New Year, New Girl, New Milestones

It has been a LONG while since I did anything with this blog but I promise I will do better :-)

So this year we had hoped that Ash would start in the International School with an aide provided by us. Not a teacher but basically someone who speaks good English to help her out in the classroom. Circumstances came up and we no longer have the aide. It worked out better for her since I cold not offer her full time work and she has found full time work. 

I am back to homeschooling Ash and so far it is going great. We have our hurdles, fallouts, meltdowns, and epic catastrophic moments but it is working. 

This year I am much more structured with her. Afterall, she is in Kindergarten now!!!! WOW!!!! I just got done blogging about my son starting Pre-K but man.... KINDERGARTEN!!!!! ALMOST 6!!!! Good lord!!!!

My beautiful and fearless Kindergartner!!!

The first two days I spent Pre-testing her through Unique Learning System to see what differentiation she needs to be on and what her skills are at this point. She was given a Pre-test over the September unit "All About School". The test covered math skills, general knowledge, litracy, and content reading. Reading she did VERY poor in, but I knew that was a weak spot for her. The others were 50% correct. Which on a pretest 50% is good. That means there is room to develop. At the end of September she will take the post test which is the same exact test. 

I also developed assessments for her on basic skills she would have acquired in Pre-K. She is a SPED student so I knew that some of the content was not mastered yet. She has a diagnosed language disorder so we work around it in the form of making the lessons more in the form of speech therapy. 

We are started using a program called Reading Eggs and she LOVES it!!!!! I know this is not 100% accurate but her reading age is estimated at approximately 4 years old (2 years behind her peers) - Which based on my day to day interactions with her, I believe this to be pretty accurate. 

Ash had a major falling out with me last week - We were discussing words "him", "his", "her", and "she"... Not hard... She learned these 1 year ago. We were refreshing skills already acquired. She COMPLETELY lost her mind. She started screaming at me saying "I can't do it"...... Back track for a minute..... I HATE THAT PHRASE!!!!!! Unless you try, and find that you really can not do it, that's one thing... But she already had it in her head that she couldn't do it. She never even bothered to try. Then she started yelling at me saying "your not even a teacher, you don't want to help me".... No one wants to hear those words EVER. But when it is your own child, it stings more than anything you could experience. I wanted to cry, I was done at that point. But I didn't show her my emotions. I remained clam and basically said that I am the ONLY one that has been going to bat for her and investing in her education. I let her theatrical display continue for 3 hours. Yea..... This was a serious defiant moment in her life and certainly not her finest hour(s). 

At that point I had lost her. No more learning was going to take place that day. She was so worked up and so far gone that there was no reigning her in from anything. Pick the battles you fight right? Well, this was not one of them. Ash - 1 Mom - 0. Tomorrow is a new day.

The rest of the week was pretty good. We created a Word Wall in our kitchen wall, a place that is always visible and she can access it anytime. She actually does look at it multiple times a day and recite what she knows. Every word on the wall she told me to put there. 

Introduce new words daily and we slowly add them one she has a fluency and a visual relationship with the word

These are the "C" words that she wanted to put up on the wall - cat, car, can, and cap.

Well that's all for now. I will write again at the end of the week with the past week's progress :-)

Things are Looking Positive!

Before I go into the week she had let me start by explaining my meeting with Sakhalin International School. So first lets rewind to November 2014 - Ash had some "trial" runs in the school setting to see how it would work out. Long story short it was disastrous on epic proportions. She was disruptive, didn't quite get the flow of how the classroom was run (which is understandable when coming into a classroom 3 months late), didn't share, threw tantrums... All in all a VERY bad experience. The students were also overwhelmed with Ash and that is not fair. 

I have the unique position of being a certified teacher and a mom of a SPED kid so I can neutralize myself when it comes to these situations. I sometimes want to go full blown "mamma bear" mode and demand this and demand that but I have to understand that the other kids matter as well. I have to think about what is best for the other students in her class. Is my daughter going to cause them to get distracted? Not work? Fall behind because the teacher has to constantly redirect my child? These are things that I can look at objectively and see both sides. I want the  absolute best for my child but not at the expense of another child's education. 

Like I said, I knew going into this assignment that the International School might not be a good fit for her so after the not so well integration I pulled her out and started a very regimented and structured home school session for her here. Since November I have seen improvements in her behavior and attentiveness so I requested a meeting with the Head Master to discuss "testing the waters" one more time. 

