Child Success Center
Handwriting Club at Child Success Center
Child Success Center Announces “Handwriting Club” for 2014
There has been some discussion recently about the viability and necessity of learning penmanship skills. Yet research shows that writing by hand engages the brain and is a vital component of literacy. Since handwritten testing throughout the school system is unlikely to change any time soon, learning to write quickly and clearly is an important means to an end. With the adoption of the Common Core State Standards, the emphasis and expectations placed on classroom note-taking and expository writing in grades K–5 is greater than ever.
Whether a child prints or uses cursive writing, it must be legible to convey correct test answers, thoughts, instructions, etc. throughout his academic career and life. Therefore “hand writing” is a skill that must be learned and serves many purposes besides legibility.
While we may take the ability to write correctly for granted, many support skills must first be learned requiring the hand, eyes and brain to work in harmony. This becomes more challenging when a child is experiencing a delay in certain areas of development. This in turn can leave a child with feelings of frustration, decreased confidence and success, and often results in avoidance of the very repetition necessary to build skill.
The years between the ages of 3 and 5 are the time your child will build the motor coordination required to develop the dexterity, hand strength and endurance to shift from a fisted grasp to an adult 3 finger, (tri-pod) dynamic grasp that will allow them to control the pencil with ease.
The “Handwriting Club” at Child Success Center is a program customized to meet each child’s needs. The program is designed and run by licensed and highly skilled Occupational Therapists and features multi-sensory strategies, whole brain learning, and the extremely successful Handwriting Without Tears® program.
For more information or to enroll, call the Child Success Center – 310.899.9597 or email: Enroll@childsuccesscenter.com
Read complete article: “Handwriting – A Dying Art or Important Skill?”– by Melissa Idelson, Director, Child Success Center
Get Set for Kindergarten Program
Preparing your child for kindergarten.
One of the greatest challenges in the young life of most children is making that initial big step into Kindergarten. Many parents who have had their little ones in preschool believe that Kindergarten is somewhat akin to preschool and that significant academics really don’t kick in until 1st or 2nd grade, but that is far from reality. With the introduction of the new Common Core Standards, the bar is being raised and children entering Kindergarten must be more prepared than ever. In recent years, California Kindergarten curriculum has shifted to become far more academically skewed than in past decades and now more than ever, it’s very important to have all children properly prepared for these greater new challenges. To successfully excel in their new setting, children must achieve and master certain educational and social skills to adequately adapt and grow in a more accountable and often faster paced setting.
Some things to look for in the “Kindergarten-ready” child:
- Follows words left to right and top to bottom
- Understands that words are separated by spaces in print
- Recognizes and can name all upper and lower case letters of alphabet
- Demonstrates basic knowledge of letter sound correspondence by producing primary sound made by most consonants
- Holds a pencil with an adult grasp – 3 fingers with control of the pencil from the fingers
New Program to Help Kids “Be Prepared” for Kindergarten with Proper Skills
To help those who may need additional support, Child Success Center announces it’s new “Get Set For Kindergarten” program, a fun, interactive opportunity to prepare your child for Kindergarten. The program will help children develop confidence while taking the first steps toward handwriting and reading. The huge gymnasium at Child Success Center turns “learning” into “play” and all activities will inspire creative interests and offer hands-on fun through touching, exploring and games.
Small groups are now forming – call to reserve your child’s spot and help ensure the best start possible to a positive and successful academic experience.
Is Your Child "ready" for Kindergarten?
You have a child in kindergarten and it’s time for the first round of parent teacher conferences.
Do you feel excited to hear about how your child is doing at school or are you a bit nervous? Are you ready to guide your child’s learning experiences this year along with their teachers?
This year I am both a parent of a kindergartner and the Director of a development and learning center. For myself and all the other parents, September was a long month filled with first days of school, back to school nights, challenges with what to pack for lunch so your child will eat, early mornings and building of new friendships. It is also the time that many schools schedule parent teacher meetings to begin the process of sharing and gathering information about your child.
