WTOW- Learning Difficulties

 

Over the past four years we have had our fair share of learning difficulties and accommodations. Last year I wrote a post about our biggest struggles and accommodations. You can read that by clicking here. In that post I really highlighted my daughter’s accommodations and not many of my son’s because I had not been schooling him for very long. Now we have completed Kindergarten, and have moved on to first grade. This year I have pin pointed a few of my son’s struggles, and am diligently working to help him with them.

I’ll keep you waiting no more. Here is our list for this year so far.  

• Never sits in his seat, was always flipping in it, or standing, switching from sitting on his bottom, or sitting on hos feet laying on the table etc.

This is something that I find extremely difficult to deal with as it throws me off track while trying to teach. For this we are working on getting a few accommodations in place.

1. We do as little table work as possible. This is the most important one.
2. I have him get up from his seat and jump between subjects
3. We are setting up an exercise band around his seat so that he can bounce his legs. What you do is take a resistance band and wrap it around the legs of the chair where his ankles hit. This allows the child to constantly bounce his legs and hopefully cut down of some of the wiggling.
4. We have a wiggle cushion in his seat.
5. We do a lot of hands on learning games that require him to run around.
6. We follow a sensory diet
7. Last but not least I do a bit of training. We have a 20 minute read time where I read to the kids. I am consistently engaging him in the story  as he sits on a rug spot with a fidget. In the beginning he had a really difficult time sitting on the rug spot. However over time and constant redirection he can now make it about 5 minutes without very much redirection.

• If he wants to do something, like play playdough, he will just get up and do it, then if I try to redirect back to what we are already doing, he becomes upset, and has a meltdown. This is particularly frustrating for both me and him.

1. We take regular breaks
2. We do as much hands on materials as possible
3. If something is on his mind like playdough and he can’t stop thinking about it, we will make a compromise as long as it is within reason. Sometimes this goes on ALL day, and on those days I have no solution. I just throw in the towel. (for now lol)

• Noises, and Distractions are a biggy in our house. It’s so difficult to accommodate as I have a three year old and a one year old, and a nine year old with needs as well. I have written posts in the past which talk about this. Here and Here. For Christopher the noise is a huge distraction for him. A few things we try are;

1. Headphones
2. Peaceful music
3. Ear Plugs
4. Doing reading time when the youngest is asleep
5. Having sister take the littles up to her room while we do his sit down work
6. Turn of the dishwasher, air conditioner, tv, etc.

Those are currently our biggest academic struggles with him. Unless you count handwriting, and well, that will have to be another post. All in all what has worked the best with him is getting outdoors.