The school is on break from April 4-April 26 so she will begin Monday April 27 from 830am-12. They have allowed me to be in the classroom with her to start with and they will slowly phase me out. They want her to interact socially with other children her age in an educational setting. She has some social deficits but this is not due to her "not" being in school. She has no clue that her and Mike go to different schools. She also does not understand the concept of "friends" and it does not phase her one bit. Some of the kids here will ask for a play date but that is something that Ash would never ask for. She does not "get it" or understand that concept. 

So we will see how this works out. If it fails then I will just go back to doing what I am doing. Fingers Crossed that it all goes well :-)

On with the week she has had....

Monday March 23
Today was very much "Math Heavy" - This is her weak spot. The simplest concepts are the hardest for her. Ash can count until she is blue in the face but the minute I say "count 5 beans" she is LOST. No clue what to do. She will grab one and just say "one". they I say "ok.... now we need 4 more" and I get the same deer in headlights look. Then a crying fits breaks out and you'd think I was trying to kill her with how hysterical she gets.  

It took a while but we pushed through it. I know for a fact she has no clue what she did but I am hoping that constant repetition will help her "figure it out"

We also wrote numbers 1 to 20. Mine are the black ones and hers are the red. First time she ever wrote out her numbers so I would say it was a success!

We then moved on to "more or less" type of problems. OH MAN!!!! Crisis outbreak over this topic! I was running a benchmark assessment on her and one of the questions was:

"Elsie has 15 whistles and Zach has 7 whistles. Who has more?" Visuals were provided and she had no idea. So we simplified the already simplified :-) 

I grabbed the white board and drew out 15 dots on one side and 7 dots on the other side. I explained that the Alligator was SOOOO hungry and he needed to eat the bigger side. The side with the MOST dots. She knows "big" and "small" so that why I went with that vocabulary. Still the concept was lost. she kept pointing to 7 and when I would say no she would choose the correct one but didn't know why that was correct. We did the "Hungry Alligator" (>) or (<) for almost 2 hours and made different games out if it where she had to get up and move. 

Hehe I used pool balls from the billiard tables and placed them in piles and told her to be the hungry alligator and choose the pile with the most "food" - the outcome was a bit more successful but the success rate was still below 50%. 

We created patterns too! This she enjoyed because I have her make them herself. She struggles with patterns and what comes next. This is what she created:

Tuesday March 24

This day was kind of a wash - We were in the middle of a blizzard, transportation was not sure if they were opening or closing, worried that my other son was going to stranded at school because roads were too bad to drive on, not sure if my husband was getting stuck at work for the same reason.... Stressful and hectic day. 

We stayed home and did a little bit of work. She has an account with ABCMouse.com and worked on her learning path for a while. We did some activities with her Preschool Prep series as well. Today's focus was Blends such as "sk", "st", "dr", "pl", "br" and so on. She is getting pretty good at recognizing these but still very much a work in progress. 

Wednesday March 25

It was a beautiful and sunny day, roads were good but for whatever reason the school was closed until 1pm. Well, Mike is in Pre-Nursery and can only go until 12pm so yet again.... another day home for him. Though not a "wash day"... It could have been better. Mike was homeschooled today with Ash :-) We all went up to the community center and worked for a few hours. Ash more so than Mike. To him it was more of a game. Today's focus was "Feelings and Emotions" - They seemed to enjoy this. 

I started by displaying different flashcards of emotions on the floor and called out "Find Happy", "Find Sad".... and so on. We made a game out of it and they had some fun.

Next I had some flashcards that had different scenes and they had to tell me how they feel when.......

I then had them face the wall and I removed a feeling and they had to tell me which one was missing

According to the lesson plan this was supposed to be an hour lesson but I created different activities and stretched it out to 3 hours.. All in all it was a pretty good and fun day :-)

We finished by having her draw out some faces with different emotions. It turned into a different kind of family tree :-) Mike clearly as not interested as you can hear him running amuck in the background!

It is not in the video but she really enjoyed drawing "Angry" - we see in some cartoons that "Angry" is coupled with steam coming out of the ears so she draws steam now! Its kind of funny actually. She tells me "they need the angry whiskers mom" - Too cute! 

