Tuesday May 1, 2007
It’s almost National STAR WARS day!!!!
Once again, the boys took to digging their underground house before breakfast. School didn’t start until after 10. well, the ‘in class sitting down’ type of school. It is good that they were digging before school. The physical work is good for them The brain needs the body to work. Learning is more complete when both there is physical activity, too.
We started with Brain Gym and drinking water. Manuel was able to do the criss-crosses much better this week! Connor is just an annoying little goof. He ended up doing extra Brain Gym because he was just playing around and being so silly.
Then we went over Spanish/English words and phrases. The boys enjoy quizzing each other. My boys say a word in Spanish and Manuel says it in English- and he says an English word to them and they have to say it in Spanish. Manuel is much more wiling to try English words for my kids- then for me. I guess it’s less embarrassing to mess up with other kids than with a ‘teacher’.
We didn’t do spelling today. We did story writing. While Manuel read with his foot propped up, I did a little lesson on time sequence in story writing. I told them what it means to tell a story in sequence of events. Starting with the first thing that happened and moving on…. to the end. First I told a little story- part of it. I said something like”
The alarm sounded early in the morning. With my eyes still closed, I rolled over and turned it off. I took a deep breath then opened my eyes. I went to brush my teeth and hair. Then I got dressed.
I then asked the boys questions about what happened first and next and last. Connor didn’t do well. He just sat there. He couldn’t figure out what happned first and next. Kids with Asperger’s often have trouble with time sequence and with his bothers jumping into to answer he just sat back. So I directed some questions to him. Just for him and was detailed and tried to lay things out in for him. He did better that way.
Then I gave the boys a list of out of order sentences for the next part of the story. They had to put them in order. Then they had to write 5 more sentences to finish the story.
Here are the sentences they had to put in order:
I followed the drops into the kitchen.
In front of the fridge I found a bone.
As I stepped into the hall, I noticed drops of blood.
I picked up Soksey.
Soksey was eating a chipmunk by the door that leads to the garage.
Ki wrote 3 sentences (I told him he only had to write two or 3). He made them out of order for ME to figure out.
He had”
I put Soksey outside. ( Ipit sokey ot siid)
blood fell on my shirt (blod fal on my shrt)
Soksey brought a bird in. (Soksey brot a bord in)
Connor wrote:
“Soksey had 79, 258,010,236,547,721 chipmunks. It took me 79, 258,010,236,547,721 seconds to count them. Soksey was very happy. The lanet exploded. Then Soksey was sad! Soksey was sadder than me because he lost 79, 258,010,236,547,721 chipmunks.”
He gave himself a HUGE RED A+
Gavin wrote:
“But he didn’t like it when I picked him up, so he bit me on the hand. I yelled and dropped him. He finished eating the chipmunk. Then I closed the door and locked him outside, but before I could close the cat door, he came inside. He ran under the bed and took a nap. I made breakfast and woke the boys. They ate breakfast and we started school. Soksey woke up and tore up the school books. We did a little work on blank papers. We made lunch and ate it.”
Then it was time for Manuel’s therapy and the boys did their reading while I took care of Manuel. After that I wrote a list of schoolwork for the boys and took Manuel to Taco Bell for doing such a good job with his therapy this past week or so.
I really enjoy spending time with Manuel. He opens up and tries hard to learn English and also to explain and teach me Spanish when we are one-on-one. After taco Bell we went to a School Supply Store. They had one of those 9 tile puzzles with a split picture on each side and you have to match the tiles…. B-Dazzle Puzzles
He loved it. He would get it almost done and the last 2 or 3 wouldn’t match up and he laugh about how easy it looks but it’s really very difficult. The he’d rearrange them and laugh when the birds had 2 heads… picture is link to website. bdazzle-
I finished my purchase and we stopped by the dollar store in search of index cards, to no avail. So we went to the little coffee shop to do sit and do his schoolwork. They had one of those triangles pieces of wood with the pegs that you hop over each other and try to get one peg left. I taught him that he really enjoyed it. He played it over and over and over. He got one left a few times and would say “YO GANA!” We worked in his Ingles in 10 minutos a dia book. We read outloud back and forth and he wrote things out.Then we did math. I couldn’t get him away from the peg game… I told him if hw could win again (one peg left) he’d not have to do his math today…LOL. He had 3 left…
so I used the pegs to demonstrate the math concept. having groups og 4 or 6 pegs, tmaking equal groups, taking one of the groups away, etc... He couldn’t get it for awhile. I finally was able to make him understand the problems. They were problems like:
½ X 6 = 6 - ?
he didn’t understand ½. I went over and over it, with pictures, and using the pegs showing that ½ is the same as 3/6 (and 2/4 and 4/8…) Finally we stumbles upon the word medio… and I finally got him to understand…medio de sais = the same as 6-3…. He finally caught on. He was getting confused my the word HALF.
He is great with math as long as there is only an equation on ONE side. So we are really exercising his brain here. Teaching different ways to see things. I wrote out a few more problems and he did great.
½ x 10= 10-? ½ x 6= 6-? ½ x 50=50-?........ etc.. I think I had 7 for him.
So I moved onto ¼ x 4 = 1 out of the group of 4 pegs…. same with 1/3 x 3 =1 of group of 3 pegs… THEN we went to 1/3 x 6 =2 (if you double the 3(6)- you double the answer of 1 (2). so he was able to get the answer to ½ x 12 = ? just by seeing to double the answer again.
We finished. He played the peg game again and won. And then said that because he won, he doesn’t have to math tomorrow…LOL. We’ll see….
Ki didn’t have his work done, but I knew he wouldn’t. I sat him in my lap and we worked on it together and he did well.
Manuel rested with his leg elevated (it is still swollen) and watched Star Wars 2.
Connor was asleep when I got home. and still coughing. I bet his antibiotics aren’t working… I’ll have to take him back to check in a day or two (he has one more pill left) And I think he has impetigo. He is a face picker.. a scab picker.. he used to have open sores all over his face until he was 4 or 5. He doesn’t scab well, so wounds stay open for a week often…. anyway, he finally got out of the face picking habit….. until he had chicken pox two months ago… now he has open scratches on his face again and can’t keep his hands off….. just another autism issue…
THAT’S IT from me today! it’s TACO TUESDAY here!
