My finest hour

Today I was at a workshop and I was a bit early. I introduced myself to the few that were also there early. Imagine my surprise when one of the ladies said "Oh! you're Esther, I've been wanting to meet you." "You taught my son and his friend." When she told me their names I had trouble remembering who she was talking about. For some reason I was thinking way in the past. I mentioned a couple of places that I had worked. " No" she said, "this summer, at your phonics camp." Her son had just dropped in with another boy so I had never met his mom.
She then went on to exclaim about how thrilled she had been with her sons progress and the fact the he had written "this amazing shark story".
That "free phonics camp" was definitely worth the effort.

" whats missing" game

J. loves the "whats missing"game. I go around the house and gather things that start with the letter of the week. I have these all in a basket and take them out one at a time and discuss what letter they start with. I then put them in a line on the floor and cover them with a piece of material. I proceed to take one thing away (while the children close their eyes) and when they open their eyes they take turn guessing which one is missing.
J. does enjoy playing this game but he doesn't ever seem to remember which one is missing. The way I play this game with him, is that we each take turns taking one article away. He really enjoys the turn taking and just the joy of playing a game even if he doesn't guess correctly. He is almost never stumped about what letter the objects start with. At this point we are working on letter "c" so he has had a lot of repetition of the first 3 letters. I have noticed a big improvement in his pronunciation. One month ago when we started this program he pronounced a "c" as a "g" sound. With a lot of practice and holding his hand on his throat to say "c" he is saying words like "cookie" instead of "gookie"

Mailbox

I made some houses out of the same used file folders that I have been using for a lot of games.
I put a piece of velcro in the middle of the house. I then printed out the alphabet on card stock and put velcro on the back of each one.
I hand the children a picture card and then they enjoy trying to decifer the beginning sound and "mail" it to the correct house.

Detective Dave

I found a puppet at the Thrift Store that looks remarkably like Detective Dave. The dollar store provided a magnifying glass and I am set with something that makes looking at the pictures very exciting.

The Apple and the Worm

The apple and the worm activity will be a great reinforcer for learning the sitting clowns. I have made "worms" for words that end in (og), (in), (at). You simply push the worm through the apple and the children read the word as fast as they can. I constructed the apple from a used file folder that happened to be coloured red and the strips of card stock to form the worms came from a local print shop. I went in and asked if they had any scraps from printing. I get all sorts of sizes from them that prove very useful in making the games.

Fun Family phonics books

I thought perhaps I should make it clear what I am using for materials. It is "Fun Family Phonics" writen by Muriel Endersby. Phone (604) 535-7444 Fax (604) 535-7425
www.funfamilyphonics.com

Down Syndrome progress

I will refer to my Down Syndrome child by his initial "J" from now on.
J is doing great in the first year program. J. is in grade one. He loves to come to phonics.
One thing that he just loves is the guessing bucket. I have simply taken an ice cream bucket and written "guessing bucket" on the top. He (and all the children in the first year program) take this bucket home every time and bring back something that starts with the letter of the week. This activity may get boring after awhile but I am hoping to keep using it as long as possible. It has so many valuable aspect to it, not the least of which is the fact that they spend considerable time at home trying to decide what to bring. This activity fosters a lot of discussion about the letter of the week. J. is so full of excitement when he comes in with his bucket -hoping he can "stump" me, as I try to guess what he brought.
J. has a very long attention span. I tried to think of an activity to work in the "upper case letter" song, so I came up with the idea of pausing the cd after each letter and putting that puzzle letter together. J. worked through the whole song which I am sure took 10 - 15 minutes. He even had the handicap of the fact that the puzzle was in lower case and the song and the book (we turned the pages as the song went along) is in upper case. I am going to try to come up with other ideas to work in upper case letters.
Since there seems to be a lot more time when the ratio is one to one I also fit in reading "story books" to J. When I bring out a book to read his reaction is always "No" I try to play down his negative reaction and come up with a reward for listening to the book. e.g. As soon as we read this book it will be treasure box time. That always works.
He is also not very fond of colouring or writing. He always say "no" again I have some incentive to distract him. He does enjoy using a white board so I give him his own white board, pen and eraser. He can try the letters on the board first - then on paper. Progress with pen and paper is slow at this point. He is doing much better with oral work.

Treasure Box

One of my goals is to make "phonics tutoring" a place that kids love to come to. To that end I give out candy and prizes. I try not to give out too many so that by the end of the hour the children have eaten about 4 gummy bears and 2 or 3 mini marshmallows. Hopefully, that isn't too much sugar to fill them with. I have one boy with a peanut allergy so I try not to vary the candies so that I don't accidentally put in m&m's or something that would cause an allergic reaction.
One big hit that I use is a Treasure Box. Sometime during the lesson I let them look through a box of prizes and choose one to take home with them. It is verily expensive but I think the investment is worth it. Last year I gave the kids a snack of ice cream or popcorn every time. That was fine when there was only 2 and one was my grandson.(the other was a boy that reading was second nature to him). With the kids that I have this year I seem to need every second to try to teach them the hour seems to fly by so fast. Also, the expense of that big snack would have be huge for the big group I have this year. Thankfully none of them have even thought that I should give them a snack so it isn't a problem. I do have a supply of saltine crackers available (I checked the box- no peanuts) to give to the kids that say "I am hungry", I'm sure that they wouldn't be able to concentrate if their stomach is growling.

