Ipad App

I have looked for a good writing app for Junior for awhile now.  Junior cannot use his hands so needs hand over hand help with writing but it still helps him a great deal to write the words he is trying to learn.  So far no app we have tried has worked like we needed it to.  I recently got the Writing Wizard app during a free app Friday and tried it out with Junior this week. 
So far we are really liking it.  My favorite thing is that the app allows me to create my own word lists and for me to record myself saying the words for Junior.  This week we started working on "fall" words so I created a fall word list with words like pumpkin and leaf.  Each word is written in something different such as stars, circles, animals,etc.  When the word is complete it burst apart or has some other animation on the screen which Junior likes(it does not look babyish which is a big bonus).
Here is Junior using the Writing Wizard app with the apple box so he can see what he is writing, on the ipad, up on the tv screen.

Fall Reading Activity

Keeping Junior engaged and focused on certain school activities can be a challenge. I am always looking for ways to help him learn subjects like reading and math and keep it fun. 

Yesterday we made a fall sensory bin and turned it into a reading activity.  Nothing fancy but Junior did well with it so I thought I would share it here.

I found containers of small plastic acorns, pumpkins, and leaves in dollar section at Target and they were just perfect for this.  I also used some leaves made from cloth that were in our craft closet from last year. 

This picture makes all the objects look flat but the acorns and pumpkins were round.

 Our fall sensory bin.  I want to try to find some little turkeys, apples, and other fall items to add to it.
 
I printed up some fall words and I will be adding more to this list in the coming weeks. 

 First Junior enjoyed putting his hands in the bin and feeling all the objects. 

I then helped him grab and object and had him match the object with the correct word on the board.


I then added some foam letters to our sensory bin and covered a letter on each of our fall words.  I  folded a piece of card stock so it fit around the laminated word card on our felt board so it can be slid across to cover any of the letters in the word.

 Junior then picked a letter out of the bin and had to show me the word it went with.  In the picture he had picked out the f and was showing me that it goes with the word leaf.

Eye Gaze Memory (repost from 2010 with update)

This post was originally posted back in 2010.  I am adding an update to the end of the post.

We love games and memory has always been a favorite. When I first introduced Junior to the game several years ago he was not terribly impressed but recently we tried it again and he loves it.
With Memory it is important that Junior be able to see the cards during the game so putting them on a table top is not an option. This is Junior's Game easel and it gets used a lot.
I did not have the tools so had to have this made but it is a very simply made item. A wood frame with a plexiglass front and bottom attached(one of these days I am going to have space for tools so I can do more of this myself). Pretty much any easel type surface with velcro strips would work.

The game easel has strips of velcro on it so I then placed a small piece of velcro on both sides of the memory cards(you will find we use velcro very, very, very, often).
Add our pointer and we are ready to play
I typically tell Junior to show me which card he wants to turn over. He will then look at that part of the board and I will then use the pointer to point out specific cards and he will use his yes/no to let me know the exact card he wants.
 

Update 9/2013
Junior continues to enjoy playing memory but we have had to find some sets that don't look so babyish.  The game shown in the pictures above he now refuses to play because it looks like a baby game. 
We were able to find a couple memory games that have a super hero theme and he thinks those are very cool. 
We also now use his felt board/puzzle board for playing.  It allows him to play when not up in his chair and is very lightweight so I can even hold it up if needed(as far as game play he still plays in the same way described in the original post above.  
Here he is in his recliner playing one of his super hero memory games using the felt board.

 

This is the most recent "big kid" memory game I was able to find.  I don't have pictures of him playing it yet but he really likes it.  Each card looks like the cover from a comic book.

Reading Comprehension "How much is he really understanding" (Repost)

This is a repost of a post I did back in 2010 along with an update.

As with reading skills, reading comprehension is another difficult thing to determine with a non verbal child.
Junior has always loved books. I would read to him and he would giggle at the appropriate spots or frown and look worried. I knew he understood the idea of what we were reading but did he really understand exactly what was going on in the story?

With a little help from the boardmaker program(something that typically is in any special ed classroom) I created these eye gaze reading comprehension questions.
They have been laminated(well I just use clear contact paper) so they can be used over and over and have a piece of velcro on the back in case I want to place them up on a board in front of him.
I did them large enough for him to clearly see the pictures and also for me to be able to tell exactly where he is looking. At this time Junior has about 10 stories with each having 8-10 questions each. I add new ones every so often to keep things exciting for him.
Junior loves the Amelia Bedelia series and also the Billy and Blaze series.

These cards are large so would work for a non-verbal child who can reach out and touch the correct picture as well as a child using eye gaze like Junior.