I recently had my conference and I will tell you that if we had sent our son to kindergarten last year it would have been a very different conversation. My son is a May birthday and a year ago, even with a play based, multi-sensory approach to learning that he had been exposed to at Child Success Center in the “Get set for Kindergarten” program and through his school, he was just entering the very beginning stages of interest, desire and ability to understand the 2 dimensional written world of letters, words and print. At 5.4 years of age last September he was a sweet, sensitive child whose brain was not ready for kindergarten in some ways and very ready in others. He, at that time, was struggling to write his name and draw. His peers were already doing that and showing interest in letters. My son was building the San Pedro harbor out of blocks and the Eifel Tower out of Magna Tiles. Some would say that is fine. While there is nothing wrong with that he wasn’t gravitating towards play based activities that would help him build foundational learning processes for reading and writing. Such activities encompass a large part of a child’s school day and include rhyming, identifying differences in the sounds that letters make, matching a sound and symbol, identifying the name of letters and beginning to write them, drawing and controlling the pencil. At that time, my son wasn’t quite ready.
Over the past year we chose to enroll him in a developmental Kindergarten program at Circle of Children and he participated in a weekly kindergarten readiness class followed by a Kindergarten readiness camp over the summer at Child Success Center. He loved all of his experiences as they were presented in a play based approach and provided him with just the right challenge to learning.
So back to the teacher conference… I was able to walk away feeling happy and calm that my son is now ready to learn, excited to learn, has the foundation to learn and the capacity to learn. Most of all, he sees learning as fun. He sees himself as a reader and loves to handwrite. As an Occupational therapist and his mother I am very proud of his beautiful dynamic pencil grasp!!
Moving from a 3D world of playing with Magna tiles to the 2D world of reading and writing is not easy for many children.
We know that the Center for Disease Control states that 16.7% of children have a diagnosed learning and/or developmental challenge and we also know that many children struggle with undiagnosed challenges. Many behaviors such as being impulsive, aggressive, controlling, avoidant, shy, silly, disinterested, immature or having a short attention span, are really a child struggling with the processing capacity to do the activity that is being asked of them. They may be having a hard time taking in the information from their environment, making sense of it quickly and efficiently and producing the desired or required successful response. Many children excel in their natural ability to remember what they see or hear and many struggle with attention, memory, visual and or auditory processing and sensory motor processing. It is time to look at behavior through a different lens and promote early detection and support for our children.
All human beings have a brain that processes some information easily and other information not so easily. Is your child a visual leaner or an auditory learner? Does he seem to learn better if he is moving? The human brain processes uniquely and we need to strive to understand our children’s natural capacities to learn. Some children will require extra support along the way. This is where individualized and specific help from trained learning specialists such as occupational therapists, speech and language therapists and educational therapists can prove to be beneficial. We as parents need to read the signs and be open to exposing our children to the teaching methodologies that will support their inherent desire to learn, setting them up for a positive relationship with learning.
Is your child ready for Kindergarten? Is he/she exhibiting behaviors that are troubling and disruptive? Early intervention begins with a proper assessment. For more information on the assessment, therapeutic and Kindergarten Readiness programs offered by Child Success Center, please click here.
Some things to look for in the “Kindergarten-ready” child:
- Follows words left to right and top to bottom
- Understands that words are separated by spaces in print
- Recognizes and can name all upper and lower case letters of alphabet
- Demonstrates basic knowledge of letter sound correspondence by producing primary sound made by most consonants
- Holds a pencil with an adult grasp – 3 fingers with control of the pencil from the fingers
Back-to-School – Working with Teachers to Identify Speech and Language Problems
Kids are Going Back to School – Working with your child’s teacher to identify speech and language problems early on is critical to ensuring his/her success at school.
As children return to the school classroom and play yard this year much will be expected of them in the areas of oral communication and listening skills. While the summer time offered great opportunity for children to build the sensory motor skills needed for playing and learning, they also had a break from the often complicated auditory and language world that school presents them.
