Our Busy Little World
Apr. 29, 2008 - Speech Therapy
Here's another of our "homeschool electives": we took Naomi in for an evaluation and discovered she has a moderate to severe speech delay, which was more than we had expected. We're still trying to figure out things that may be causing or contributing to it, like food intolerances, but for now she's started a little speech therapy class with a couple of other three year old girls. She's so thrilled with it! It's funny how basic it is, and one of the big reasons we have her in it is simply to guide us in what we can practice with her at home. But it seems to be good in all sorts of ways other than just speech improvement. Naomi is so thrilled to have a little class that only she goes to. She proudly hops back in the car afterward, holding her prized paper projects. The older girls beg to be the first to see what she made! In fact we still have the first little booklet she made there, and when she "reads" it to us now, she actually uses an ending sound for each word - a big deal for her!
When we have schooltime in the morning, we all start out at the dining room table. The girls each get to pick a "school game" (anything from teeny plastic horses and riders, to special blocks, stacking pegs and memory games) to use when it's not their "letter lesson" turn. I practice Isabelle's TATRAS phonics and read alouds with her, Hannah's Penny Primer and letters, and Naomi's speech sounds with her. Of course, Juliette has a turn, too, and we work on speech sounds as well, since she's not an early talker by any stretch. It really works quite well, despite the necessary reminders to play quietly so sister can think! I do hope it is helping Naomi to speak more clearly, but at least I'm pretty sure it is helping her feel special and be excited to learn!
Comments
Apr. 28, 2008 - Untitled Comment
Posted by mystiedawn
Three of my four brothers had to do speech therapy, and they all enjoyed it and it worked within a semester (although they began when they were about 6 or 7).
I would be interested in a post about how you organize your school time. My four-year-old is starting to pick up reading on his own, so I've really got to get into TATRAS soon (all 6 of my siblings learned to read with TATRAS). I have the program but haven't set about organizing our day into a solid routine after baby was born almost 4 months ago. I've had about 2-day-long spurts of sticking to the plan, but I've not internalized it yet and stuck to it.
