Hodgeheg

Some of you will know that our eldest daughter has short term memory issues, it's taken a while but we now know that her auditory memory is very poor fortunately her visual memory is about average and her long term memory is good.
Much of what we have done to help her was without knowing the problem, just knowing her and how her brain worked. Knowing the specific issue has helped us understand more and given us tools to support some of our decisions regarding her learning.
It also explained her difficulty in reading, it's not the words that pose the problem but holding on to what she has read in order to piece the story together. Understanding stories has always been challenging but picture books gave visual clues and were short enough to read several times allowing her to put the story together. However as she has grown up and her class mates have moved on to chapter books with few if any illustrations she has struggled. She no longer wants to read little kids books! But has little comprehension of the chapter books.
She loves reading and it is heartbreaking. At the moment she still gains pleasure from completing a book, but I wonder how long this will be the case.
So when we were told at the beginning of the Easter holidays that the class would be reading the Hodgeheg this term I decided to experiment with it, could we make it visual and interactive? Could we make it fun, and could we hold her interest enough to get through the book a number of times a hence access her long term memory?
To start with we read it to her, and we made a bookmark giving the names of the main characters.

She then read the book and we made felt puppets of the characters and she labelled them with stickers, she was beginning to remember the key character Max.

So as she read through the book again we created a story mat, a section at a time, but crucially Rebecca created it, she came up with the design and cut out many of the pieces - I got the job of sewing it together!

Once the basic areas were made, we then went through the book to find what we needed to add, essentially this is comprehension but creative comprehension, she would keep looking because we needed to know what to make next, there was a point and a purpose.
Letting Rebecca design it and do the cutting, engaged her brilliantly with the story even if I had to sit on my hands occaisionally! The tactile and visual nature of the mat helped her remember the flow of the story, it was no longer random words.
But doing this for every book just isn't practical and so the search continues!

Life from the back of the pack: Rebecca is nine

Craft parties are the party of the moment it seems well if your 9 and go to Barton Primary anyway!

I decided to have 6 craft options running simultaneously and kept my eyes open for bargains!
The result was : Felt bags, painted coasters, Decopatch bird houses, loom bands, Hama beads, and butterfly tags.
The bags were reduced Easter stock from Tesco. The original design was tricky so some savvy ones left out the side panels and sewed a simple bag!

Decopatch is always fun, in my head they were using one colour for the walls and another for the roof, the reality is that they used a complete mix on all of it and bizarrely it worked!

The coasters were another Easter bargain, this time from hobby craft. Some had more success with the stencils than others, but they enjoyed painting them anyway.

Loom bands were definatly the favoured activity but all the girls took home a selection of crafts, and having a garden available meant that they could have a run around when they hah had enough crafting!!

Rebecca's cake followed the craft theme, I purchased a silicone mould for the buttons but wasn't happy with the result so opted to make my own.

She had a butterfly theme running through the decorations and tableware so these were incorporated in her cup cakes.

It was a fun afternoon !

The plans are now underway for next years parties! No joke Sophie is planning a loomy party! And Annie a frozen party - even discussing costumes with her friends! I guess with 6 months to go she will have it all sorted by February!!