If you have had concerns about the rate of your child’s speech acquisitions, their attention, socialization, ability to follow direction, answer questions, verbally problem solve, express themselves and emotionally handle communicating with their environment and those in it, we suggest you talk to your teachers at the beginning of the school year to make them aware of your concerns and to discuss ways to help your child be successful. As parents we know more about our children’s strengths and challenges than anyone else. Give your teacher a head start by meeting with them either before school starts or within the first 4 weeks. Often when children struggle with sensory motor and or speech and language processing their behaviors can be misinterpreted as personality traits; Controlling, sensitive, shy, aggressive, avoidant, rigid. Truth be told, these behaviors, if not properly identified, can hamper a child’s academic success as early as pre-school. We are setting students up for success if we identify and support as early as possible.
Knowing who to turn to for information is key. Seek guidance from your school, pediatrician, friends and online. You will find answers. Sometimes it is very clear what your child’s speech and language needs are… “my child cannot say the “s “sound.” Other times it is not so clear… “My 3 year old is hitting at school, not using words to communicate easily and is always on the go.” The combination of Sensory Integration trained Occupational Therapists and Speech and Language Therapists working together is often critical when searching for the underlying root of the challenges your child is presenting with. A collaborative therapy center offers you, the parent, with guidance and a whole child approach as your child grows.
Not all communication challenges are rooted in a speech and language disorder. But it is imperative that this be ruled in or out through a thorough assessment process. If you child is under the age of 5 it should be a play based assessment and your child should be made to feel as relaxed and comfortable as possible in a new environment. Make sure that the environment has play space and is not a small office. If your child is older make sure the therapist is skilled in identifying language based learning challenges and works closely with an educational therapist as these services often work side by side.
For more information on speech and language development and age related indicators that your child may need help please refer to this chart .
Speech and Language issues by the numbers:
Speech or language problems can lead to reading and writing difficulties which in turn lead to serious educational consequences.
- Some 17-20% of children in the United States have difficulties learning to read.
- More than 70% of teachers believe that students who receive speech and language services demonstrate improved pre-reading, reading, or reading comprehension skills.
- Most poor readers have an early history of spoken language deficits.
- A recent study reported that 2nd graders who read poorly had phonemic awareness or spoken language problems in kindergarten.
- About 41% of fourth grade boys and 35% of fourth grade girls read below grade level.
- Overall, communication disorders affect approximately 42 million Americans. Of these, 28 million have a hearing loss and 14 million have a speech or language disorder.
***Statistics provided by ASHA (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association http://www.asha.org/)
New Occupational Therapist Joins Child Success Center Team
The Occupational Therapy Team at Child Success Center is pleased to welcome Gina Yoo as it’s newest member.
Gina Yoo, MS OTR/L, comes to us with 12 years of experience in the field of Pediatric Occupational Therapy. She has worked with individuals ranging from 0-21 years old with a variety of diagnoses, ranging from developmental delay to Autism to Down Syndrome. She is a graduate of Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with a Master of Science in Occupational Therapy. In addition, she is certified in auditory programs such as Therapeutic Listening and Integrative Listening Systems (iLs).
She has also worked with other disciplines throughout her career such as speech and language pathology, physical therapy, developmental optometry and psychology to enhance the therapeutic experience not only for the child but the family as well.
Gina’s main goal is to provide a safe, supportive and therapeutic environment to promote each child’s optimal performance, build self-esteem and teach skills to enhance their quality of life and academic success. In addition, since the family is an integral part of the therapeutic team, Gina feels it is essential to involve them in the process and selection of activities for carry over in the home and community.
We welcome Gina to Child Success Center and look forward to introducing her to our families!
For more information on the Child Success Center’s Occupational Therapy Programs click here.
The Importance of "Handwriting" Skills
Has your child struggled with handwriting skills throughout the school year?
Now is the time to get them help. Handwriting skills are a key component and an essential part of school related activities. Refined hand skills are not only critical for early learning, but enables a child to use tools, participate in manipulative learning activities and most importantly express and demonstrate his/her knowledge through handwriting.
Interesting Fact:
The College Board found that students who wrote in cursive for the essay portion of the SAT scored slightly higher than those who printed. (Read More)
With the new Common Core Standards taking effect in the 2013-2014 School Year, children entering Kindergarten will be expected to know how to correctly and effectively hold and use a pencil, crayon or marker. Note taking and expository writing will have greater emphasis in grades K-5 than ever before. Sharper handwriting skills need to be acquired and bad writing habits abated early on in a student’s academic career.
