Episode 93-Fun Summer Educational Activities

[00:00:00] Speaker A: And I'm Nicole. Welcome to the DAC Dyslexia in Coffee Podcast. We're so happy you could join us. We're both moms and dyslexia interventionists who want to talk about our students and children. What dyslexia is, how it affects our kids, strategies to help and topics related to other learning disabilities will all be covered in this podcast. Parents are not alone and we want to give voice to the concerns and struggles we are all having. This is a safe place to learn more about how to help our children grow and successful, succeed in school, in the world. Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the conversation. [00:00:34] Speaker B: Hi everybody. Welcome to episode 93 of Dyslexia and Coffee Podcast. We're going to start today's episode like we do every single time with the concept of the week. So the concept of the week is our opportunity as practitioners to kind of peel back the curtain and let everyone into an intervention session. I like to teach about things that either we would teach directly to our students or their family members. And today's concept of the week is a reading strategy. It's the close C L O Z E reading strategy. This is an instructional or assessment strategy where some words in a passage are systematically omitted. In a closed passage that you might see in a classroom, it might be completely blank, like there might be missing words. Or there could be a multiple choice option where a student might have to pick between two words that could make sense. That's one way to use this. The other way that the strategy can be used and adapted at home or in an intervention session is that parents can read aloud to their child but stop at selected words. So if you really know, your kid can decode a CVC word really well. You can read most of a passage but stop on words you know your kid knows. It's really good for reinforcing sight words. Even in intervention session, I might go through and highlight certain words ahead of time that I want my students to read while I read the rest. [00:02:33] Speaker A: 1. [00:02:34] Speaker B: It forces the student to pay attention. They have to attend to task the whole time because you're going to be here we are. You're, you know, tag, you're it. It's even better than using like an every other sentence strategy. It's really one of the most researched backed strategies for attention and for increasing the ability to gain vocabulary with context clues. So it's a really, really good one and it's really simple. It doesn't really require that much expertise. You can simply you're following along with your Finger and then you stop and your kid has to jump in and then you keep going. It's probably another strategy. A lot of parents are probably doing this and don't even know that's what they're doing. And if that's you, good job. And it's highly researched, supported and a really, really good strategy. [00:03:40] Speaker A: Yes. So episode 93 is fun summer educational activities. [00:03:47] Speaker B: Woo. [00:03:49] Speaker A: This could be fun. Yes. [00:03:54] Speaker B: It's such a fun time. [00:03:57] Speaker A: Right? [00:03:57] Speaker B: Like summer really is such a good time to learn some hands on skills, boost your creativity doing things that are truly fun. I probably am a person who could make an argument that anything is educational. Correct. I don't think educational activities stop and end at only academic tasks. People are much, much more complex than that. [00:04:32] Speaker A: Developmentally, the way children learn best is through experiencing. Right. [00:04:42] Speaker B: Like playing. Right. Playing and experiencing is exactly how they learn best. And it's so much more fun when summer is a time of low fresher [00:04:58] Speaker A: usually [00:05:01] Speaker B: and a lot of opportunities that you just have to kind of open your eyes to correct. Okay. Most of the parents who are listening to this, they're gonna be like we already do this, [00:05:16] Speaker A: but maybe you'll find a new thing. [00:05:19] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:05:20] Speaker A: So like basic mix of allergy, like making different things, the art of putting together different popsicles together or cooking, making different ingredients go together. Maybe experimenting on something that you've never done before or your child has never done before. I mean honestly, cooking is a great skill and it's also so creative. [00:05:54] Speaker B: It can be so creative and so fun. Ayda. Well, we like to cook a lot, all four of us in our