Providing lifespan services to individuals with special needs...

Hand Dominance:-

• This aids us as humans, in determining how we will proceed to perform functional tasks, such as choosing which hand we use to throw a ball, brush our teeth, or hold a cup.
• Hand dominance should be established by the age of five in order for a child to function at his/her most efficient level with hand writing tasks, activities of daily living (ADLS), and over all coordination tasks.

The importance of developing a dominant hand

• It is important for a child to develop a dominant hand so that he/she can learn how to efficiently perform tasks involving midline crossing and bilateral integration skills. One hand needs to act as a helper to the dominant hand. For example, when cutting a piece of paper, one hand must hold the paper while the other hand cuts with scissors.
• Overall in order to develop skilful and proficient hand dexterity, coordination, fine motor control, hand dominance needs to be established.

Activities to Facilitate Bilateral coordination tasks

• Push a toy car around a track – hold the car with one hand and the track with the other hand.
• Screw lids on and off jars or bottles, or assemble nuts and bolts.
• Thread beads on a string or use lacing cards with yarn or shoe laces.
• Use tracing on paper or even colour on small pieces of paper. The non-dominant hand is to stabilize the paper so that it doesn't move.
• Play with play- dough and cut it into pieces with scissors.

Activities involving one side of the body:

• Play 'keep it up' with a balloon: keep a balloon off the ground by hitting it up with only one hand.
• Play tennis with an age appropriate tennis racquet.
• Play darts, throwing with the dominant hand.

Midline crossing activities:

• Play with sand, scooping it from one side of your body and crossing over to pour it onto the other side.
• Play Twister, Hockey pokey, Simon says.
• Play sorting games (i.e., card games)
• Make figure 8 in the sand/on a dry erase board/or with streamers, and trace it with finger or with chalk.

Diwali was celebrated at Sharda as a Festival of Lights. We are trying to be environmentally friendly and reduce the use of crackers and sparklers. Over the years we have managed to eradicate the use of noisy crackers and this year we had the bare minimum sparklers just as the significance of the festival to be represented. Instead the foyer was lit up and a beautiful ceremony was held where every student, teacher, parent, friend who was present exchanged lit diyas , and greeted each other . The Diyas were then placed in a formation while they emanated warm light in the darkness of the evening sky amidst beautiful songs being sung by the children and teachers. It was indeed a special Diwali and we hope many more people join us next year as we continue to bring the light of consciousness in our special way. Thank you also to the VTU team who joined us for the celebrations.

9th November, Friday few of the teachers from KLC attended The Inner Essence of Mathematics, by Gregorio Noakes, an experienced Waldorf Teacher. It was an insightful workshop. Monday 12th November, Gita met the parents of Grade 1 and 2 student's parents along with the class teachers to draw up the goals and to find about the students and what the parents felt were challenges. Many of them were new parents and wanted to just touch base with the school and share their concerns.

Senior School celebrated their October birthdays on 13th November, Tuesday. The birthday celebrations are special. Teachers and students are felicitated with a special crown on their heads and songs being sung by their friends.

Children's Day on 14th November was celebrated by taking the children of KLC for a day picnic at Guindy park. It was a beautiful experience for the students, who played in the play area at Guindy Children's Park, Adyar, without any hesitation and it was wonderful to see them enjoy themselves for a long time. Students from kindergarten to Senior School, everyone were up and about climbing, swinging, sliding, see-sawing, on roundabouts, walking, all under the watchful eyes of the teachers and akkas. We had lunch there too. Thank you Prakash S for arranging the vans, so that we could all travel in comfort and in a full group.

We had an Intern Counselor from Banyan, a 2nd year Psychology student , Dhruva joining KLC as an intern for 3 months, working with the senior school students on 2 days in a week - Thursday and Friday.

Hospitality services for Friday Tuck Shop has started again from this week, where Aaqila and Kailash will be coming around the building, taking orders and delivering the snacks. Counseling Department have started seeing parents of students and teachers, some family members of teachers who needed immediate attention, this week. Thank you Parimal and team for the enormous help.

OT Department has been assessing the students and Lakshmi has been meeting parents individually to give them suggestions and ideas to work better with their children and also giving them some home programmes. Thank you Lakshmi. Thank you Vinoth for the help towards Vansh and his family. Vansh will be rejoining school in the next week.

Friday meeting saw Lakshmi talking on the Vestibular System in a Special Child, to the teachers in the meeting. It was a very interesting lecture and well understood by the teachers.

A peek into the classroom:

Senior School which was working with Fire and Heat, took a step ahead and worked on the Safety precautions and methods that were to be taken while working with Fire and Heat. Practical demonstrations were done in the kitchen, in class and enacted too.

Senior Students of KLC are putting together a small 20 minute Christmas Play to be showcased only to the parents and teachers of KLC. Practice for this has started in the afternoons between 1 pm to 1.30 pm.