Thursday March 26th

Today was a pretty successful day. We reviewed yesterday's feelings and emotions and continued on with directions. Ash has difficulty with her "Positional" words such as left, right, beside, in front, behind, next to, under, on top of..... Not so much under and on top of but the others are very much a work in progress. 

I have a learning tool from Lakeshore Learning all about positional words and it is a manipulative so she can physically place the objects in the prompted location. 

We had lots of tears over this activity with the "behind" and "in front" positions. 

What We Have Been Up To

Over the last 3 months we have been up to a bunch of fun things. She is writing!!! Huge for her. She does not write out of her imagination but if I tell her a very basic sentence she will produce it on the white board. The first thing she ever wrote was her name shortly after her 5th birthday (November). 

Blue writing is mine and the red is hers. I was a proud momma that day :-)

I asked her to spell her brother's name "Michael" - She spelled it how sounds.

These are the first two sentences she ever wrote - And yes, she is in mid nose pick :-)

I am so impressed with her! 

So these next two pictures - Her new craze is Big Hero 6. If you have not seen it, I suggest watching it, It is very cute! The snowman looking thing is Baymax. This first one CJ's nanny drew (CJ has a Russian nanny during the week so I can focus on Ashlynn) and the bottom one AJ drew. The black figures on the top is her and her brothers with Baymax, The bottom is Bayax and Hero. This is the first time she actually produced something completely imaginative. 

Baymax and Hero

When I homeschool Ash, we go through all the the motions of going to school. She gets her backpack, lunch box with a snack, and we leave the house and walk to the Community Center and use one of the rooms as a classroom. It is so convenient because no one uses the game room (Billiard Tables, FoosBall and card tables) during the day and it is a wide open quiet space for her to concentrate. We were working out of our house but she was very distracted and separating home from school was not going well. She is doing much better now. 

On our way to "school"

Her CiCi and Papa got her a really cool personalized coloring pad 2 christmas's ago that we are using as a "follow the direction" activity.

This bottom picture has shapes that coincide with colors - I tell her a shape and she has to color it the right color. 

I have been playing some Phonics games with her. These are velcro back pictures and she has to pick out the ones that start with "A" then the ones with "B" and all the rest of the letters. I enjoy this game because she has to say what the image is, then really think about what that first sound is. There was A LOT of tears this day - especially with the letters K, N, O, X, & Y. Lots of "I Can't Do it". As a teacher this is a hard phrase to hear but hearing as a parent who happens to be the teacher is a much deeper wound. It breaks my heart seeing her struggle and loose confidence. 

This activity I was extremely proud of and loved watching her create "herself" - I had saved some of the big packing paper they used in our shipments over here for drawing paper. I laid her down and traced her body. Then told her to put some clothes on her friend and label the head, arms, hand, and legs. I just wanted her to point them out to me but she insisted on writing the word. Not going to say no to that!!

What I didn't expect was for her to color in the person to be an exact replica of her self! She colored in the skirt with polka dots just like hers, colored black leggings, even made the Rainbow Dash jacket (She's obsessed with My Little Pony). The only thing that I did on this whole picture was obviously trace her but I also added the Purple to Rainbow's eyes. Everything else was 100% Ash. 

"Look Mom! The Same!" 

She did a super job! This was about 2 weeks ago

AJ's Tool Belt

I am using a variety of "tools" to facilitate her learning. Before we moved to Russia I knew there was a STRONG chance that the school over here would not be a good fit for her. It as either we all move and do everything we can for her or my family is separated for 4 years. Well that was not an option. I contacted the Texas Home School Coalition and had many conversations with the Special Populations department on what would be the best step. They provided me with a list of curricula that the Coalition supports and it was up to me what I went with. 

They did not have a "Special Education" curriculum but any curriculum can be differentiated to meet the learners needs. I am using Sonlight Curriculum. It is a Christian based curriculum with books on virtues, 101 stories from the Bible, and some others intertwined within the lessons. AJ enjoys it. It is a full curriculum with every subject accounted for. We are using the Pre-K at the moment and will start Kindergarten in September.

I am also using Unique Learning System. This is a full online SPED curriculum complete with lessons, monthly content checks, benchmark assessments, books, and different "packs" for math and language arts. I REALLY enjoy this system. In Texas, some of the teachers use this system for supplemental information and that is how I found out about it. It is pricey but if your homeschooling a child with "special" needs - I strongly suggest looking into this program. All the lessons are downloadable via PDF so you have them forever. 

Shhh.... don't tell any one but I am going to look into the copyright stipulations and see if I can make a hyperlink and put some fun lessons up for you guys :-)

Come September I will be adding another resource to her tool belt - Starfall Kinder Curriculum. Now this website is pretty cool because they have Free resources and apps that anyone can use. 

I almost forgot - PRESCHOOL PREP!!!! I can not say enough good things about this program. The DVD's you can find on Amazon and they are fantastic. The first set are Meet the Colors, Meet the Numbers, Meet the Letters, Meet the Shapes, and 3 DVD's on Sight Words. Remember how I said AJ learned 60 sight word since October? THIS SYSTEM HELPED! We started with Colors when she was 1 yr and even though she was not talking and saying the colors she had exposure to it. It is pretty cool. For those parent with typical kiddos this will help them as well. My sons (3 and 2) were exposed to these DVD's and knew their colors early on. 

The set that I just got is Letter sounds, Blends and Digraphs. It is more complicated for her but she is slowly understanding the different sounds. 

The links to all these sites with be in the side bar somewhere - Have not figured that part of the blog yet :-) Its a learning process!

Where to Begin!!

It has occurred to me that many people are invested in Ashlynn and that since we are living overseas, that I should just make another blog - ALL ABOUT ASH :-)

My sweet Princess

So here it goes!

The purpose of this blog is to obviously keep my family and friends up to speed with AJ's (Ashlynn Jay Fry has requested to be called "AJ") progress and also to help out other families who have children who suffer from the same or similar conditions. Once I get this fully up and running I will have a "links" tab filled with stuff that I have found useful. 

The blog will be a weekly. I figured that It might be easier to document her weekly instead of daily. So every Sunday I will send out a new post about the week she has had. I homeschool her during the week since the International school over here is small and in sort of a unique situation. There is no "special education" department and very little resources to facilitate differentiated learning. 

Had we been placed in any other location that had an American school overseas, the circumstances would have been much different but way out in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Russia (WAY Far East) there is not much offered. Lucky for my daughter I have a wealth of education behind me. In May I will earn my M.Ed in Curriculum and Instruction and in May 2016 I will earn my M.S in Special Education and take the exam to be a licensed Applied Behavior Analyst. So I am more that qualified to facilitate her "differentiated" learning. Plus she is also my guinea pig for my own schooling :-) 

So a little crash course on Ashlynn (or AJ if she has any say in the matter). AJ was born with a condition known as Microcephaly - literally translates to "small head". Somewhere along the pregnancy she suffered from a Neuronal Malformation stunting the growth of her brain. Ultrasounds failed to pick anything up as she was growing normally and everything was proportionate. We did not know until her 4 month check up when her head did not appear to have grown much. 

We were sent to Texas Children's Hospital where an MRI showed that she had very simplified Gyral patterns but that all the components of her brain were there - just smaller. Prognosis was unspecified, which is not what I wanted to hear but I know that no one can tell me what she will be like. 

Fast forward 5 years and I have a healthy, beautiful, determined, STUBBORN, thriving, little girl!!! She has mixed expressive and receptive language disorders but she has surpassed and gone above and beyond what anyone had thought she would do. On paper and brain scans show that she is extremely severe. Her head is currently 45cm (17.7 inches) and that is roughly the size of an average 1 yr old girl. Between the ages of 2 and 5 she has gone from 43 to 45cm. Not much growth but developmentally and intellectually she has made tremendous strides. 

She is on track with her peers for the most part. Writing and over all learning is behind but she is learning. When we moved to Russia in October (1 month from 5th birthday) she did not know a SINGLE sight word (high frequency words for those followers who are not American). Today as of March 22, 2015 she can read and write 60 of the 100 words required for kindergarten!! That's HUGE!!!

I look forward to taking you on this journey with us. If you can handle the good, bad, and the ugly (lets be honest - some days it can be very ugly) we will be great friends :-) 

I am going to put together a blog entry encompassing everything that I have done with her thus far - so bear with me while I get this together. 

PS - Apple Jack was my favorite My Little Pony as a child - It's funny how things come full circle!