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.