"Magical" Rocks

Well, they are MAGICAL to me!

A wise friend who works in "Special Education" told me awhile back to write letters on rocks for my son to help him learn the alphabet. At first I must admit, that although it sounded like a good idea, I had a hard time thinking that something so simple could possibly work since he was having so much trouble at home and at school.

My son attended early Pre-K at a local church starting at age 2 1/2 and since the age of 3 1/2 he has attended a Special Education and Therapeutic Preschool. So, with two solid years in actual school and all the work we did at home he still did not know how to spell his name, recognize more than three letters (only 1 was in his name) and occasionally confused numbers for letters until the MAGIC ROCKS!!!!!

As some of you already know, my son has been diagnosed with PDD-NOS and like a lot of kids on the Autism Spectrum who have attachments or fixations on certain items my son does too and his "thing" is rocks...the kid loves them!!!! My friend kept insisting with me to use the rocks to my advantage, he likes them and will pay attention!

On Friday night my mother handed the boys each a set of rocks with the letters of their names printed on them and kept arranging them in the proper order for about 15 minutes while reciting the letters.

After the initial 15 minutes the big guy had is name down pat!!! The next day he still had it plus if we included the little guy's letters into his pile he still knew which letters to pick out.

He still gets a little confused with the actual "names" of the letters at times but he knows which ones belong to him!

I guess I have to get out more paint and make some more letters soon!

If you have a child who is having some difficulties learning letters try using the things they truly love...I have a feeling I will be buying some cheap wooden trains in the future and using my Sharpie marker to make an alphabet train for my little guy.