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!