house. It's kind of one thing we like to do together. [00:06:12] Speaker A: Why we like to be invited over. [00:06:16] Speaker B: You guys are always welcome at the conference for dinner. Always. It's really fun because it is something that we really like to do. And I think as a mom it's probably one of my biggest like, okay. I'm actually proud of what I'm doing as a mom here because my kids have cooked with me in the kitchen since they were teeny tiny. Like my 8 and 6 year old have pretty good knife skills. They can handle knives for safely because they have been taught to do it. I trust my 8 year old to be able to cut up things like apples or most things I give him he can do. And it's because I've been really very purposeful about it. I do not just give him a sharp knife and say have fun. [00:07:12] Speaker A: I wish you couldn't do with much. [00:07:15] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, or even like their understanding of heat is pretty good because they will surf that. We have a gas stove. And they do know how to work it. They can't work it without me. They're not allowed to. But they do know how to work it under my supervision. And now they are really into watching, like, Food Network competition shows. [00:07:43] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, we are too. [00:07:44] Speaker B: Yeah. And now they want to, like, recreate those. Yes. And I think because I've done all the work of setting that up as something they can do, I can let them do that. And, like, that could be fun. Like, they want to do like, a Cake wars this summer, and I think we're gonna do it. [00:08:04] Speaker A: We'll taste test. [00:08:05] Speaker B: Yes. [00:08:08] Speaker A: We'll be the judges. Yeah. [00:08:10] Speaker B: And it's like, what a good opportunity in summer. Like, am I going to do that during the school year? Absolutely not. It's going to be way too much stinking work. But during the summer, sure. Okay, let's figure it out. Let's do it. [00:08:23] Speaker A: The OT and me needs to talk about crafts, especially for the summer. Right. I mean, there are so many crafts out there, and they work on fine motor coordination, Gross motor coordination, following directions, organization, all sorts of different really great executive functioning things. So like learning how to sew, maybe doing a T shirt and dyeing it. They have, like, any hobby store, you can put together a wooden thing together and glue it together, paint it, put it outside. There are so many. So many different things that you can use with crafts. They have little beads. They have the little painting buttons. [00:09:11] Speaker B: Yep. [00:09:12] Speaker A: I mean, they have so many different things now. And they make them so easy to do. Yes. Because they put all the materials together for you most of the time, or it's next to each other in where you're shopping. So. So, I mean, it's all right there for you to grab. And those skills will be lifetime skills for. [00:09:34] Speaker B: Absolutely those little things for building those fine motor skills. You know, I have one who is very crafty and into arts and crafts and doing all of those things. And then I have another who is like, absolutely not into it. He'll do it if strongly coerced. But give him, like, play DOH or modeling clay or like that kind of the dry. That kind of clay that you can dry out, it kind of becomes foamy. He'll do that. Or even better yet, what he likes to do is like, climbing, collect rocks and sticks and leaves, and he'll kind of like line them up in patterns and like, that all counts. [00:10:31] Speaker A: Yep, exactly. [00:10:32] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:10:36] Speaker A: Music and arts. I mean, painting, trying music, trying a new instrument over the summer. Even going to like an art museum. [00:10:46] Speaker B: Yes. [00:10:46] Speaker A: I mean, you don't have to be an artist just. And enjoy art. [00:10:50] Speaker B: Exactly. You know, and not like counting it all the way out. I sometimes I hear a lot like, art's not my thing or music's not my thing. It doesn't have to be your whole identity to just enjoy the exposure to it. Even just going in during the summer in our town, in my small town, every Thursday is a concert in our park. And sometimes these groups are truly awful. Sometimes they are really, really, really, really bad. [00:11:26] Speaker A: And sometimes that's a learning experience too. [00:11:28] Speaker B: That's a learning experience too. But it's like, still fun. It's still really fun to go to. And even those groups that are like really bad, you could