Ways to Keep Your Child Reading & Writing This Summer

Parents,
I think this blog post from thisreadingmama.com has some great ideas for integrating authentic reading and writing practice into summertime activities. Enjoy!
Click here for ideas to keep your kids reading and writing in the summer!

Hooray for Summer!

Congratulations to all the kiddos for their hard work this year and a big giant THANK YOU to all the parents for your support this year. I'm so proud of the growth that each student has made.

I hope that you all have a relaxing and fun-filled summer with your kids. Take advantage of the downtime to try new activities with your kids. Summer is the perfect time to try to expand your child's interests.

Don't forget about the importance of a simple visual schedule to ease the anxiety of transitioning into summer and back into school (or any "different" time like vacation). Here's a link to a post about working through transitions with a printable calendar. 

When the summer doldrums hit, here are the some resources for
fun activities in the Austin area.
Click here for a comprehensive list (free & not so free)! 

Click for  lists of free summer activities!

If you would like to see your child be able to complete more writing on the computer, summer is a great time to have them work on developing keyboarding skills. Check out this post for links for keyboarding games.









Summer is also a good time to work on basic personal care and safety skills like shoe tying and  learning their parent names, addresses, and phone number. Here's a link to a post with shoe tying visuals.

In mid-August, I will touch base with each of you to see how your summer has been and send you a social story and picture of your child's teacher for next year. We will also set a meet the teacher visit when it is quiet and chaos-free.

Have a wonderful summer vacation!

p.s. I've started a SCORES wishlist page on the sidebar. If you have a moment, check it out! If you can keep your eyes open for small items for the treasure box, that would be great! When my kids were younger, I was famous for swiping those discarded Happy Meal toys from the floorboard of the car to recycle in the treasure box! Any freebie can be a good wishlist item (keychains, pens, pencils, sticky notes, toys, etc).  Wish List

Fun Ways To Develop Keyboarding Skills This Summer!

I've spoken with several families about increasing their child's familiarity with letter location on a computer keyboard. Typically before having a child do more of their writing on the classroom computer or considering assistive technology options for fine motor/handwriting difficulties, it is important for students to be familiar with the keyboard and be able to quickly locate keys. Hunting and pecking is fine, but needs to be able to be done pretty quickly in order for it to be a help and not a hindrance for students.

If you think that you would like to discuss having your student complete more writing assignments on the computer or requesting assistive technology such as a Netbook or an Alphasmart next year, please have your child spend time this summer using the computer with the goal of becoming faster at typing.

The kids can email me at kelley.hively@austinisd.org to practice typing or perhaps a family member or friend. They can also play computer games for 10 minutes a day and will develop skills quickly. If your child is a video game fan, I recommend requiring them to practice a typing game for 10 minutes before they can access the video game of their choice.

Here is a list of great (free!) online resources for keyboarding games:

typingweb.com 

This site has excellent instruction as well as games. The section under "courses" is unfortunately dull, but good to do if you can get your child to work on it for 5 minutes or so. The section under "games" is fun and good practice.

Dance Mat Typing

learninggamesforkids.com

What is Social Thinking (c)?

Social Thinking (c) is a concept originated by Michelle Garcia Winner. She defines Social Thinking (c) as:

Social thinking is what we do when we interact with people: we think about them. And how we think about people affects how we behave, which in turn affects how others respond to us, which in turn affects our own emotions.

Whether we are with friends, sending an email, in a classroom or at the grocery store, we take in the thoughts, emotions and intentions of the people we are interacting with.

Most of us have developed our communications sense from birth onwards, steadily observing and acquiring social information and learning how to respond to people. Because social thinking is an intuitive process, we usually take it for granted. 

But for many individuals, this process is anything but natural. And this often has nothing to do with conventional measures of intelligence. In fact, many people score high on IQ and standardized tests, yet do not intuitively learn the nuances of social communication and interaction. (http://www.socialthinking.com/what-is-social-thinking)

If you are new to learning about how Social Thinking (c) instruction impacts your child, you might find the videos below helpful. They are excerpts from workshops provided by Michelle Garcia Winner.

South Austin Optimist Club Baseball League