Child Success Center’s Handwriting Club will also address the following common handwriting challenges:
- Difficulty holding pencils or markers?
- Difficulty coloring within the lines?
- Messy or sloppy handwriting?
- Writing too large or too small?
- Occasional or frequent reversal of letters/numbers?
- Difficulty learning letters/numbers correctly?
- Difficulty staying on a line?
Program Details:
Dates: For current session dates click here
Times: Days and times will vary dependent on the nature of each group
Ages: 5-12 years
Enrollment: Call the Child Success Center – 310.899.9597 or email: Enroll@childsuccesscenter.com
Cost: Please call for details
Kindergarten Readiness and Summer Camp 2013
Now is the Time to Ask, “Is My Child Ready For Kindergarten in the Fall?”
One of the greatest challenges in the young life of most children is making that initial big step into Kindergarten. Many parents who have had their little ones in preschool believe that Kindergarten is somewhat akin to preschool and that significant academics really don’t kick in until 1st or 2nd grade, but in newer times that is far from reality. In recent years, California Kindergarten curriculum has shifted to become far more academically skewed than in past decades and now more than ever, it’s very important to have all children properly prepared for these greater new challenges. To successfully excel in their new setting, children must achieve and master certain educational and social skills to adequately adapt and grow in a more accountable and often faster paced setting.
It may seem early, but for families who will be making the transition into Kindergarten, parents should seek counsel or advice from teachers or experts and possibly even have an evaluation for their child to ensure that educational and social skill development is on track for entry into Kindergarten in the fall.
New Program to Help Kids “Be Prepared” with proper skills
To help those who may need additional support, Child Success Center will be holding Kindergarten Readiness Camps in the summer that will not only teach and prepare little ones, but they will have a blast with the classes too! Presented as individual weekly Kindergarten Readiness Camps, kids will spend over 20 hours involved in activities designed to prepare them for the new rigors of Kindergarten. The program will help children develop confidence when taking the first steps toward handwriting and reading. The huge gymnasium at Child Success Center will be turned into a summer fun learning camp with the aim of turning “learning” into “play”. The camp will feature swings, a trampoline, climbing wall and monkey bars, which will take children on an adventure and build up their kindergarten readiness skills. The program will also feature art, music and science activities that will inspire creative interests and will offer hands-on fun through touching, exploring and games.
Parents can enroll their kids in a single weekly program, but enrollment in two or three week sessions will build stronger, lasting skills. Also, as a bonus, multiple week enrollees and those who bring a friend may be eligible for special discounts, so be sure to inquire when you call. They will also create a personalized specialty program for small groups who might be interested.
Each Week-long Session Will Teach Kids To:
- Recognize letters and match them with a name and sound
- Master holding a pencil, marker or crayon
- Develop attention and listening skills
- Socialize and communicate
- Enjoy learning
DATES: Dates: July 8, 2013 – Aug 16, 2013
TIMES: 8:45AM – 1 PM, Monday through Friday
AGE: Starting Kindergarten in the Fall
ENROLLMENT: Call the Child Success Center on 310.899.9597 or email: officemanager@childsuccesscenter.com
COST: Full Fee is $495 per week.
DISCOUNTS:
- Early Bird registration and payment by Friday March 29, 2013 is $475.
- Multiple week discounts are available. Call for details.
- Discounts are also available if you bring along a sibling or friend. Call for details.
Learning to Read – Is Your Child at Risk?
Identifying risk factors in your child that could impair literacy skills.
Children with language impairments often experience great difficulty learning to read and write. Other risk factors include: having a developmental disability, having a parent with a history of a reading disability, speaking a language that is different from the local academic curriculum, and/or living in a household where experiences with oral and written language are infrequent. Signs that your toddler may struggle with reading in the future include lack of interest in nursery rhymes or shared book reading, difficulty following simple directions, difficulty learning the names of letters, and failure to recognize or identify letters in the child’s own name (ASHA, 2008,www.asha.org).
- Nearly 50% of children enter kindergarten with at least one serious risk factor that may negatively affect academics (Rimm-Kaufman, Pianta, & Cox, 2000)
- The best predictor of end-of-kindergarten literacy skill is beginning-of-kindergarten literacy skill (Walpole, Chow, & Justice, 2004)
- The likelihood that a poor reader in first grade will stay a poor reader through fourth grade corresponds to a probability of .88 (Juel, 1988)
Speech-Language Pathologists Can Help
Research emphasizes the need to prevent reading problems through emergent literacy intervention. Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) can identify children at risk for reading and writing difficulties and provide intervention to remediate literacy-related difficulties. The intervention will be a collaboration between the parents, teachers, caregivers, and the SLP.
Learning to Read – What Can Parents Do to Help Their Child?
You can help your child develop literacy skills during regular activities without adding extra time to your day. There are also things you can do during planned play and reading times. Show your children that reading and writing are a part of everyday life and can be fun and enjoyable. Activities for preschool children include the following*:
- Talk to your child and name objects, people, and events in the everyday environment.
- Repeat your child’s strings of sounds (e.g., “dadadada, bababa”) and add to them.
- Talk to your child during daily routine activities such as bath or mealtime and respond to his or her questions.
- Draw your child’s attention to print in everyday settings such as traffic signs, store logos, and food containers.
- Introduce new vocabulary words during holidays and special activities such as outings to the zoo or the park.
- Engage your child in singing, rhyming games, and nursery rhymes.
- Read picture and story books that focus on sounds, rhymes, and alliteration (words that start with the same sound, as found in Dr. Seuss books).
- Reread your child’s favorite book(s).
- Focus your child’s attention on books by pointing to words and pictures as you read.
- Provide a variety of materials to encourage drawing and scribbling (e.g., crayons, paper, markers, finger paints).
- Encourage your child to describe or tell a story about his/her drawing and write down the words (ASHA, 2006, www.asha.org)
Handling the Hustle and Bustle of the Holidays
Mom and Dad set the tone at home during the holidays.
We often think about how our children will experience the holiday season, but what about Mom and Dad? The holidays can be the most joyful, yet stressful time of the year. And, sometimes it isn’t the kids we really need to worry about, but ourselves! How parents handle the holiday season will have a direct impact on what their kids take away. And since the holidays can be an especially magical time for little ones, it’s important that parents remember to take a deep breath and enjoy the ride.
Here are a few tips to ensure a more relaxing holiday season:
- Try not to take it all so seriously. The holidays will happen whether we’re “ready or not.” Sit back and remember to enjoy the season. Also don’t forget that the traditions your family celebrates are all routed in another meaning – and they usually don’t involve parties and gifts! Try to remember why we honor the holidays in the first place.
- Give yourself – and your family – a break by not over scheduling social commitments, gatherings and festivities. When you try to do too much, you risk missing it all.
- Build in couples-only time for you and your spouse to “take five” and sneak away for a reprieve from the holiday madness. Arrange for a babysitter, family member or friend to watch your children and enjoy a solo dinner or even a stroll through your neighborhood to catch the holiday lights.
- Remember that for your little ones, the holidays are already filled with awe and joy because they’re different from the routine. Many parents try to too hard to make it all special when it already is. The only thing for parents of children who have Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) issues to keep in mind is to shelter their little ones from noisy parties; the over-stimulation of lights, music and commotion; and unfamiliar family members that hug, kiss and touch kids who may be uncomfortable with that kind of attention. By being aware of the “sensory world,” parents can help their children to be more at ease, and, in turn, can ensure a more relaxed holiday experience for the whole family.
- Try to grab a little extra sleep, take a warm bath, indulge in one extra treat at the buffet table, and – if you can afford the time and cost – let yourself be pampered, even if it’s only for one hour. Even parents deserve a little something extra from Santa because the joy of the season should always come for grown-ups too!