Update 11/2012
We have adjusted how we do things as Junior gets older and as new technology has been introduced.  The stories above he has outgrown and he now enjoys things like Narnia and the Hardy Boys.
We have transferred his reading comprehension questions to the ipad and he now answers from a field of 4.  The ipad makes it sooooo much easier to change the questions for what we are reading so I add a new set of question for every few chapters we are getting ready to read in his book.

He has some books on his ipad that he enjoys.  Here is his board to pick a book(there are about 20 if you were to scroll on down)

 After listening to the story we go to the story board and pick the story he has listened to.  It then goes to a question about the story. 

 If he chooses the correct answer he will be linked to the next question.  If he chooses the wrong answer he will hear "try again". 

Answering questions for his latest Hardy Boys story

 

 

 

 Proloquo2go has really made a difference in how we do schooling with Junior and made it so much easier to change and adjust for his needs.  It is the app being used above and is also used for him to communicate. 

Do you have Amelia Bedelia books or Billy and Blaze books?  Though we are not ready to give up our books I would be happy to share our comprehension boards with someone since we no longer use the laminated ones.  Let me know which books you have and I will see if I have comprehension boards for that book.  We have boards for many of the Amelia Bedelia and Billy and Blaze series.

Update 9/2013
Junior continues to love the Hardy Boys and we use the ipad for comprehension questions after every couple chapters as it shows in the above update.
We also have discovered that Abitalk now has several reading comprehension apps that Junior does well with.  These are great for during our school session because they are short stories followed by about 5 questions.  They have grade specific apps for k-5th  and some that are also subject specific.  We started using these apps this semester so have only tried  2nd and 3rd grade levels and will try the 4th and 5th grade level in the coming weeks. So far most the stories do not have the "baby" look even with the younger grade apps which is great.  Junior enjoys the stories and then most the questions he can answer using his yes/no eye gaze.  He loves science so I look forward to trying the subject specific science reading comprehension apps with him.  I am still on the hunt for other comprehension apps that work well for Junior but am pleased to have these to use with him for now and of course we read "real" books as well.

Learning to Read the Junior Way (repost from 1/6/10)

I first posted this back in January of 2010 and recently did an update to the bottom of the post so decided to repost it.  This was the first post done on this blog. 


This week we are trying to get back into the swing of things after the holiday break. I was sorting through Junior's reading activities to prepare for the next few months and thought I would share some of those. With a child who is non verbal(for the most part, he does have a few words) and unable to move his hands it can be a challenge to not only teach him the basics but also to figure out what he is understanding. For Junior eye gaze is his primary mode of communication but using a work book with him is impossible. Not only is he distracted by the many other things on the page there is no way for me to tell what exactly he is looking at.
So I looked through many, many books and curriculum, and ended up going with this one.
The pages were still far too cluttered for Junior and repetition is a necessity. We enlarged the different activities then laminated them and added velcro. This way Junior can easily focus on what we are doing and I can tell if he is choosing the correct answer. We can also do them over and over if needed*(any copies I have made of the pages in the book are used solely for Junior who the book was purchased for)*
I am also using hooked on phonics with Junior but again everything is too small and it was impossible to tell if Junior was actually reading what was on the pages. I enlarged the little readers then did enlargements of the pictures by themselves and laminated them. I also did the same with the sentence on each page. Now Junior can use his eye gaze to tell me which picture goes with the sentence and I have a way to know what he is reading and understanding.

This is how we set up his felt board with the sentences and pictures

Combining the ipad and felt board to work on reading skills

It has been awhile since I did this post but Junior still uses much this method to work on his reading.  We have gradually moved to doing more and more of his reading on the ipad and I don't spend as much time enlarging pages and laminating things.
He is now working on blends and longer words instead of just 3 letter words with short vowel sounds.  

He uses many apps now to work on reading and typically we combine with his felt board.  The app pictured is one of the abitalk apps and we have several from that series.  He has to look at the fish with a specific vowel sound, blend, starting letter, etc.   Some of our other favorite reading apps are Word Magic, Teach Me Kindergarten, Teach Me 1st Grade, Teach Me 2nd Grade, Word Wizard, and Magnetic ABC.  There are several others we use but those are our most used. 

We also use various games were Junior matches a picture and word.  Here he is "fishing for words".  He catches a fish(they have magnets) with his pole then matches the picture on the back to a word on his ipad. 

In these specific pics he had caught a fish with the pic symbol for help on it and was matching the word.  Junior gets bored easily so we never stay on one thing very long and if we can turn reading into a game then he will stay focused much longer.  The ipad has allowed us to see that Junior is much further along in his reading then we realized. 

 

We have tried words like friend, family, computer, sunshine, doctor etc. and were amazed that though we had never worked on those words he had no problem picking them out of a group of 4 when asked(on his ipad).   He also continues to use the curriculum for reading which is at the top of this post(just the next level of it) though we are now just working through the book and using the ipad to allow him to do the book work.