tell they're trying their little hearts out and you just got to kind of give it to them. But even just having that exposure to outdoor music. [00:11:51] Speaker A: Correct. [00:11:52] Speaker B: Can be really powerful. Having them make their own instruments is really fun. I mean, my kids have done the like where you take rubber bands around a, you know, shoe box. Oh, yeah. And made like a little mini guitar. They've made, you know, different kinds of percussion kind of instruments. There's always opportunities to just notice those things that are already around you. [00:12:25] Speaker A: Correct. [00:12:28] Speaker B: Yeah. Gardening. [00:12:33] Speaker A: Indoor or outdoor? [00:12:34] Speaker B: Indoor or outdoor? Yeah. This is always kind of a little bit of a joke for me because we do have an outdoor garden that does pretty well because it's on the side of the house where we do get pretty, like full sun. But I'm not really a gardener. I enjoy having especially fresh tomatoes from the garden. I mean, nothing beats that. And I really cannot even abide a store bought tomato. Like that's not a tomato, but a garden tomato. Absolutely. Probably one of my favorite foods. Inevitably though, what I do is completely neglect my garden and kind of forget it exists for a good couple of weeks. And that it's totally overridden with weeds, but yet I still generally get produce out of it. [00:13:29] Speaker A: So. So it's working. [00:13:30] Speaker B: So it's working. [00:13:31] Speaker A: Right. [00:13:33] Speaker B: But it is really fun to pick the plants. Do the planting have that physical connection to like, this is food. We planted, we grew. This is really, really fun. And watching things grow is totally so fun, especially with the kids. And my poor mother in law just has to close her eyes and not look at our garden because she is a gardener and she's like, you know, you really have to get rid of those weeds. And I'm like, no, I really don't. Also, I don't really Know what's a weed and what's the actual plants? [00:14:19] Speaker A: They're not gonna do it. Another thing for summer fitness and movement. Summertime is the best time to be outside doing maybe a new hobby. Taking up swimming, kicking around a soccer ball, doing baseball, learning how to do a sport you've never done before, or just getting out to walk and taking out through the neighborhood. And, I mean, there's so much educational bits to just be out there and learning about, oh, this is a different house style, or this is a different tree, or you can take a flower book with you and figure out which flower it is. Well, they all look pretty to me, but [00:15:12] Speaker B: I did get, a couple years ago, an app on my phone that you can take a picture of a plant and it will identify it. [00:15:24] Speaker A: Oh, okay. [00:15:25] Speaker B: Which is kind of cool. That is kind of cool because. [00:15:29] Speaker A: Yeah, they all look the same. [00:15:30] Speaker B: They all look the same to me. I have. Yeah. My husband could rattle off a bunch of facts, and, like, that's also what's kind of fun about all of these different kinds of educational things. Like, those are things I know basically nothing about, but my husband knows a ton about. So, like, that's his opportunity to teach the kids about stuff, you know? And me. Yes. I just think [00:15:58] Speaker A: it's. [00:16:00] Speaker B: Again, I really think almost anything we do is educational, right down to going to the grocery store. [00:16:08] Speaker A: Correct. [00:16:08] Speaker B: That is educational. [00:16:10] Speaker A: Yes. [00:16:11] Speaker B: You know, you can teach budgeting skills. You can just teach the flexibility it takes. Like, oh, we were going to plan on making this recipe we need. [00:16:23] Speaker A: They don't have. [00:16:24] Speaker B: They don't have it. Right. They don't have this. We either have to replan or we have to learn to substitute or we have. I mean, there are just so many skills involved in your regular grocery store shopping that, you know, as your kids get older, letting them into that decision making. [00:16:50] Speaker A: Correct. [00:16:51] Speaker B: Is really pretty important. [00:16:56] Speaker A: So some people actually do want to learn academics in the summer. [00:17:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:17:02] Speaker A: But. And this is, like, some ways to maybe make it a little bit more fun, like learning a language through an app on your phone. My daughter's doing that right now, making me do it, too. [00:17:16] Speaker B: So what is she learning? [00:17:17] Speaker A: She's learning