Volunteering in Harry's Class - Day 1

Today was a wonderful 2hrs spent with Harry in his class environment. His teacher had mentioned that he was not very productive in the afternoons and was not focusing or producing work like his peers. I thought I would take the opportunity to go and take a look and to see if there was anything I could help with or learn about him. these were my findings.

The main thing I noticed today was the lack of attention he gave his teacher, not once did he look up and listen or look in her direction when she spoke. When she gave the directions to the class for the next activity they were to complete he was off in the clouds. He was fidgeting with a clip on his desk, the rest of the class was going on with what was asked (there were a few exceptions) it was like he had not even noticed that he was meant to be doing something. He needs some type of prompting or cuing to get him to sit up and pay attention.

He would slouch in his seat, usually with arms folded and head on the table. He would look around the room swinging his legs and would not be aware of what his table was doing, the class work he should be doing. The teacher asked his table to put there work away and come join her on the mat, he put the work under his desk and then just sat there looking around at the ceiling. While the rest of his table had been on the mat for a few mins already. He was not aware of what he should be doing. I intervened a few times with directing and showing him what the teacher has asked everyone to do. They had work on the over head projector which I sat with him and helped him complete. Without that one on one he would just sit there and look around the room with the work sheet in front of him, waiting to be worked on.

As a result of Harry's unawareness, he is missing out on getting tasks done, the sense of achieving at school, the reward of finishing a task and letting his table down for not showing he is ready by sitting there with work away and arms crossed. He misses the cues.

I also had the opportunity to meet with his reading tutor today Heather Cook, she is a wonderful resource teacher who will work with Harry one on one with his reading, letters, phonetics and writing skills. I believe 20mins every afternoon.

Tuesday afternoons will be his social group time for 1 hour. Yet to start, I think next week is the kick off for that. This will take place with Mrs Jones.

During Writing time, I sat with Harry and helped him through the process the teacher has put in place to get the kids journalling, thinking, drawing, writing. To this day all Harry had achieved was the drawing stage, but today, I sat with him and made it fun and achievable, helping him every step of the way, in the end he finished it and you should have seen the sense of accomplishment. In fact it is now 6pm and he is still talking about it. He could not wait to show his teacher, he put his hand up to get her attention, she came over. Harry could not contain himself, I finished it!!! He was so proud! She was beaming too, that is great Harry! what did you write about, can you tell me what it says? he shared it with her with a smile on his face.
He had a few hurdles along the way, one was the motivation to see it through to the end, he wanted to give up a number of times. Saying its too hard, I don't know how to do it. I eased him through one small step at a time, looked at a word rather than everything he had to write. I also made it exciting for him, by encouraging him to draw and write about something that he found fun over the weekend. Daddy cutting down a tree...cool!

This was a very rewarding time for both of us, we both learnt a lot about each other. I want to help him and see this as a great way of giving him something he needs.

Doing OK...but man is getting anxious about his birthday!
Troubles understanding time and length

Its almost not worth telling him its his birthday until the day of. Everyday he asks me over and over again, "Is it my birthday tomorrow?" We have made a calendar for him, counting down the days so he can clearly see how far off it is. Its as if he has no reality of time or days. When you say dinner will be in 5mins, he gets upset because he is hungry now, but if you told him after that, would an hour be better or 10 hrs he would be fine? I don't understand. We need to teach him to understand these concepts but its not an easy one for him.

I think we may need to tell him of big events a few days before, that way he is not disappointed everyday leading up to the event. Everyday at the moment is like one big disappointment, he just wants his birthday to be tomorrow and everything will be alright.

Another thing he is anxious about is the time he spends at school. He feels it is too long and is a big day. He is overwhelmed by spending his whole day at school almost as if it is hard for him to see the end of the day or understand time. I wonder if it seems like an eternity for him?

Bedtime Routine

Bedtime routine we now do 3 pages of exercises from a kindergarden workbook.

Everything goes well until he makes his first mistake. Then he is no longer interested. He immediately wants to either do a different page or do it tomorrow. He also slapped his head hard. He also said something along of the lines that he was stupid and he cant do it.

I persist with trying to correct the mistake and finish the page. This makes things worse. Harry insists on doing another page to the point of tantrum. This resulted in Harry wanting mummy and running out of the room.

Harry finds it very difficult to work through mistakes or correct himself. When I tried to correct his pronounciation of "yellow" from "lellow" - he could pronounce "yeh" and "ellow" but couldnt string them together. He then immediately lost interest in that page so I moved on.

This is a bit of a catch up! As we have just started this blog, we hope to be updating it daily. So this post is a bit of a catch up of the week.

• Behavior/Headbutting - Tonight, Something we haven't seen a lot of lately is the headbutting, but man did it make an appearance tonight! During dinner, which was going really well, he was eating all his chicken and sweet potato. And then all of a sudden. out of now where...BAM! Really hard against the tile table top (enough to crack the grout) I think it was because we told him he couldn't have my fry that I had put aside for him until he had finished his chicken, he ate some chicken and then tried to sneak the fry of my plate and I told him he had to eat the last two mouth fulls of chicken. This response was totally out of the blue! The more surprising thing was how quickly he moved on from it, no crying or attention on his part and was past as soon as it happened, almost as if it didn't happen. Very strange?
  

• Learning - When working in a kindergarten work book with dad, if its an exercise he can do in his book he is happy to do it, but when it's something he finds hard he says "can we do it tomorrow!" and there really is no compromise or talking him into it, even with help. Its hard to get him to even just try it!
  

• Learning - We have been doing a word of the day, this is to get him focused on a easy word, where he can practice reading, spelling and sounding out, keeping it all simple. We did the word "cat" yesterday and while he was great at sounding out the letters he could not tell me what the word said. when asked to write the word on the chalk board next to it, he did not want to and said he would do it later and that he was too tired. funny how he was awake enough to go play lego after that. Its like there is always something else he would rather be doing.

• Behavior/Social/Emotional - This week Harry's hardest moments have been when we are going out. I will tell him what we are doing for the day and straight away "I don't want to go out!" Getting him dressed and out the door has been a 30min plus process that is always a battle with tears, screaming and foot stomping. All that just to get out the door and then when we get there from the moment we arrive to the time we finally get back in the car to leave, all I hear is "mommy I don't want to stay, can we go home?" repeatedly until we go, makes for a fun time out...not!

• Behavior/Emotional - Tonight when asked to get in the bath, he didn't want to go upstairs and cried and said he just wants to be with his mommy, when asked to go up he said "please I want to stay with you!" then I suggested why don't you have a shower then, off he goes!