by Tim on August 30, 2010
This one boggled my mind. I’ve always said that one of the most important skills a parent of an autistic child can have is that of pattern recognition. There is usually a reason why your child does something, and I’m becoming more and more convinced that if you study the pattern of what’s going on with and around your child and what they do or create within that, you may begin to figure out the why behind what he or she does. I have slowly developed this skill at least to some degree either through experience, knack, or outright necessity. I was really glad for it today.
Not surprisingly, it’s hard to evaluate the math skills of a non or minimally-verbal autistic child. That difficulty may easily span much further along the spectrum, but I can only speak from our own personal experience. It didn’t dawn on me until the J-Man built the following – and I figured out at least part of what he was doing – that he might be more able to express the math skills he does have visually. I think he gave us his first big clue today that this is indeed a real possibility.
The J-Man constructed the following two towers out of Duplos. He actually built two more along these lines, but I didn’t get pictures of them. See if you see what the relationships are. (Answers included at the end.)
[Hint - We actually found two 'answers' to this first one.]
[Hint - I think there's only one for this one.]
OK. Figured them out yet? Scroll down for what I saw at least. If you see something I didn’t, please post in the comments! And while you’re at it, how do we expand on this discovery?
Tower 1: It’s 9 blocks tall to the top of the shorter side and 9 more blocks up from there to the top of the long side. Also, the color pattern of the first 9 blocks repeats with the last 9. That’s some serious patterning.
Tower 2: The shorter side is 14 blocks tall and then it is 7 more blocks up to the top of the longer side. Nice way of showing how to double a number, show 2/3 and 1/3, or just generally show an appreciation for something like the Rule of Thirds for Lego building. The color pattern this time doesn’t repeat obviously (dawned on me just now that he didn’t have the necessary color blocks to do that if he wanted to). However, it’s possible there is a color pattern to this that I didn’t figure out. That’s happened before.
In our last IEP goals recap from last quarter, the J-Man had a great nine weeks overall and showed great gains. This past quarter just ended last Thursday, and our little superstar continues to make great strides toward what we thought were some pretty ambitious goals for this year.
As a refresher for those curious about how we do things around here, the quarterly evaluations are done based on how well the kids are progressing toward meeting their IEP goals for the entire year, and then they’re assigned an evaluation code based on the following scale:
1 – Insufficient progress to meet IEP goal by end of year; below expected mastery of goal at this point in the year
2- Skills are emerging; mastery of goal is still inconsistent; student needs support to meet goals
3 – Consistent progress toward goals; on track to meet annual goal
3* – Consistent progress toward goals + some evidence of application and independence (Not sure why they need another 3 score here, but whatever. “Application and independence” are definitely two words we like.)
4 – Annual goal has been mastered; able to generalize the skill independently in multiple settings.
As I mentioned last time, don’t ask me why they felt the need to add a 3* in between 3 and 4 rather than just fix the scale to begin with. But anyway…
We rounded the halfway mark of this year early in March, so in light of that, his progress toward goals he has a few more months to meet is awesome.
Here are those categories and all the great stuff he’s been up to lately.
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It’s been a long few days of continued sicknesses and traveling out of town – which by the way went pretty well by our travel standards – so we’ve been slow to report much in the way of what’s up around here lately. (Pretty much just sickness, pregnancy, school, and work if you’re really dying to know.)
At Mary’s parents’ house, we discovered what may be the ultimate J-Man toy!
Numbers and words and wheels, oh my! What’s not to love?
He carried these around pretty much everywhere. He had a bazillion little cars to choose from at their house, but he always chose these two. Just for fun, I looked through the pile of other cars and none of them had such a combination of numbers and words. No mystery here!
Also not surprisingly, we rediscovered over the weekend that Wheel of Fortune is also a huge hit with him. Big letters stay on the TV screen for long periods of time – it doesn’t get much better than that.