German, because that's what I know. German. [00:17:19] Speaker B: Okay. [00:17:22] Speaker A: I took German for, like, seven or eight years. So, like, yeah, it's actually coming back to me, which is really kind of scary to me, because I'm gonna start sleeping and talking in German, which, when my husband met me, that's what I did, only in my sleep. Hilarious. Yes. [00:17:37] Speaker B: Yep. [00:17:37] Speaker A: So I'm waiting for him to be like, guess what you're doing again. [00:17:40] Speaker B: Guess what? [00:17:42] Speaker A: And she gets mad at me with when I don't do my lesson for the day. [00:17:46] Speaker B: Oh boy. Are you guys using Duolingo? [00:17:48] Speaker A: Yeah, we are. [00:17:49] Speaker B: It's. It's fun. [00:17:50] Speaker A: It is fun. [00:17:51] Speaker B: It's fun. [00:17:51] Speaker A: And the fun part is she decided to link us so now she can actually look to see what I'm doing. [00:17:58] Speaker B: She's following you. [00:17:59] Speaker A: She is. And now like I can't get out of it. Which is fine because I'm okay. Like relearning it. [00:18:06] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:18:06] Speaker A: But I'm also like, some days. Some days don't really not what I [00:18:13] Speaker B: want to do right now. [00:18:14] Speaker A: What I want to do. [00:18:14] Speaker B: But you know what? [00:18:15] Speaker A: I'm brushing up on that skill. And it's. I'm really proud of her that she wanted to do that. We tried to talk her into a different language, but she decided that. So. [00:18:28] Speaker B: Yeah. And you know what? That's such a good example of like. Yeah, hold it loosely. Let her do it. That's awesome. Yep. That's awesome. [00:18:38] Speaker A: Okay. And she. Evelyn told me so that's what happens. You have a 13 year old. [00:18:44] Speaker B: Oh, that's what's happening with my 6 year old. [00:18:49] Speaker A: She's not 6. She's like 30. [00:18:51] Speaker B: I don't know. She's. She's scary friends. My word. [00:18:57] Speaker A: Another one is like doing astronomy because in the summer it's so much fun to be outside studying the constellations. We have an app on my phone because Katherine are my oldest. This app on my phone. This is how I get apps on my phone, guys. And literally I can point my phone at the sky and it tells me what the constellation is, what stars are involved and the whole history of it. [00:19:22] Speaker B: That's really cool. [00:19:24] Speaker A: Then she steals my phone and never gives it back. [00:19:27] Speaker B: I'm really pretty excited because Aiden got a telescope for Christmas and we haven't been able to. It's set up. [00:19:35] Speaker A: Catherine will be all over it. [00:19:37] Speaker B: Yeah, we have it. It's set up. But we just really haven't been able [00:19:40] Speaker A: to use it yet. [00:19:41] Speaker B: Use it yet. Okay. So I'm really [00:19:46] Speaker A: super excited. [00:19:47] Speaker B: Really excited about it. And I think it'll be. I think that'll be really fun. [00:19:54] Speaker A: I think so too. [00:19:57] Speaker B: You know. [00:19:58] Speaker A: Yeah. We did. Someone at school brought one in and we all went one night. But it was cold out. It was like in November. [00:20:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:20:09] Speaker A: I am not a person who loves being cold. [00:20:11] Speaker B: Same. [00:20:12] Speaker A: So like I'd rather be 80 out than looking at the stars. [00:20:16] Speaker B: Same. Absolutely same. [00:20:19] Speaker A: It was a really Cool thing, though. [00:20:21] Speaker B: Yes. [00:20:21] Speaker A: But. [00:20:22] Speaker B: Yes. I remember doing an astronomy class in college. [00:20:28] Speaker A: Okay. [00:20:28] Speaker B: And of course it was like winter and we. [00:20:33] Speaker A: Oh. [00:20:34] Speaker B: I was like, this is actually kind of awful. I actually don't want to do this right now. But I'm learning. [00:20:49] Speaker A: Another thing we could do is creative writing. Right. Like a couple five to 15 minutes a day writing in a journal. Maybe you go on vacation and you have. You guys. Everybody writes their favorite parts. Yep. Try some poems. Do something fun. Something that you don't normally write about. [00:21:09] Speaker B: Exactly. Like the low pressure. It's not being graded. It's not being judged. You know, I wouldn't even. My son last year got into writing these like full on comic books. [00:21:28] Speaker A: Nice. [00:21:28] Speaker B: They were so silly, you know? And he had a lot of letter reversals and things that didn't really quite make sense and like not complete sentences. And I just