Childhood Communication Issues
It’s understandable that nothing is more disheartening to a parent than to think that their child is developing less than perfectly in every way, but it is part of being human. We all develop at different rates and in different ways. Just as babies require help developing the skills needed to feed themselves, sometimes children also greatly benefit from help overcoming communication issues.
Communication issues can manifest themselves in how a child speaks or how they understand speech. As a side effect of communication issues, children who have trouble communicating their thoughts or feelings, or children who have trouble processing the meaning or clarity of what is being said to them, often can become frustrated and act out with unexpected or unwanted behavior. Parents who are dealing with both communication issues and unwanted behavior often see a dramatically happier and more expressive child soon after treatment begins.
The role of therapists in treating childhood communication issues.
To better understand the challenges and treatment process, it helps to understand the focus and role of different therapy professionals such as occupational therapists and therapists that work with speech and language difficulties.
Occupational therapists work with children who have sensory processing disorders (SPD). A child with SPD will find it difficult to process and act upon sensory information, creating challenges in performing daily tasks.
The Vestibular System and Auditory Processing and Language Disorders
One of the most basic of all the sensory systems is the vestibular system. As described by noted author and therapist Carol Stock Kranowitz, M.A. in her 2009 book, The Vestibular System and Auditory-Language Processing: “The vestibular system coordinates body movements, maintains balance and equilibrium, and helps children develop normal muscle tone.” She further writes, “The vestibular system plays a significant role in the development of language, so that children with vestibular dysfunction may also have auditory-language processing difficulties. The two systems work together as they process sensations of movement and sound. The two systems are closely connected because they both begin to be processed in the receptors of the ear.”
While occupational therapists treat children with vestibular dysfunction, speech therapists work with children who have auditory processing difficulties and language disorders. Some auditory processing skills include auditory discrimination (differentiating among sounds), auditory figure/ground disturbance (discriminating between sound in the foreground and background) and language.
Language Disorder
When a person has trouble understanding others (receptive language), or sharing thoughts, ideas, and feelings (expressive language), then he or she has a language disorder.
Speech Disorder
When a person is unable to produce speech sounds correctly or fluently, or has problems with his or her voice, then he or she has a speech disorder.
Speech therapists provide therapy to children with speech disorders. Kranowitz further explains, “Language and speech are closely related, but are not the same. Speech is the physical production of sound. Speech skills depend on smoothly functioning muscles in the throat, tongue, lips, and jaw. The vestibular system influences motor control and motor planning that are necessary to use those fine muscles to produce clear speech.”
Overall, the child with vestibular dysfunction frequently develops problems with speech and language. Here are some common characteristics of children with poor speech, language, and/or auditory-language processing:
- May have trouble discriminating between sounds, such as the difference between “comb” and “cone.”
- May have trouble attending to, understanding, or remembering what she reads or hears.
- May misinterpret requests, frequently ask for repetition and be able to follow only one or two instructions in sequence.
- May have trouble putting thoughts into spoken or written words.
- May talk “off topic,” e.g. talk about his/her new shirt when others are discussing a soccer game.
- May have trouble “closing circles of communication,” i.e. responding to others’ questions or comments.
- May have weak vocabulary and use immature sentence structure (poor grammar and syntax).
- May have difficulty speaking and articulating clearly.
- May improve her speaking ability after she experiences intense movement.
According to Kranowitz, “Moving activates the ability to speak. A child with vestibular and language problems benefits greatly from therapy that simultaneously addresses both types of dysfunction. Speech therapists report that just putting the child in a swing during treatment can have remarkable results. Occupational therapists have found that when they treat a child for vestibular dysfunction, speech-and-language skills can improve along with balance, movement, and motor planning skills.”
The development of communication skills begins in infancy. Any communication issue is likely to have a significant effect on the child’s social and academic skills and behavior. The earlier a child’s speech and language problems are identified and treated, the less likely it is that problems will persist or get worse.
An in-depth overview of the vestibular system can be found in the book by Carol Stock Kranowitz, M.A. (2009), The Vestibular System and Auditory-Language Processing.
Parents are also urged to contact Child Success Center to learn more about the treatments and therapies available to help their child. CSC can be reached at 310-899-9597
