Sunday, November 6, 2011

Cross Lateral Movements



I've been researching cross lateral movements to assist Missy, age 9.5, with her reading. She has learning challenges and I am hoping that these will help her recall the phonic sounds and how they blend into words. We've been using 100 Easy Lessons for a couple of years and it just isn't clicking with her.

When I first introduced Cross Lateral Clapping (think of "Miss Mary Mack"), she couldn't do it, even slowly. She had fun trying, though! After a few days of practice, it was if she'd been playing this game for years! I call her a few times a day now and just clap with her for a minute.

I looked up some more exercises to add to our play time. I found one idea on one site, another couple on another. Finally I found one blog that had lots of ideas in one place. What a resource! This week we will begin doing windmills and elbows-to-knees in the mornings.

I have also dropped 100 Easy Lessons for now and began using Progressive Phonics. We're doing the alphabet portion first, beginning with Alphabetti Book 1-1. It's enough challenge for her and she's enjoying it. She's mastered the first book, "Dod the Dog" and has moved on to "Dod and Bob". It's a nice blend of phonics and sight work and has accompanying copywork, coloring pages and other busywork to print off if you want.

She may not ever read "War and Peace" but I do want her to have basic reading skills. If sight reading is something that will help her, I am going to give it a try.

2 comments:

  1. Have you tested for dyslexia? She might remember better with song. Music is stored in a different section of memory than speech. If she has better access to her music memory than talking or seeing, learning to melody and rhythm might stick with her more and be easier to recall and build on. The other children could help create the verses with you, like making custom puzzle pieces that look like a familiar object helps you remember where they go in the puzzle.

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  2. We have many "School-ish" music CD's, including phonics ones, that she enjoys listening to. They have not translated into knowledge, though. We also have done the associative pictures. That doesn't click, either. I have compared her learning issues with dyslexia "symptoms" but they don't match up all that closely.

    Missy's learning has always been different. She has to have a tremendous amount of repetition to learn new skills. Even something as simple as stepping up a curb took weeks. She had "global delays" when we adopted her. She was diagnosed as 'severe failure to thrive', was likely cortically blind, severely hard of hearing or deaf, and we were told she would likely never walk. She had been exposed to drugs and or alcohol prenatally and was not fed consistently for the first 5 months of her life. She couldn't hold her head up at 11 months. She bore no weight on her legs. She wasn't blind or deaf, though she did fail all of the tests they put her through as a baby.

    Physically, she has made tremendous strides. I'll have to share about the day the Lord began her healing one day. It's truly a miracle.

    She learned to stand at about two years old and later, to walk. Since her physical therapy was focused on getting her to walk, she only crawled for a short time. Recently I have learned that not crawling enough can cause some brain/learning issues.

    Physically, she has recovered from the trauma of her past. She can ride a bike without training wheels, swim like a fish, climb trees, etc. Her speech is getting better all the time and though learning issues are still challenging, I am daily impressed with how hard she works!

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"Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones."