Learning, with love

A few weeks ago, I read Colleen Bailey's story (click on Education in the list of contents and then click on the last piece - Inclusion - under education). It's one of those stories that makes you want to stand up and applaud the child, his parents, the whole family. They must have worked very hard to make Colleen the star that he is.

Wouldn't we all would love for our kids with DS to have such great stories? I know I would be thrilled for Angel (and all our kids). So our efforts to teach her to read started quite early. When she was about seven months old, I came across this wonderful website - Love and Learning - which is about a reading and language development program meant for children with special needs. The program has been developed by a couple - Joe and Susan Kotlinski - who have had remarkable success in helping their daughter (born with Down syndrome) acquire reading skills. They now offer the program to other children with special needs. The stories on this site are so heart-warming and encouraging, I decided that I must get Angel started on this program.

I got in touch with Joe and Susan and ordered the first two kits. Joe was very helpful and gave us some good advice on how to use the program. Each kit comes with books, a DVD, a computer program and an audio CD. As soon as we got the kits, we started reading the books to Angel. She watches the DVD everyday and loves to watch the animated letters and words on my laptop, whenever we run the computer program for her. She even knows that she has to press a key to make it go to the next word :)

Though we are not able to do much everyday, we still try to do a little and are delighted to find that she has begun to recognize words. She's tried to say apple when I showed her the word apple a couple of times, and she even tried to say bus and car.

Recently, I found another excellent resource on Downsed International. It's called See and Learn and you can find it here. This site has an entire range of downloadable material that is easy to put together and use. It took me less than an hour to get the first lot of the material ready and we were ready to go. The material is customizable and it provides a good template for you to create your own flash cards. I cut pictures of myself and Angel's daddy to make the mom and dad flash cards. Interesting and fun.

And now to the crux. We are at a point where Angel is easily distracted and would prefer chewing on the material rather than looking at it so I'm not sure how much of what I do is being absorbed but I still read it to her everyday. I'd like to believe that she will be reading soon and I can add her story to all the other beautiful and inspiring ones out there. I would love to hear about your efforts and your child's progress. I'm sure he or she is doing great. Please do write in with your stories.

Thanks for reading,
JD