Category Archives: Kidlet & Baby L

My daughter does not like to write.  Or color.  Or do anything that really works her hands in a way to prepare her for writing in kindergarten.  Oh, she will use markers occasionally, probably because they are so much easier to make marks with than pencil or crayons, but even that is a struggle.  It’s not really a fine motor issue; she can handle other fine motor tasks just fine.  Caterpillar Scramble, given to us by Aunt Julie several years back when I was working with Kidlets fine motor issues (now due to the Asperger’s though at the time, we didn’t know that!), is no sweat for Lil L.  She can thread pony beads endlessly.  And so on.  But still doesn’t want to color at a restaurant, or balks at writing anything at home.

So, I have been coming up with ways to encourage her to use those muscles and build her writing endurance, without it seeming to be work.  She asked for corn on the cob for dinner, for instance, so I had her write it on the shopping list.  She likes to make up stories, so I made some mini books to record them; she does like to see her stories in book form so she can show them off to folks.  I also try to instigate art projects that will encourage her to need to pick up a crayon or pencil.

It hasn’t seemed to make any difference yet, but we’ll keep working on it.

Last night we were working with sharpies on foil, some form of which you’ve probably seen. It’s all over Pinterest in various forms.

Devious as she is, Lil L even managed to bypass holding the sharpie after a couple of triangles, instead using paintbrush and fingers to add glitter glue to the foil.  My girl, she loves herself some bling 😉

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Posted by Kristen in Kidlet & Baby L

Little LE is exactly one month away from turning 4.   I am convinced that she is gifted.  In its own way, its as challenging raising my little LE as it is raising a child with Asperger’s.  Right now, I am faced with the challenge of perfectionism.  Her brain processing power is ahead of her fine motor skills.  She knows the way she wants something to look, the way it “should” look.  When she is unable to match it in reality, she gets very upset.  Temper tantrum, scribbling all over her art / note, crying upset. She is heart-breakingly hard on herself.

Moments after drawing this person, she drew a big X from corner to corner to corner because “her stripes and dot dress is wrong”.  At her age, the “average” kid is still making “tadpoles”, with legs sprouting from the head.  The emergence of a torso is a 5-6 year old skill, with making the trunk longer than it is wide an even later milestone.  I’m just amazed at her precocious ability (she scores around 6 years, 3 months on the Goodenough Draw a Person Test), and she is freaking out and destroying it because its “wrong”.

It does no good to tell her that it is all right, or that it is perfect just the way it is.  She *knows* it isn’t (in her mind), and she just gets more upset.   We’ve read Beautiful Oops more than a few times.  In moments of calm “rationality”, we’ll talk about art, and how there really are no mistakes in art.  How she is only three and she is still learning to use her hands, and it’s ok if the 2 points of a “w” don’t line up exactly right now (or whatever). I’ve tried to model making mistakes and different coping skills.  I try to acknowledge the work that went into something, rather than just praising the result.  I’m not entirely sure what else to do.

Posted by Kristen in Kidlet & Baby L

Over the last year or so, light tables have been a big deal in the momma blogger / homeschool scene.   It’s funny because we’ve been playing with light a very long time, although certainly not with a fancy, big table.  I have a very old LightTracer box picked up years and years ago for tracing images for scrapping.  It is not as versatile as the ones I have seen out there in blogland.  I wouldn’t want to bring in anything wet or messy on it.    We’ve played with see through pony beads and petri dishes, translucent geo tiles, layering tissue paper,  and those multi colored flat vase filler marbles.   As overhead projectors become a thing of the past due to document cameras and smart boards, etc, I keep an eye on the clearance section of educational supply web sites.  I’ve picked up a bunch of accessories designed for the overhead for rock bottom prices — dominos, word tiles, base 10 pieces, and so on.

Today Little LE was making sentences with a word tiles.  At 46 months she is recognizing about 2 dozen words (family names, some basic sight words, and some CVC words like cat, sun, etc), but most of the words were unfamiliar.  She’d put together a “sentence” and then have me read it and laugh at its silliness.

Posted by Kristen in Kidlet & Baby L

A sheet like this comes home each week with the words circled that Kidlet needs to study.  (The errors in capitalization are mine.  waterproof and evaporation aren’t capitalized on the actual weekly sheet, but my app “auto-corrected” them for me, oops).

BUT, the homework is photocopied from a SF spelling practice book, so the 4 pages a week of spelling homework are on the first 12 words of the 30 (sometimes it includes the first 3 challenge words, but not always).  The 12 words my kid almost never needs to study.  Can you guess how well it goes over that he has to do the dreaded writing to “study” words that he doesn’t need to study?

So we come up with different solutions for practicing the words that he “needs” to study (tbh, he generally only gets 4-5 words that he actually doesn’t know how to spell, even when its all “challenge words” ;)).  I’ll have him use a set of alphabet stamps to spell his words, or type them on the computer using different fun fonts. Sometimes I will pull out the gel bag (ziploc bag with cheap hair gel, food coloring and glitter) and have him draw the letters in that. I will have him use the words in sentences, the sillier the better (typed up ont he computer of course). Some days I let him give me the spelling test, and he has to correct it.  We’ll use magnet letters or scrabble tiles, or do oral spelling bees.  We’ll twist pipe cleaners into letter shapes to spell the words. I try to be creative and come up with different things each week.

On days where I know that I am volunteering first thing in the morning, and I will be the one pulling and correcting the homework (the teacher only keeps track of IF they did it, now how they scored on it), I don’t even make him suffer through those worksheets.  (don’t judge!)  However, even on days where Lil L is headed to child care, I sometimes have trouble getting the kids out of the house early enough to drop her off first.  I have to take Kidlet in, then take Lil L to KinderCare, and then come back to Kidlet’s school to volunteer.  So I present the homework most days, even if I *think* that I’ll be the one checking it in.

Posted by Kristen in Kidlet & Baby L