Note to J-Man – I am NOT putting numbers and sponsors on our car. Well, on second thought, find us a rich sponsor and I’ll consider it.
by Tim on January 14, 2009
Because 99% of the stuff in a toy store isn’t really made with the learning needs of autistic children in mind (not likely gonna see “For reading levels 6 and up and speech levels 1 and up!” on a toy) and because there’s no telling what the J-Man will play with and what he won’t, I’ve started making ‘folder games’.
These are just very cheap learning games made from manila folders, velcro dots, and other stuff that you can for the most part find around the house, or for almost no cost at the store. And when you’re done with them, you can just fold them up and slide them on a shelf.
The ones I’ve made lately center on matching words with objects (e.g. a square of one color, then he puts the word under it – or vice-versa) with some number and letter matching thrown in too. This seems like a big leap in mental effort for him, so his attention span is lower. But that’s just how he normally is with newer challenges, so it’s nothing unusual. He perseveres and soon amazes us with the things he can learn.
So I’d like to show you three examples of these folder games. I think the entire cost for these three activities took less than $2 out of the supply budget plus the time it took us to make them. And as a bonus, the folders themselves are reusable for countless other activities I haven’t finished yet.
This is just a manila folder with eight velcro dots stuck in it – four for the color squares, which are made from construction paper – and four for the label strips, which I printed off my computer as sheets of about 20 words each and then cut them out. All of these things are laminated with matching velcro dots on the back so they’ll stick to the folder.
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by Tim on December 17, 2008
We had our end-of-quarter Parent/Teacher Conference yesterday, and we all celebrated how great the J-Man is doing in school.
Since IEPs are all about annual, specific, measurable goals, these four-times-yearly conferences with the teacher are about seeing how he’s meeting the measurements established by those goals. This allows you to make mid-course corrections as needed, argue for more services if your child is way behind on meeting their goals, etc.
It also allows you dedicated time with the teacher to learn all the ways you can supplement your kid’s learning at home. Of course, we’re always working on that with the teacher, but since these meetings occur at the end of the quarter and in year-round school the end of the quarter means three weeks out of school, this is about coming up with strategies to keep the learning going during the break. Combined with the holiday, we actually have 5 1/2 weeks off starting Monday. Yikes!
The classroom he’s in is about way, way more than just the goals on the page, of course, but the IEP is both a good instrument for measuring progress and one of the most important ways of showing what sorts of services and classroom your child needs from year-to-year.
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by Tim on December 11, 2008
To preview what Goosie Cards are, visit their web site at GoosieCards.com.
As we’ve chronicled in recent posts (see “My God, He IS Reading!”, “Roy G. Biv”), our son is all about his flash cards lately. They’re not going to displace the Sacred Wooden Letter Blocks of Steadfast Security and Comfort anytime soon, but flash cards are a cornerstone of many of his most important learning activities.
We recently discovered that – at age 3! – he can read many sight word cards (see above posts and “The $64,000 Question…” – and note that he’s trying to read people’s t-shirts now), so Mary and I are all about finding as many different kinds of cards as we can to build on these wonderful skills he’s suddenly developed.
So, in what proved to be a timely e-mail, I was contacted by Tom Stein, COO of Goosie Cards, who asked if I would be interested in trying out some of their cards and reviewing them. This was right up our alley and a great opportunity to try something new with the J-Man, so of course I agreed.
I looked at their web site before the cards arrived and was immediately intrigued (go look now if you haven’t already) but you can’t really appreciate what you’re getting until you hold a Goosie Card in your hand. Once you do, you know immediately that these are light-years beyond the flash cards you get at the store.
Goosie Card (left) next to other flash cards of two other brands.
The cards are practically bomb-proof. The card stock and lamination are of a quality, thickness, and durability unparalleled by anything I’ve ever seen. I think the only way to make them more durable would be to manufacture them out of slate or paving stone. While nothing is technically indestructible in the hands of a toddler, I don’t know whether anyone – child or adult – could put even a nick on them without using scissors or a hacksaw.
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