Up for reading

Of late, my little AngelicA seems to have made the connect between books and reading. I just have to say or sign read and she makes a dash to perch herself on my lap and then she waits for me to start reading. Sometimes she pulls out her books from the shelf, picks one of them up and then reads - turning the pages and mumbling to herself. It is such a cute sight.

Part of her interest probably stems from the fact that her sister loves books and enjoys being read to. Elle was into books from a very young age and at one point she would only eat if I would read to her while I was feeding her. Her favorites are Spot, a couple of the Fisher Price early reader books and some Enid Blytons. And Angel has always been a part of all the reading that we would do with Elle.

I guess this is something that all parents do. And now there is increasing evidence that for kids with Down Syndrome, the benefits of reading are significant enough to warrant concerted efforts to build this essential skill.

I recently came across this interesting article - Teaching reading skills to children with Down Syndrome on Up-for-Reading.org - which has some interesting ideas on how to teach our kids to read. Here's what the article says on the benefits of teaching them reading:

Reading will help children with Down syndrome to develop vocabulary and grammar knowledge and will give added practice, and therefore improve spoken language skills. Reading practice will also help to develop working memory skills. The ability to read and write facilitates easier access to general knowledge and the school curriculum and it supports the skills necessary for problem solving and thinking strategies.

There is also evidence for the beneficial effect of reading on speech and language skills. Case study records suggest that early reading activities encourage progress to longer utterances and improved grammar in speech. They also suggest that reading improves articulation and speech intelligibility (the ability to be understood by the listener).

Picture source: Up-for-reading.org

Reading also helps in social development. The best part about reading is that it is fun. In one of my earlier posts (find it here)I had mentioned some of the stuff we were doing to support Angel's language development through early reading along with some ideas and links to resources for early reading.

I cannot emphasize enough how much of difference our efforts have made. Earlier today, I was reading one of Angel's books to her, I pointed to the word 'eat' and asked her "What's this?" And she signed eat, putting her little fingers to her mouth. It was the best thing that happened today - our little Eureka moment :)

Thanks for reading,
JD

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