29th - Senior School in keeping with the Christmas Spirit, has the main lesson on Wish, Wonder and Surprise and the story of Jesus is being told from the beginning of the week. This day a special story telling session with songs by Puja and Neha was done which mesmerised the students.

We at VRC form small group from time to time to focus on social communication skills, functional activities with pre vocational skills that could be done as a coordinated team work. Remediation is a dynamic process wherein we need to cater to individual needs of the students through one-one sessions and also forming small groups to work with social communication skills. From time-to-time we form small groups according to the age group and common objectives. This has been working well. Now we have a few adolescent boys with behaviour issues that are common to the transition stage. At this stage they undergo neuro-psychological experiences and as there already exists difficulty, they become reluctant, rebellious and very impulsive. These groups are temporary to run about 3-6 months and there after children will be placed ideally in different units. Before we wind up for this year we are going to set a small group again by December with 4 students- Sivacharan kumar, Samuel Peter, Shyam and Yogesh. These students are of Transition age group and our group activities will be carried out with main lesson on Animals and Man where the hierarchy of Living will be learnt for better understanding of self-abilities and S elf Responsibilities to leadership. There will be circle time with songs, movements and Prayers for healings. Working with hands- Pre vocational skills training and Outdoor traditional games for peer factor, agility and fun. The group will go for Nature walk once a week and will have a Music Session too. Group will start by 10:00 am and will go till one 01:00 pm with a short Ragi break and Lunch Time. After periodical progress reports, students will be guided towards the next step of integration.

Diwali at VRC
This year Diwali celebration was absolute fun for students of VRC. Students (about 20) first gathered in first floor and enjoyed wonderful circle time to start with! They all repeated the songs ,”Diwali has come_ Lets light the diyas one by one/ let's greet all dear ones/ let's burst crackers just for fun”. Students came out one by one to light a diya with rows of diyas on both the sides. Then they gathered to listen to Prayer, story of Diwali- how is it celebrated in different parts of the country. They were guided to share the greetings cards that were handmade by themselves with another friend. After the exchange of greeting cards, they were all set for games. Teachers conducted games for children and they participated too at the end while students took over to entertain teachers. Then came the snack time and finally bursting crackers time. Every child was made sure to have participated and there were laughters echoing everywhere.

There was a dance floor where teachers and children had a party like fun to wind up the celebration. Children were given take away gifts of hand painted diyas, candle and sweet.

Light bright Your Inner light
To fight the evils and Restore Right
was the Diwali Message.

Bridges Learning Academy:
The month started a Diwali excitement. We had a grand celebration in our unit. Diyas were decorated by our children. The corridor was decorated with the lighted diyas. Many programs like dance, games were organized. Bursting crackers was highlight. Handmade Gifts were presented to the children. One of the highlights was a speech given by N Hariharan BLA-NIOS.

A routine month for Pre NIOS-& Primary. The Second Tern syllabus has a good start, with more innovative and streamed & ideas.

NIOS

This month had a great start with Hariharan appearing (NIOS 12th) for his 2 subjects in his board exams. Ajay appeared for his final paper and to our delight , he was recommended for foundation Unit at Sreyes. He has a recommendation, based on his assessment that he can continue with his computer training . This would help him in his future placements.

Monica class 12th NIOS was a school dropout, failed in 11th has emotional disturbances. Her failures had pushed her to extreme levels. She did not have acceptance of this environment, when she initially entered this center. After long intervention and counselling and the bonding between teachers has raised her level in confidence, performance and socialization. Nowadays she refuses to go for breaks and wants a non-stop session. This has raised the motivation of teachers. Teachers are ready to bring out the talents of the students by pulling extra efforts.

Nalanda Way:
We resumed after the quarterly holidays. The kids, especially new ones have started settling in slowly with the special educator and therapist. They are slowly building a rapport and shedding their inhibitions. We met parents of new students and have taken their inputs on the children and their history. We have a couple of kids with Cerebral Palsy who come for Occupational therapy. We have finalised our time tables and going on with our sessions based on that.

Visit to Pollachi:
Ms. Kejal Bakshi, our Curriculum Co-ordinator visited Outreach Pollachi center. A brief report on her visit.
Morning group – Insisted on the importance of the group and holistic development and not just academics.Suggested sports for two Saturdays a month. A timetable that has enough academics and skill development was planned. The teachers were asked not to give academic homework. Instead give projects, practical work as homework.
School model to be be Monday to Friday. Once a month meet parents to discuss about the next month goals and activities.
Few strategies to work with children were also suggested that are different from the regular school model. For eg - No red pen and giving crosses.
Evening group – Timetable to be planned based on availability of teachers and timings. Individual therapy to be taken for a few children on story telling, phonics, painting for morning group. Involving parent as a volunteer was suggested. Explained about movements and introduced wet on wet painting.
Met each and every child and discussed their progress and concerns. Gave suggestions also.