January 25

If Benedict Cumberbatch was suddenly in the room with me, I would have some trouble continuing with my work. In the same way, when I am fastening my belt or putting on my bunny pajamas, Sarah has trouble continuing with what I have just asked her do to. Ah. I understand her distractions in a new way and it is easier to have more patience. 

When my computer shows a rainbow spinny ball, I know that I must wait. Sure, I might feel annoyed, but I know there is nothing I can do except wait. Perhaps I could visualize Sarah as showing me a rainbow spinny ball when she seems distracted and I could just wait, trusting and knowing that there is nothing else for me to do except possibly close some activity windows.

Sarah had her annual audiology appointment on Thursday and it showed possibly a bit more hearing loss than last year. Her left ear hasn't had perfect hearing for a few years but her right ear did. Since she had a bit of a cold we weren't sure if that was impacting her hearing during the tests so we will do a follow-up in March. If her right ear is back to hearing perfectly or nearly perfectly then we won't need to do anything. If the right ear does have some hearing loss then we might want to consider hearing aids at some point. Allowing the possibility that she truly might not be hearing me (rather than willfully ignoring me) helps me have more patience sometimes and changes my behavior somewhat to get closer to her rather than yelling from far away. My request to all of you lovely people is that whenever you think of it, please take a moment to send loving energy to Sarah and her ears. Think about perfect hearing and how wonderful that would be for her. Think about what you most enjoy hearing. Think about Sarah enjoying hearing the word "bicycle." Thank you!!

I bought a massage chair a week ago and I love it. This is a chair for massage therapists to use when they work with clients (for anyone who doesn't know it, I am a massage therapist). What I didn't foresee was that Sarah would enjoy and request mini sessions in the chair. It is one of the cutest things ever to see her snuggled into the chair, her face resting against what is normally the chest pad. 

The number flashcards are a testament to the fact that anything can be anything in a person's imagination. We pretend to taste the numbers and say what flavor they are, we make number cakes (sheet and layer), we frost with number frosting, we pedal number bicycles, we wrap number presents and then put them in a box that serves as a truck/plane/boat/sleigh and we deliver them, we canoe with number canoes and number paddles. Sarah loves it when I give her a choice between two numbers. She says which one she wants and then tastes it. One day I wrote out new cards with each number written as a word. We played 3 rounds of matching the words numbers to their numeral counterpart (I told her what each word was as we went). I also made new numeral cards so now we have 1-100. She watched attentively as I made them and then she started writing and coloring some of her own. She made several 23 cards. Almost every day for the past 3 days, Sarah and Amy and I all play together in the SR room with the number cards. We mainly taste, wrap, mail, and deliver them. On Friday, G. and I did a joint session that involved mailing number card "letters" into G.'s created mail slot above the door. Then I had Sarah sign for a package. At one point I asked Sarah to address a letter and write who it was to. She began, "ot." I nearly fell over with delighted surprise. She had written "to" backwards. Incidentally, I know she knows "two" when we do numbers.

One evening I played "Amazing Grace" on our music system. Sarah said, "Sixty one feet." This is totally impressive wrongness. The group is Sixteen Feet. How amazing that she remembered that from forever ago, knew from her current knowledge of numbers what that must look like and then reversed the numbers.

Sarah walked past a book cover Thursday night and said, "we are six." The cover is for Now We are Six. I didn't know if she had read it or remembered it so I asked her. She said "with Ju." I asked Ju. and she said they briefly played with the cover a few weeks ago but hadn't focused on the words much. I know Sarah knows the word "six." Maybe the line between reading and remembering is not what I thought. I don't any longer sound out my words. I just know what they are. Maybe the same is happening for Sarah. 

I recently learned about a different approach to teaching reading. I feel as excited about this as I did when we started SR and Sarah's language started to increase. The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential have an approach different from phonics. It involves making very large word cards and showing a small group of them briefly each day with joy and enthusiasm. The cards quickly rotate so new words are introduced every day. The method is geared towards babies but can be used with anyone. I bought the kit and I also made lots of cards myself. I am so excited about this I can hardly stand it. I am constantly thinking about new word cards I can make and intro books I can make out of the words we have done. I started this on January 23rd and yesterday Sarah read "swimming" and "Grover." Amy read "spaghetti." This was after ONE day! I want to run from room to room whooping in delight. This is so easy and fun. Amy always wants more words and Sarah wanted to play with the giant stack of cards. I am following the guidelines, though, and not giving Sarah the stack because I think the program is probably designed to introduce enough words to be interesting and not too many so as not to confuse and overwhelm. Another guideline is not to test. If there are fun opportunities for the kids to show what they know then we can offer them those opportunities or, chances are, they will just start saying words as they recognize them. That is what happened with "swimming." Oh my goodness!! Oh my goodness!!!!!!! Oh my goodness!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! For anyone interested: http://www.gentlerevolution.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=&Category_Code=Reading