VCFS and Rhyming

I am quite fully aware that my 12-yr-old with VCFS learns differently than most kids. Unlike my older children, this is not necessarily a good and beneficial sort of "different." But today I realized something that I hadn't noticed before.

We were driving to town, playing a rhyming game. We had come up with several rhymes for pole, and she was a little stymied coming up with another one. She thought bowl might work, but she said it wasn't right because it was spelled with o-w-l instead of o-l-e. So we talked about the sound being the important thing, not the spelling. A little later we ran across another word that she suggested as a rhyme. But it didn't rhyme; the ending was spelled the same. (I can't remember what that one was, but it would've been something like clown and thrown.) When she was smaller, she couldn't figure out rhyming for the life of her! She still struggles with it, not being able to distinguish between similar sounds (b/p or m/n or f/v or various short-vowel sounds). But it's improving. And what I learned today makes me realize that she learns better by what goes into her eyes than by what goes into her ears. Seeing the spelling sure sticks better than does the soundwaves.

This was reinforced a few hours later. She had picked up her "how to be good" books at the library. And they made a difference in how she spent her afternoon! There is a series of books by Joy Berry on how to deal with a wide variety of problems: bullying, stealing, messiness, dawdling, tattling, gossip, etc. These books are written at about a 2nd-grade reading level. My older kids disliked them: the books were too preachy. And boring. But Maggie loves them. She checks them out of the library again and again, working her way through all 40-50 books of the series each time she goes on a jag.

Today she was reading the book about laziness and recognized herself in the pages of the book -- especially the part about asking people to do for you what you are perfectly capable of doing for yourself. There were hints on setting the timer to race the clock on doing a particular chore, or setting the timer to pick up for just 5 minutes or whatever. Maggie read these ideas and set herself to do them. She picked up all sorts of stuff this afternoon that she usually just tosses anywhere. It's not like she hasn't been taught these things. (Been taught them over and over and over!!) But reading it in a book (seeing instead of hearing) and figuring it out for herself (rather than being told by a family member) seemed to make a significant difference in what she did.

Now I just hope it lasts longer than one day!
And I hope that I can figure out ways to use today's discovery when it comes to academics too, and not just life skills.