Game review

I found that I only had time for one of the games today and I had too many pairs of card for the game. I turned over all the pairs of cards on the table and mixed them up. I had about 17 pairs and that was too many for the boys to remember where they had seen one that matched the one they turned over. I have taken out about 5 pairs and will try the game with the next group of kids tomorrow.
Most of the boys haven't been practicing the song at home so it is taking us a long time to get into the lesson as we are working on the sounds and shapes of the letters for so long. It is going to take a lot of repetition for some of these boys as it is not coming easy for them.
First Year Program:
I am taking my time with the kindergarten kids as well. We have spent 3 lessons on letter a and b. This Wed. we will still review b and then add the letter c. They are still having a difficult time hearing the beginning sound of words. I have been trying many different ways for them to see a picture and then try to tell me the beginning sound. Today I put one picture on my sentence board and then hid another picture that matches it around the room. They scrambled to find the card then as they matched them to the ones on the sentence strip they would get a minimarshmallow (if they could give me the beginning sound and the phrase ie bobby with is bag. etc.)
These picture are part of the supplies that came with Fun Family Phonics. I just bought 2 sets so that I can use them for games.

Games

I made two new games and I reviewed the rules of a third this afternoon.
Game 1.
I cut up the words on the new word sheet and taped them to a cardboard backing. Two of each word. For the second game I just wrote on some cardstock squares words that have the sitting clown "a" and sitting clown "e". Two of each. With these words we can play the game in 2 ways. First just the regular memory game of turning them all upside down on the table, the children turn over 2 cards at a time. If they match they keep them. Everytime that they turn over a word- they read it out loud. The other way is to hide one of each pair of words around the room, put the matching word on your sentence strip board on the wall. The children find the words then take turn reading them to the class and putting them on the wall chart.
The 3rd game I played with my grandson this afternoon to be sure that I had the rules right. It is called "Go fish". For this game I used a purchased "Rhyme time" card game. These cards are simply a set of cards made up of a picture on the card with the name printing under the picture. For each card there is a card that rhymes with it. To play the game you deal out 5 cards to each player. ( chose the number 5 because it was all they could hold in their hands) The rest are in a pile in the middle upside down. The first player asks another player if they have a card that rhymes with a card that they have. If the player doesn't have a card that rhymes he says "go fish" and player number 1 picks up a card from the middle. If they do have a card that rhymes they give it to the one who asked for it. At the end we count who has the most pairs.
I found that my boys that are in grade 1 don't know how to rhyme but I think they will be able to play this game (I hope) I will try it this week.

For each game that I make I put them in a used envelope and file them with the worksheets etc. for this lesson. I tried using sandwich bags but I found them to be so slippery that they were hard to handle.

The end of the first week

After the shakedown of the first week, I have gotten the kids sorted into groups according to what they are working on. The two boys who are actually in grade one but it is not coming easy for, I am slowing down on the "ready to read" program. I have told the parents that they will not start that program perhaps even until next fall. They were both fine with that.
For the kids in the ready to read program.
I have settled into a routine for some things, I start each day with the phonics song. I then review the letters in the fun family phonics book. We are up to letter "J" now. I let them hold Dave and the magnifying glass and find objects that start with the letters on each page.
I then move into a game of hiding the new words around the room. When they find the words they sit in a circle by my sentence strip board. They read the words and then get a marshmallow for each word then match them onto the sentence strip.
We then move to the table and are working on the alphabet worksheets then into the ready to read take home page.
I have done 2 pages so far. We haven't had time to do the fun family stories pages so next week I am going to fit in a review day and work on them. I feel I am rushing the kids a bit too much so we are going to slow down next week and fit in more games and review. I may think about sending home a note to the parents and tell them we may not be finished by June but I will wait awhile and see how it goes. The kids that are in grade 2 and 3 are having no trouble keeping up the pace of one "ready to read" page a day. The kids that are in grade 1 but have no background in FFP are finding this very fast.

First Day

I found the first day to be very stressful. I had some boys that I hadn't taught before join in. I found them to be very active. The other problem is knowing where to begin. It sounds like it should be simple but I can't begin at the beginning with kids that are in grade 3.. All of the children had the first 3 books to learn over the past month. Some did a great job and others have hardly looked at it. I am trying to review the first 3 books at the same time as go ahead with lesson one. The games that I used for review were,1. I hid an object in a bucket that started with the letter a. the kids had to guess what it was. 2.I also had a lot of objects that started with letters a-e - I played the game of take away one and guess what it is. It was very challenging day. I guess it boils down to- the ones that have great parental support will do better. One boy is quite far behind and I am going to volunteer to work with him for a couple of hours on a Friday by himself to bring him up to speed.
Anyway, I went ahead with lesson one- sitting clowns. I made a die from two kraft dinner boxes that I cut down to have 6 equal sides. I then wrote a,e,i,o, and u on each side. The children took turns throwing the die and then saying the sitting clown song. It was very successful. I also had the kids paint a long tube (the inside from plastic laminate) so that they will have their own personalized baton for singing the clown song.
I find myself being more organized that I should be at time. I put away all the props that I had used in the quessing games and then I realized that I would need them again the next day.
I hung my white board on the wall and then put velcro on the edges to stick a marker and eraser to it. I am finding one of the tricks it to be very orgnized and have stuff at your fingertips. Anytime, you are looking for something or hesitating for a minute - that is when they get out of control