Friday, September 2, 2011

New Successes + Future Plans

Well, summer is over and we're back to the school schedule.  Luckily our summer ABA therapist is staying on with us and will see Dylan 3 hours per day, 5 days per week.  He is making tremendous progress.
  • Spontaneously requesting things.  Today I asked if he wanted hamburger for lunch and he said "chicken nuggets".   So of course, he got those for lunch instead!!! He has said "up please", "chippies please" "shirt on" and "backpack off" without prompting. Showing so much independence and using his words to express his preferences.  Thank.  You.  God.
  • He will mimick 5-7 word sentences.  I can't tell you how thrilled I am with this, especially since a short time ago he was nonverbal.  Last Christmas he was signing for "more" and that was his only communication.
  • He has started successfully recognizing sight words.  We are using the Rapid Prompting approach and matching words with corresponding pictures.  He is doing around 75% successfully.
  • Matches like color to color and color word to correct color.
  • Can draw a circle independently.
  • More successes on the potty!  Still not there yet, but getting closer!
With all the progress we made this summer I have decided to extend his home preschool program through the rest of the year.  I am using a unique online tool called Pinterest to plan the program activities.  It is an online photo bookmarking site for collecting and categorizing ideas.  My Pinterest pages show you activities and free printables we are using to accomplish each goal listed below.  The photos on each page (called "pins") each have a link to the original website where you can find more information on each activity.  You can see my Pinterest homepage HERE or click on any of the goals below to go directly to that page in my Pinterest collection:
  1. Continue to work on Colors
  2. Shapes
  3. Letter Recognition and Writing
  4. Numbers
  5. Learn to recognize Emotions
  6. Learn Bible
  7. Sensory
  8. Sight Words
My will program consist of a monthly theme, Bible verse and story book, along with at least one short 3-5 minute video and one song.  Then we have 2-3 colors per week, 2-3 letters per week, 2-3 shapes per week, 2-3 numbers per week.  All weekly colors, letters, shapes and numbers are selected so they do not look or sound alike.  For example, we might do letters: N, P/shapes: circle, heart/colors: pink, black/numbers:1, 5.  Then when we've done them all we start over again.  After December we will go from having two per week to having three of each.  Here are our planned themes/units:
Our Books of the Month (chosen to work with unit theme of the month):
To reinforce letters, we are using books that correspond to letters of the week.  These were chosen because they work with the Letter Crafts from Totally Tots.  We are doing those too and putting completed projects in a big 3 ring binder.
Additionally, we are still using Zoophonics to teach letter sounds.

At present, I am working on finding short videos to correspond to themes.  These work well when I use them as a reward for doing work.  Also need to find songs.

If you haven't tried Pinterest, I highly recommend it.  You are able to easily save (and easily relocate) any ideas you find online.  Plus you can browse around pinterest to see what others are pinning and repin their ideas to your board.  The trick is to find people with common interests, then "follow" them, and then everything they pin shows up on your homepage.  I am presently following over 100 people - lots of teachers and homeschoolers so I can easily find ideas to add to our program.
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