paper into 12 sections. I love it!
Then I've got my second spreadsheet that lists the learning outcomes for each topic and resources that I will need each month. Then I plan out the lessons or activities that we need to cover each week within that month. This is going to be my main planning document. We typically have a four-day academic week, with a fifth day reserved for field trips and such. That fifth day is also our catch-up day. I'm trying to figure out how to much we can reasonably do within that week. Typically, I over-plan, and it hasn't been pretty. We'll see if I do a better job this year.
Then there are my binders. I have taken apart my Core Knowledge Teacher Handbook so I could rearrange each section that I need by month. All of my other resources are stuck in these binders. I plan on pulling out just what I need for each month and organizing all that stuff into a working binder. So while my system doesn't really require that we start everything completely new each month, I do plan to put out new books, new visuals, and new materials each month to go along with the new topics.
That's the plan now anyway. "The best-laid schemes of mice and men..." :tongue_smilie:
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X-Post: The psychologist told me to just give DD8 a calculator
in The Learning Challenges Board
Posted
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