Thanksgiving is the perfect time to spend time with your family. I’ll be with my kids, grandkids, and husband. This year we’ll be celebrating at our house. My children and 3 new grandchildren will be here. I’m so excited! We are getting ready with some simple Thanksgiving activities that will get both the kids and adults engaged in a great time. That makes for a happy mom and grandmom!
Reading fluency is the speed and accuracy of reading without conscious attention to the mechanics of reading. In other words, a fluent reader has the ability to retrieve and read words automatically. Efficient readers are fluent readers. Multiple studies show that slow single word reading leads to both poor comprehension and frustration.
Auditory processing skills are foundational skills for both reading and spelling. Phonemic awareness and phonics are the first steps in learning to read as well as spell. Both phonemic awareness and phonics depend on the auditory system. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate the individual sounds – phonemes – in spoken words. Phonics is the ability to accurately relate an auditory sound with a visual symbol. This is exactly what we do when we spell.
Children that struggle with rapid naming, dyslexia, or learning disabilities typically perform more slowly on tasks that deal with the speed of processing. So, when helping a child with dyslexia or learning disabilities, we also need to help them improve their processing speed.
Phonics is different that phonemic awareness. We often think of phonics skills and how we may need to improve them without actually understanding what phonics skills are and how they differ from phonemic awareness.
Number Sense is your sense of what numbers mean. What value does a number represent? Which number is bigger or smaller? Making comparisons is also part of number sense. Learn what number sense is and activities you can do to improve this sense.
Three brain-based auditory processing disorder activities for kids of all ages. These activities improve learning skills while you have fun. Auditory processing is one of the three avenues we learn academic skills from. Remember, we learn by hearing (auditory processing), seeing (visual processing), and doing (tactile/kinesthetic processing). That being said, APD – an auditory processing disorder was found to be present in 43.3% of those that struggle with learning (2009 The National Center for Biotechnology Information). Read on to learn the behaviors that indicate your child may have difficulties with auditory processing.
Whether you have inattentive type ADHD, hyperactive type ADHD, or the combination type ADHD, sleep problems often impact you. In fact, studies show that 50% of those with ADHD have signs of sleep deprivation at least a few nights a week.
Spelling Practice Is Impacted by Visual Processing Areas. Many students have difficulty with weekly spelling practice because they don’t remember well. The visual memory associated with visual processing impacts your ability to spell. Kids that have poor visual memory may have difficulty with the ability to store and retrieve information that has been given with a visual stimulus.
The school year is well established, in fact, it is half over. How can parents make the most of the rest of the school year and give their child the homework help they need? Let’s re-evaluate how things are going in school. For example, is it a good year or a frustrating year? Are your children spending time every night on homework? Is it taking up the whole night?
Reading activities and games are a great way to help your kids improve both their reading skills and their love of reading. When learning becomes fun, in a relaxed atmosphere kids do better and their skills improve. Learning is a lot more fun when you are playing a game.
Setting goals and priorities are the first steps to accomplishing what you want to do. When you set goals, it increases your motivation to take the steps to actualize them. The best way to do this is to write your goals down and then to identify and write the steps you need to take to make them a reality.
Auditory and visual closure play an important role in reading fluency. Auditory closure is the ability to bring sounds and/or words together to gain meaning from them, visual closure is the ability to bring letters, partial letters, or words together to make sense of them.
Visual discrimination is directly connected to reading fluency. Visual discrimination is the ability to discern subtle similarities and differences visually. This is the process of seeing details. What is the same? What is different? Shapes, sizes, and colors are details to be looked at. An additional part of visual discrimination is ‘form constancy.’
Reading comprehension is the ability to understand, analyze, synthesize, and use what you have read. Without comprehension, there is really no point to reading. Graphic organizers allow you to easily take notes and turn what you read into a graphical display or story structure. These strategies improve critical components of reading comprehension.