Dysgraphia? Dyscalculia?

Ill handwriting. Severe atrocius writing skills. Difficulty to write.

Those are the definations I got when I Googled for 'dysgraphia'. Somebody pointed out to me that Nadia's symptoms may not be dyslexia. It could be other type of phonological processing problem. Suspects includes dysgraphia and dyscalculia. There are also dyslexia dysgraphia, dyslexia dyscalculia and othe types and degree of dyslexia, waiting to join the bandwagon. I don't want to go and write into depth about each types of the disabilities. My knowledge about dylexia or other phonological processing problem is too little for me to elaborate in this entry.

Whatever the name is, Nadia does have an obvious phonological processing problem. I haven't got a clue what exactly it is. Weeks ago I'm very positive that it was dyslexia. Now it could be anything from dysgraphia to any other phonological processing disabilities. I am still clueless about the exact name of Nadia's disability. Nevertheless, I will share with you the methods and approaches I used and experimented whilst educating Nadia in here (and future entries). Maybe some of it may benefit you. I do hope a lot will benefit me :)

Last Sunday & Monday was yet another full 'rest days' for me at home. Sunday were spent for painting, learning mathematics (addition) and play the 'rice' game. Monday was another craft-day, creating huge numbers by sticking grains on paper. I discovered Kindergarten Resources for Phonics Practice and let Nadia played with some of the games available in the links listed there. I also downloaded heaps of printable colourful easy phonic-practice short stories which were composed and posted by teachers all around the world. All of them share one obvious passion, promoting language education through phonetics knowledge.

Painting is an activity Nadia will never get tired of. Nadia LOVES to paint. She loves to draw too (though she's not as good as me when I was her age, hehe). I can see that she likes paper-folding-art (origami), like building paper boats and paper planes. Maybe I should learn how to do origami after this :)

Nadia loves the 'rice' game too. This game requires a bowl of rice, a piece of paper (with colour is preferred) and lots of patience (because of the mess effect after!). All you have to do is to pour the grain onto the paper and then write anything on the grain. It can be letters or numbers or words. Nadia and me always form letters and numbers she normally gets confuse easily. These include letters like 'b', 'd', 'p', 'q', 's', numbers such as '2', '3', '5', '6', '7' and '9'. The effetiveness of the game and her mirror-imaged handwriting? 50%-60% success. She gets 's' correct, '2', '3', '5' and '6' right all the time now.

For letters 'b' and 'd' I used the 'b'e'd' method. Thanks to a lot of parent-teacher websites available online, information about dyslexia and tips on teaching them come very handy and easily retrieved. Now, everytime Nadia come across letter 'b' and 'd', she will immediately raised her right and left hands, forming letter 'b' with her left and 'd' with her right.



This helps her a lot in remembering the letters. It has also made her gain her confidence while doing her reading exercise with me. Success rate: 80-95%. What I have to do now is to be more creative in creating or start searching for other tips on helping her to remember letter 'p' and 'q'. There is no such word as 'p'u'q' right? If there is, I would surely make Nadia remember THAT word so she doesn't confuse the two again in future!

Till then, see you guys again in the next entry :)