Activities of daily living, or tasks that we complete everyday, are incorporated in to Wyatt’s school day. He completes “morning jobs”, such as watering the plants, cleaning the table, and filling the water pitcher. These “jobs” are also a great opportunities to functionally work on fine motor, perceptual, and attentional skills. This week we learned about table setting. Wyatt sets the table before each lunch day. We use a visual to reinforce the proper placement of eating utensils.
Wyatt completes sensory-motor activities prior to his school day. Activities that provide vestibular (movement and balance) and proprioceptive (heavy/hard work) input help organize his central nervous system and set him up for success during the school day. These activities are also strategically embedded during learning times to reinforce concepts taught in reading, spelling, and math.
Wyatt is continuing to develop and strengthen his handwriting skills. At Cornerstone Prep, we use the Handwriting Without Tears program to teach and reinforce letter formation, sizing, and spacing. Wyatt is also learning typing skills and computer use through the Keyboarding Without Tears program.
On Monday we learned about the solar eclipse! Wyatt was very excited to learn about this special event. In morning meeting we discussed what happens during an eclipse and then made a coffee filter craft during art. Later he joined his sister at her school for a solar eclipse party.
Over the past two weeks we have been learning about community helpers. We have gone out and explored the community to meet these helpers and learn more about what they do! During our outings we also practice concepts/skills taught at school, such as social skills and math skills. You can read more about the community helper adventures here and here.
This week Wyatt has been working on counting with one-to-one correspondence (pairing an object with its own number). A good way to understand and learn this concept is to practice counting different objects by touching each object and pairing it with a number. One activity Wyatt worked on required him to identify the number on a worksheet and stamp squares to represent the correct number. The next day we changed it up and had him use stickers to represent the given number. Through the use of teacher demonstration, manipulatives (different objects), and an occasional worksheet, by the end of the week Wyatt was working on his activity independently!
For reading and spelling, we use a program called Easy-for-Me. This is geared towards nontraditional learners who need a multi-sensory approach in order to fully understand and remember learned material. Easy-for-Me provides visuals, movement and stories throughout every lesson.
Wyatt was introduced to new sight words and short stories this week. Using a multi-sensory approach, the activities he worked on provided multiple ways for the new sight words to reach his brain. We used sentence strips to write new words, a pocket chart to organize the words / practice reading from left to right and Wyatt was given a short story with familiar words to read. By the end of the week he said “I can read now!”, which made his teachers very happy! For spelling, our focus this week was the short ‘I’ sound. Through a variety of activities, Wyatt had to segment and blend sounds together that had the short ‘I’ sound in it. We are practicing spelling skills with magnetic letters, a whiteboard and picture cards throughout the week.