didn't. That wasn't about that. That was about figuring something out and about trying it. And I mean, he was writing pages and pages every single day and it was so cool. And his drawings were funny and like. Yes, that's the time to just let all of that happen. [00:22:06] Speaker A: Correct. And I guess the last thing, some basic math, you know, budgeting again, Grocery shopping. I don't want to say the calculating the miles per gallon because honestly, at this point you don't want to know. [00:22:23] Speaker B: That is not advice for this summer. Oh, my God. I don't want to know. [00:22:26] Speaker A: Don't want to know. [00:22:27] Speaker B: Don't want to know. But, but like anything but even time. Okay. How much time does it take us to get to grandma and grandpa's in here? How much time does it get us? You know, how much time does it take us to get from our house to school? [00:22:44] Speaker A: Chris has been playing the. For Carolyn, the game of give me the directions of how to get from our house to the store. Yeah. Let's just say they go along with the left. [00:22:59] Speaker B: She likes to go really hardcore. Likes the left. So I don't know if it's because [00:23:04] Speaker A: she's left handed or if that's just. She just thinks she just makes everything literally. He'll actually drive the route that she's saying and they'll just go into a circle and she'll be like. [00:23:16] Speaker B: So she's learning directions, you know, and even literally reading a map. I mean, it is kind of a forgotten skill. It is. And we need to bring some maps back. [00:23:28] Speaker A: There's a lot of skills we need to bring back. [00:23:30] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. For sure. So, Maggie, what's happening beyond dyslexia oh my goodness. Yeah, it's been a lot. I feel like that is my answer. Every single episode. Honestly. No, it's been a lot of things happening. I been really looking forward to this weekend. We have a slightly less load. I think we only have like two things for sure planned. [00:24:11] Speaker A: Only two? Only two. [00:24:14] Speaker B: And I think one of them is like dinner at my in laws house. So like lower key, you know, not that big of a deal. It is the kids last day of school or. Yeah, last day of school next Friday as we record this. They will be done then and it is, you know, it's just those little last things and I'm feeling weirdly emotional because at our school the kids change schools in third grade. So Aiden will be in a different building than Millie next year and that [00:24:55] Speaker A: just feels like, oh, he's like a big kid now. [00:24:59] Speaker B: He's not in the little kid building and I know he's not a little kid anymore but it's like oh yeah, third grade also just sounds like oh, that's like an older kid. That's not. Yeah, that's not a younger kid any more. So that's what's going on with me. What's going on with you, Nicole? [00:25:24] Speaker A: Well, our oldest started soccer last night. [00:25:27] Speaker B: That's so awesome. [00:25:29] Speaker A: We didn't know she was going to but because we applied like four months ago and then didn't get any emails and then the night before I was told hey, we start tomorrow. So we showed up. It was actually a lot of fun. It was a lot of kids [00:25:44] Speaker B: and [00:25:45] Speaker A: young adults that yeah, it's with, you know, they just had a lot of fun and we had a lot of fun watching so considering they've never, you know, a lot of them didn't ever play before so you could tell that the ones that have versus the ones that haven't skill level was very different. So But I think she's, they're going to play for a while together so I think that's going to really help her build her skills. [00:26:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:26:12] Speaker A: And it's something new that she's learning and it's great timing because it's going [00:26:17] Speaker B: to be like, yeah, she's going to [00:26:19] Speaker A: be done with school soon. [00:26:20] Speaker B: So that's, it's going to be really good for her. Something physical and like a group activity that is building like that's going to be, that's going to be a really cool thing for her. I'm excited for her for that. Be fun. Well, thank you everybody. Please follow us on social media and reach out if you have questions or you would like us to discuss a topic. If you do like our show, be sure to follow and rate our show on your favorite podcast player. That's how we really get to reach more listeners and we get to help our families. Thank you, everybody. [00:26:55] Speaker A: Thank you.