Blessings

"Children are GOD's best gift.

                                The fruit of the womb His generous legacy."                            

 Psalm127:3 (The Message)

        I continue to teach two deaf 5-year-old children everyday. They are enrolled in the regular preschool class at St. Peter's and I pull them out, one at a time, for an hour each.  It's a joy! Their smiles and laughter are contagious. After teaching a classroom of children for many years, teaching one-on-one is a teacher's dream. I can focus on exactly what that child needs to learn without "keeping one busy while I teach the other one". Another reason I don't teach them at the same time is they have completly different learning styles.  Glenford doesn't like to imitate the signs I teach him or do pencil and paper tasks. He kind of doesn't want to "learn" in a traditional sense.  He wants to play.  So if I can incorporate the learning of signs and language into his play, we have a win-win.  In the picture above he is threading beads. To get another one, he needs to ask for it by color,label (ie. "car") or sign "please bead".  He would prefer to just say "ahhh" and point, but he has learned that using language is the key to getting what he wants effieciently.  Such an important lesson!  Glenford is a blessing.

This blessing is Morine. She loves pencil and paper tasks, cutting, gluing, and looking at books. She often shows her younger hearing sister her new sign language vocabulary.  She likes to teach her mom, too.  As a first born, she likes taking charge. That's a good thing if it means looking for ways to learn new things.  Today we were cutting and pasting a 4 piece story sequence onto another paper.  Each part of the sequence had a number.  After she glued the first one down she signed, "your-phone-me-write" which meant she wanted to use Kidspaint on my phone to practice writing the numbers. That wasn't part of my plan but, one of the benefits of teaching one-on-one is the plan can change at any time.  We proceeded to glue the pictures, sign the picture, sign the number, write the number, and then glue the next picture.  What an ideal teaching situation.  I thank God for this opportunity.

Kidspaint uses a touch screen.  The child uses their finger like a pencil to draw.

Last week after taking a picture of her,  Morine signed she wanted to take a picture of me.  Below is the picture Morine took.

Peace everyone!