If you don’t celebrate Chanukah, then you may have never played the dreidel game before. By the way, Hanukkah is the easier way to spell it, for those who don’t care for the more authentic, clear-your-throat kind of sound represented by “Ch.” What’s a dreidel? It’s a toy with 4 sides that you spin …
Help Kids Focus on the Wins
Children with learning differences can feel pretty down about themselves. The parents of children with learning differences may be doing their very best to help. When parents (or educators) struggle to find real solutions, they can feel pretty down about themselves, too. Why is my child still struggling? Why can’t I seem to …
Are Parents of Struggling Learners Giving Up?
I read some advice the other day offered to parents of children who were newly diagnosed with learning differences. I agreed with most of it. “Always have hope” was advice that I could certainly support. This part, however, didn’t sit well with me: “Channel your emotions towards the fight. The fight for services, quality education, …
Strengths vs Learning Intervention – Which Do We Focus On?
The debate goes on. How do parents and educators best help our struggling learners? Do we focus more on children’s strengths, highlighting all of the good? Or do we focus on their weaknesses, then make every effort to help students develop better learning skills? Before we dive any deeper, let’s clarify a few things …
Learning Ability – Not Just for Other People
Have you ever felt like talent was for, well, other people? For me, it’s singing. I stink at it. I do it anyway, of course. Heaven help the sad soul within earshot of me when I do. Maybe you’ve always wanted to be a virtuoso on the guitar. Too bad those fingers of yours don’t …
Empowerment Poster(s) for Kids – Delight in the Difficult
I’m not against word art per se. I know that positive words like “love” have been scientifically proven to invite an uplifting kind of energy to any home environment. Personally, I don’t happen to adorn my walls with word art or phrases. That’s mostly because, and this is rather silly of me, I don’t want …
The Danger of Nonsense Words
Ever heard of a bap? So… a funny story here. One day I was creating an answer key for the Letter Sounds Made Simple program. Within the program, students come across occasional review pages, some of which include real words and nonsense words. Using their new letter recognition skills, students read the words, then …