Ava Speech Update - Winter 2013

Birthdays, holidays, trips, surgeries, and reduced childcare have been conspiring to decimate my previously immaculate record of regular posting. Bear with me please, I'm working on it.

We just had Ava's second IEP meeting. She's come such a long way.

(Brief review for those who aren't caught up.

We began almost exactly two years ago with her early intervention evaluation. At that time she was barely talking at all even though she was almost two years old. Even more concerning was that she only had a few speech sounds she could make and she couldn't imitate. She was also giving up - beginning to turn to rudimentary gestures instead of even trying to talk.

Over the next several months we started using communication boards and sign language which gave her some tools to communicate and made her much happier. She began receiving services and working with me intensively at home. We all worked hard, and we saw a great deal of progress. She learned new sounds and started using words along with her signs. She made the jump to two-word utterances. Steadily we saw progress.

Six months after her initial IFSP meeting the second one was held and the team identified an additional area of need. Ava had sensory issues that were affecting basic life skills like dressing, bathing, feeding, and socializing. She began to receive occupational therapy in addition to her speech therapy. She continued to make progress in both areas.

Another six months crept by as she approached the age of three where children transition from early intervention to services provided by the schools. We needed to have her reevaluated to see if she would continue to qualify for services. Fortunately, she did and so her first IEP meeting was held. On her third birthday she joined a speech group using the cycles approach. It has served her well and over the next year we have seen so much progress.)

At this point Ava is speaking in full sentences using age-appropriate vocabulary and morphology. She is not at all hesitant to communicate and is usually intelligible. She continues to exhibit many speech errors but the only ones that are age-inappropriate at this point are /k/ and /g/. If you've been following me for a while, you'll know that we've been working on /k/ and /g/ for something like 18 months. I am happy to report that they are finally starting to come in. She can produce velar sounds now. She can do it almost all the time when imitating words in medial and final position and at least 85-90% of the time when imitating initial position. I even hear it pop in occasionally in spontaneous speech. (Okay, very occasionally, but that is huge!) So, finally we are on our way with the velars. Now it is just a matter of time.

At her IEP meeting we decided that the speech group using the cycles approach was no longer the most appropriate setting for her given that she's only working on velars. We are reducing her minutes to 30 minutes a week and she will receive those services via a traditional pull-out method. Her therapist will pull her out of her preschool room for 15 minutes twice a week to work with her on her velars.

I know there is more to work on than the velars, but I am so much more relaxed about it. The other sounds come in later anyway (/th/, /r/, etc.). She's mostly intelligible. I'm going to start homeschooling in the summer, and I think I'll sneak speech work into pre-reading phonics lessons rather than addressing it completely separately during "speech time". She's really have a phonemic awareness explosion enjoying playing with syllables, beginning and ending sounds, rhyming, and alliteration and so working on the speech covertly through a related area of strength makes more sense to me.

In summary, things are good. Progress over the past two years has been phenomenal and I anticipate that she will continue to improve. As I look back and remember how devastated and worried I was two years ago I wish I could travel back in time and provide a glimpse of the future. We are fine. Ava is fine. It has been a lot of work, and a huge commitment. However, even the work has often been fun. Ava enjoys her speech therapy and the friends she makes there. She’s been doing it so long, it is just a part of her life – no different than preschool or gymnastics. It is just an activity for her. I’d say the turning point is when the speech improves just enough that you can understand her most of the time. When everyone is frustrated and in tears because you just can’t understand what they are trying to say on a daily or hourly basis, things are awful. After that, it is so much easier.

20 Brain Breaks for Small Groups

Free Download: 20 Brain Break Activities for Use with Small Groups

Homeschooling - Small Therapy Groups - Scouts - Extra-Curricular Activities

Brain Breaks are short 2-5 minute activities used to help children get the wiggles out during a transition from one activity to another. You might even choose to use one in the middle of a lesson or activity if you feel like the children need a brief break in order to refocus. Set a 2-5 minute timer when beginning a brain break to keep them consistently short and encourage quick active participation.

The other great thing about brain breaks is that while serving their primary purpose of "getting the wiggles out" and helping transition from one activity to the next, they also work on other skills. You'll find brain breaks that use music, balance, gross-motor and physical coordination, teamwork, following directions, imagination and creativity, and self-control. It is a way to build working on important non-academic skills into your schedule without devoting huge amounts of time to them. It is always nice when an activity serves multiple purposes.

These brain breaks have been chosen because they can easily be used with small groups of children in a variety of settings. Many of these will also work with an entire class as well. You need to download the front page and the back page and print them two-sided. The back of the page will give you instructions for each activity.

On the front, there is a symbol on each card. If you see musical notes you will need a music player, or prepare to sing. If you see a box, you will need an item (see list). If you see a hand, you don't need anything at all to do the activity - just willing participants.

Props List:
Keep these supplies handy in a box and you'll have everything you need to do the activities with the box symbol.

• Bean Bags - One per child. (Bean Bag Balance, Penguin Shuffle)
• Paper from a recycling bin. (Snowball Fight)
• Small pillows, or some alternative. (Icebergs!)
• Balloons. (Balloon Sandwich)
• Balls suitable for catching. (Play Catch)
• Straws, Pom-poms, Paper cups or Small boxes (Pom-Pom Race)

Music List:
Grab copies of these songs to use with the musical Brain Breaks. You might buy the mp3, bookmark them on YouTube, burn a Brain Break CD in ITunes, or find another solution that works for you for keeping these songs handy. (Singing will even work in a pinch for a couple of these.)

• Hokey Pokey
• Parade March. Some suggestions include: 76 Trombones, Marines' Hymn, King Cotton March, US Navy March, etc.
• Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes
• Freeze Dance
• Macarena
• Finale from William Tell's Overture
• Hi, My Name Is Joe

FYI: Scholastic Dollar Deals Are Back

Scholastic has almost 2000 instantly downloadable teacher resource books and children's ebooks on sale for $1 each. The dollar deals expire 1/9/13. Teacher resource books and children's ebooks that work on word families work well for targeting sounds in final position. Phonics readers that address initial consonants work well for targeting sounds in initial position. And now I'm off to build a shopping cart for myself... Enjoy!

Edited to add: Scholastic has apparently changed their Teacher Express store since the last time I visited in an extremely annoying way. Now, instead of being able to preview pages from the books, clicking on the "See More" button simply brings up a bigger picture of the cover. This would be tolerable if their descriptions were more than 1-2 sentences each, but as it is, now I feel like I have hardly enough information to justify even a $1 purchase. I'm having to manually go to Amazon's website, search for the item, and hope there is a preview or comments there before deciding to purchase an item. I am very disappointed in the change and will be buying significantly fewer books as a result. (Thanks for listening to my rant. I feel marginally better.)