Last week I wrote about the importance of the motor planning piece in how Joey learns to communicate on his LAMP communication device. While the motor planning aspect is what currently fascinates me the most, it is only one aspect of why the LAMP treatment works to teach communication. My post last week also left me with other brief thoughts to share. [Read more…]
Motor Planning and Communication
On vacation with my family, miles away from Joey, we passed a fire station. My own four-year-old shouted out “FIRE ENGINE!” and I found my fingers immediately itching to push the buttons on Joey’s AAC device. Just the notion of a fire engine stimulates my motor memory. My index finger twitches and I visually see the icons on the screen – hit ride– hit fire engine (top right on the screen). I had not been thinking about Joey, or alternative communication, or anything but beach traffic and what we’d find for lunch. Yet sudden there I was, with a twitchy index finger. I didn’t even respond to my daughter’s exclamation, because my first instinct was to respond with the device. [Read more…]
Art Project Success! Using sticker-backed felt to give Joey independence in art
Although Joey loves art projects I often struggle to find appropriate projects he can access easily. Painting projects always please him, but it usually ends up being a rather large mess and I can only get paint on someone else’s carpet so many times a month. Painting also tends to be over quickly and does not always allow him to be overly independent or purposeful. [Read more…]
Lobster/Mobster/Monster?
Sometimes I find it takes a long time to explain Joey’s successes because there is so much background needed to set the stage for each story. Sometimes it involves explaining where words are on his AAC device, or how he uses his AAC device and words to communicate, or even what an AAC device is. These stories get complicated. That being said, read on because I think you’ll be as proud of Joey as I am.
One of my favorite board books of all time is Mommy! Mommy! written by Taro Gomi. It tells a simple but relatable story of little chicks looking for their
mommy. They spot her across the farmyard by looking for the red comb on the top of her head, which
sticks out over plants and rocks. Sometimes they find her, and sometimes when they think they’ve found her they find something else that looks like her comb instead. When I first introduced this book to Joey he immediately fell in love with it. Truthfully, I was surprised. It almost seemed too simple for him, but he asked to have it read over and over again.
On our first read Joey enjoyed touching where he thought the mommy was hiding and turning the page to see if the mommy was really there or if it was a look-alike. The first time she was there. Then the chicks found a flower behind a rock instead of their mommy. The third time they found (what I believe is) a scary dog.
OK. Whenever I read this page my adult mind continues to call the animal a dog. Yet every child I’ve ever read this book with calls it a monster. It’s long and red and scary so I guess it does look a bit monster like. The chicks in the story look terrified. My own daughter and I have gone back and forth on this point (my husband sides with my daughter). Joey proved to be no different.
He studied the picture for a minute, and then made the /m/ sound while looking up at his words. “Dog” I said, and assumed he just hit the wrong button when he clicked on the tab for ocean animals. “Mmmmm” he said again and hit octopus, frowned slightly, went back into his ocean animal tab and hit lobster. Each time he said “mmmmm” before he hit lobster.
Sometimes I’m a bit slow to catch on. “Oh, I guess we could say it’s a lobster. It’s kind of red and long and looks like a lobster.” Joey gave me a look and then continued to call it a “/mmm/… lobster” every time we read it.
OK, say lobster. Now take away the /l/ sound. You get obster. Now add the /m/ sound. Mobster. Now change the b to an n. A stretch? Maybe. But this is a kid who just started playing with rhyme. My guess is that to his ears lobster/monster rhymes. And he figured out a way to get us as close as possible to saying monster. We’ll presume competence and go with it. After all, every other four year old whose ever read this book has declared that the figure on the page is a monster.
This kid. He never stops surprising me.
Teaching Rhyming Part Two
Last week we talked about the importance of exposing Joey to the phonemic awareness activities such as rhyming games to help prepare him for skills later in life. Here are some of the rhyming games and activities we are working on so far.
We started with a silly game of “feed the hungry rhyming monster” where I put two pictures of food in front of Joey and ask him to find the one that rhymes with what the monster is saying. We are using made up words because like manana, mueberries, and mookie because it is easier to hear the rhyme in a nonsense word. Joey is forced to focus on the sounds in the word instead of the meaning. We also play silly games with Joey’s name to continue the word play. (In the classroom I used to call kids to line up by their rhyming names throughout the day. “Boey can line up now!” Nothing is sillier to young children than hearing an adult call them by their rhyming name…)
Once Joey was able to identify the silly word with it’s real food we moved on to rhyming real words. I made an interactive song book of Down by the Bay and velcroed pictures of what Joey could choose to put together. Although we have the traditional lines “Goose kissing a moose”, “Bear combing his hair” and “Whale with a polka dot tale”, we added other options so that Joey will not just memorize pairs of words, but will be focused on listening to the rhyme. Now Joey can choose which animal to sing about (cat, fox, fish), and then choose what rhymes with it (hat, box, dish). Once he’s chosen his rhyme we make up a silly song about it. “Have you ever seen a fox hiding in a box? Have you ever seen a fish eating a dish?” The sentences don’t need to make sense, they just need to rhyme. His choices are all on laminated cards that move in and out of the book with Velcro. This way Joey can physically participate in the song and game.
Pretty soon we’ll start the song “Willabee Wallabee Whoo”, which is another fun rhyming song that leads to practicing decoding skills. “Willabee Wallabee Woey…. An Elephant sat on Joey!” We’ll have picture cards out of family members and Joey will be able to pick the family member whose name most sounds like the rhyme.
Right now I’m not overly concerned about Joey’s accuracy with these games. I want to expose him to the concept of rhyming so that he begins to recognize that some words sound the same. Years from now when he is ready to learn to read, this background will give him some of the phonological awareness he’ll need.
Stay tuned next week for how Joey spontaneously used his new rhyming skills to help with his communication.
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