Earlier this year we did Sebastian's Roller Skates. When we did I used emotion picture cards for us to review the different emotions and give Munchkin a visual connection between an actual emotion and the word that is used for it. I got the basic picture set from here:
http://do2learn.com/activities/SocialSkills/EmotionAndScenarioCards/EmotionAndScenarioCards.html
The site has quite a few useful tools. I did have to make a card for "shy" but there are blanks for precisely that purpose.
Well, for the last two weeks we've been reading "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day". The title is great. So I pulled the emotion cards back out and we reviewed them as we read through the book. And we reviewed the variety that might apply to each situation that Alexander suffers through during his day. Toward the end I had Munchkin chose and give me the card that he thought best related to the different situations. He did really, really well. He didn't always chose the card that I would have but that wasn't the purpose. The purpose was for him to make a connection between the events and the emotions.
I'm going to keep the cards handy now for us to use with the rest of the stories when appropriate. But one thing that I did discover with this story was that Munchkin was over empathizing with the main character, Alexander. He seemed to think that he was having, or going to have, a bad day as well. So we are going to add that to the pile of things to work on. Specifically, we are going to spend some time working on the difference between real and pretend. We will also work on him understanding that just because it happens in a story/movie, whether real or pretend, doesn't mean it will happen to him.
But I'm also happy that he made an emotional connection with the story, even if it was a confused one. It's a good sign for positive connections to the world around him rather than getting lost in his own world.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Lessons Within Lessons
For Valentine's Day Munchkin and I went hunting online for pictures of "love". We dug through Google Image searches with Munchkin pointing out pictures that meant love to him. Love having been defined as the warm, happy, snuggly feeling he gets when he thinks about his mommy, his grandparents, his Twiggy, and his Drew.
When we had an assortment collected, I sat down and did some cutting/pasting in Paint to get it down to three sheets of pictures that we could cut out. (And that would fit on the box being used). There were so many that he ended up covering the box inside and out. And with only a little help from me he choose which pictures went where and glued them on. My input was to keep him from stacking the pictures directly on top of one another - that's it.
(Note: I did not take these. The artists who did take them did a wonderful job at portraying the emotions so clearly that my son had no problems making a connection with them. Next year I might work with him on using his camera to take pictures himself.)
But there was another lesson that popped up within this project. That lesson was how to apply glue using a glue stick. This has always been difficult for my son. And I couldn't understand why because he loves playing with glue sticks and smearing glue. We've used plain glue sticks and colored glue sticks but he just didn't seem to catch on to the concept of spreading it across the entire space to be glued. And I honestly thought I'd have to go back and do some more gluing after my son was done.
But this time we used something different. Elmer's Colored Glue Sticks. These aren't the colored glue sticks that fade as they dry. These glue sticks go on in color and the color stays. And that was apparently what my munchkin needed in order to figure things out.
First, these glue sticks spread on easily with none of the grabbing that's been an issue with other glue sticks. So it was easy for him to hold the picture down and use the glue stick.
Second, the color didn't fade as the glue dried. So he could easily see where he had missed. I only had to show him once. Every picture after that he did completely by himself. And he was picky. Every single piece of white had to be thoroughly colored before the picture could go on the box. And since he was so thorough, even if the glue had started drying there was more than enough to still adhere the picture.
And that skilled has continued to show in all the gluing projects since then.
So he's mastered a skill he needed. He has a wonderful box which we will be using to store mementos of occasions that make him feel love/loved as a further extension on learning and understanding another emotional word.
And mommy is going to be hunting up lots of these glue sticks to set back for future projects. Especially since they are going on clearance in the stores around here. I don't want to run out before he can shift to using the older style glue sticks. Hmmm....I might need to go look online now....
(This is a completely unpaid, unplanned review. These just really worked for my son. I thought they might work for someone else having a similar problem.)
When we had an assortment collected, I sat down and did some cutting/pasting in Paint to get it down to three sheets of pictures that we could cut out. (And that would fit on the box being used). There were so many that he ended up covering the box inside and out. And with only a little help from me he choose which pictures went where and glued them on. My input was to keep him from stacking the pictures directly on top of one another - that's it.
(Note: I did not take these. The artists who did take them did a wonderful job at portraying the emotions so clearly that my son had no problems making a connection with them. Next year I might work with him on using his camera to take pictures himself.)
But there was another lesson that popped up within this project. That lesson was how to apply glue using a glue stick. This has always been difficult for my son. And I couldn't understand why because he loves playing with glue sticks and smearing glue. We've used plain glue sticks and colored glue sticks but he just didn't seem to catch on to the concept of spreading it across the entire space to be glued. And I honestly thought I'd have to go back and do some more gluing after my son was done.
But this time we used something different. Elmer's Colored Glue Sticks. These aren't the colored glue sticks that fade as they dry. These glue sticks go on in color and the color stays. And that was apparently what my munchkin needed in order to figure things out.
