Delight-Directed Adventures (A Schoolhouse Review Crew Blog Hop)

To me, "Delight Directed Learning" means finding what makes the student come alive, and then finding a way to incorporate those activities into learning.  I've learned the hard way that Jude is not an auditory learner.  Jude loves tactile activities - rearranging triangles to make new shapes, stacking cubes, and moving letter tiles around to make words. However, his absolute favorite activity is "arts and crafts."  We try to do a project that he considers this category.  I think just about anything qualifies, as long as it makes a mess!

Some days, it's an actual craft project -- like the turtles we made when we were studying Aquatic Herps.  Coloring the scutes on his turtle's carapace reinforced those vocabulary words. 

This cute little caterpillar was a lesson in colors. 

We also saw color mixing in action.  In addition to being an "academic" problem, he also learned sensory tolerance (painting is messy) and problem solving/fine motor skills (he doesn't have the dexterity to get the paper backing from the jewels, so once he realized that wasn't going to work, he went and got a bottle of glue). 









Sometimes, I just pour some paints, and he has fun with them.  One day, he was just smearing paint around on the paper, and this little guy emerged: 

Every time he sees our blog button or header, he says, "That's my painting!"  

You can often find us in the kitchen.   Jude loves cooking and baking.    I like that he's learning important lessons, like following directions and counting.  Often it doubles as fine motor practice, especially if we are making something portioned or shaped.

Braiding Challah

Cutting circles for Hamentashen

He likes that there is a snack at the end of the lesson. 

Pretzels

We recently started working on a lap book.  I think this may turn out to be one of our favorite activities.  There's lots of coloring, cutting, and pasting involved, so Jude thinks it's more arts-and-crafts.  He did not realize the work we did that day was carefully choreographed so the doctors could observe his motor, speech, and cognitive skills without Jude realizing he was being tested.

  For Jude, the best part about learning is the doing. 

Everyone has their favorite activities!  

Follow the Crew Blog Hop and find out what other students enjoy doing.

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