Special Connection Homeschool

I can't believe my last post was way back on October 2nd! I really try to do one post a week, but this month has been crazy. I hope to get back on track now. One thing this month has brought us was Gess' birthday celebration. She certainly couldn't wait to be 9! Gess knows she is "growing up" and constantly tells me how she can't wait until she is 18 and passes the test so she can drive. Man, they sure want to skip all the good times don't they? One day Gess kept frantically pointing to her leg. I asked her what was the matter. She said "My leg! My leg is growing, it's growing into 9!" Yes, my literal little girl figured her leg was literally growing "up" on the one day that is her birthday! You just gotta love moments like that! But to help her slow down on the "growing up" thing and settle down to enjoy the moments until then I figured I would share the neatest gift Gesserine got for her birthday. It was gi...

As we are getting into addition, an important concept we are trying to master is counting on from one number to the next. In the book Teaching Math to People with Down Syndrome they offer some ways to help teach the concept. They suggest playing games with dice and count on from the first dice to add the second. You can count money starting with a $5 or $10 dollar bill. They also suggested laying out a number line that goes to 20 and throwing out random playing cards (with the face cards removed and using aces as ones) and counting up to 20 from whatever card is thrown. Another idea that my husband came up with involved an abacus I had purchased but have yet to use. While this game does not use it in the manner in which it was intended, it is a great visual tool to help Gess count on and she has found it more interesting then just throwing out one random card to count from. First we took the playing cards that already had the face cards removed and used aces as ones. I then...