First, these glue sticks spread on easily with none of the grabbing that's been an issue with other glue sticks. So it was easy for him to hold the picture down and use the glue stick.
Second, the color didn't fade as the glue dried. So he could easily see where he had missed. I only had to show him once. Every picture after that he did completely by himself. And he was picky. Every single piece of white had to be thoroughly colored before the picture could go on the box. And since he was so thorough, even if the glue had started drying there was more than enough to still adhere the picture.
And that skilled has continued to show in all the gluing projects since then.
So he's mastered a skill he needed. He has a wonderful box which we will be using to store mementos of occasions that make him feel love/loved as a further extension on learning and understanding another emotional word.
And mommy is going to be hunting up lots of these glue sticks to set back for future projects. Especially since they are going on clearance in the stores around here. I don't want to run out before he can shift to using the older style glue sticks. Hmmm....I might need to go look online now....
(This is a completely unpaid, unplanned review. These just really worked for my son. I thought they might work for someone else having a similar problem.)
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
This is what we are doing.......
A good friend pointed out that there aren't many resources out there to help families that are homeschooling special needs and/or autism children. So I promised to start sharing what we are doing.
First off, we are loosely following the lesson plans from Lesson Pathways. I say loosely because I tend to refocus a lot of the lesson plans. And there is no time limit for a lesson. If it takes a couple of weeks then it takes a couple of weeks. Some, like the language arts lessons, I plan for a two week span and then expand it if necessary. So far it really hasn't been necessary unless he's gotten ill.
To keep on track of things I've been using Home School SkedTrack. I put the lessons in as I plan them and prep for them. Then I make any changes on the day we do them and mark the plans done. It is proving to be a great way to keep up on the paperwork portion of homeschooling. In addition, I plan as far out as I can reasonably do so. The result is that each day all I have to do is pull up the "today" section and I know what we are doing. No stress. It's great!
Ok, so the first lesson I'll go over with you is the one we just finished for Language Arts. We were reading Good Night, Gorilla. This book is a hoot and has very, very few words. The focus for the tutor was that my son learn to sequence the animals and the action sequence of the story. She did this by having him color pages of the animals and put them in order. She also made copies of some of the pages for him to put in order. He did really well.
My focus was for him to learn the animals represented in the story. So each day's lesson involved watching a video of an animal on YouTube first. Then he would do a coloring page of that animal. Then we would look at printed pictures of that animal. Finally he would match all of those things together and point out the drawings of that animal in the book. All of these things were very easily found online by Googling the title "Good Night Gorilla" for the pages and prints. And then searching on YouTube for the individual animals. I learned a few things myself, such as hyenas are much larger than I thought they were. For the final three days working on the story we read the book and then worked on him identifying pictures when I asked him for a specific animal. Like his work for the tutor, it went fairly well. And when we get a zoo visit in later this year, I'll check the book out again. And pull back out the pictures. That way he can make even stronger mental connections between the different images.
See...not really hard. You just have to define your goals and not get too expansive. There will be time to learn everything. Next we are working on emotions again. This was something we did earlier when we read Sebastian's Roller Skates.
First off, we are loosely following the lesson plans from Lesson Pathways. I say loosely because I tend to refocus a lot of the lesson plans. And there is no time limit for a lesson. If it takes a couple of weeks then it takes a couple of weeks. Some, like the language arts lessons, I plan for a two week span and then expand it if necessary. So far it really hasn't been necessary unless he's gotten ill.
To keep on track of things I've been using Home School SkedTrack. I put the lessons in as I plan them and prep for them. Then I make any changes on the day we do them and mark the plans done. It is proving to be a great way to keep up on the paperwork portion of homeschooling. In addition, I plan as far out as I can reasonably do so. The result is that each day all I have to do is pull up the "today" section and I know what we are doing. No stress. It's great!
Ok, so the first lesson I'll go over with you is the one we just finished for Language Arts. We were reading Good Night, Gorilla. This book is a hoot and has very, very few words. The focus for the tutor was that my son learn to sequence the animals and the action sequence of the story. She did this by having him color pages of the animals and put them in order. She also made copies of some of the pages for him to put in order. He did really well.
My focus was for him to learn the animals represented in the story. So each day's lesson involved watching a video of an animal on YouTube first. Then he would do a coloring page of that animal. Then we would look at printed pictures of that animal. Finally he would match all of those things together and point out the drawings of that animal in the book. All of these things were very easily found online by Googling the title "Good Night Gorilla" for the pages and prints. And then searching on YouTube for the individual animals. I learned a few things myself, such as hyenas are much larger than I thought they were. For the final three days working on the story we read the book and then worked on him identifying pictures when I asked him for a specific animal. Like his work for the tutor, it went fairly well. And when we get a zoo visit in later this year, I'll check the book out again. And pull back out the pictures. That way he can make even stronger mental connections between the different images.
See...not really hard. You just have to define your goals and not get too expansive. There will be time to learn everything. Next we are working on emotions again. This was something we did earlier when we read Sebastian's Roller Skates.
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