Sheesh. Word search.

[azurelunatic]

Little Fayoumis has near to *no* search-find skills. So the word search is absolute *hell* for him. He's getting better at it, but it's still hell.

Seriously, you tell him, "Find your toothbrush!" and sometimes if it's right in *front* of him, he won't notice it; his eyes will go across it, but there's something in there that is not matching up "toothbrush" to what's coming in through his eyes. You have to point at it, and ask, "What's that?" before he'll process and say, "Oh, that toothbrush!"

It's even that way with stuff he wants to find.

So far, I've made him utilize his impressive anger-management skills, and I've instructed him to identify the thing he's looking for, identify the first letter he's going to look for, and do a systematic search for that letter, and see if the next letter in the target word is in the immediately surrounding letters.

It's like programming a very stubborn computer.

He seems to have the hang of it now. When I started writing this, we'd struggled through the first six words. Now, he's zooming through the last four on his own. He's on the last one as I type.

He's yelling out the letters, every time he finds the letter he's searching for. ...I also taught him that when he's too frustrated looking for the first letter, he should try picking another letter in that word and seeing if the correct adjacent letter is present...

Comments

[boojum.livejournal.com]

One of the biggest correlative thingies I've noticed for search-find skills is the noticing of random details. I've got a trick for bumping up my own noticing of random details because it improves my mood, but it might be portable: I walk around outside and notice interesting things. The way the clouds feather prettily up there, the unusual leaf veins, the squirrel having trouble figuring out what to do with a too-big nut, the interesting bark texture on various trees, the way the ground is lumpy just here -- not necessarily big important interesting things, but just interesting details.

[azurelunatic]

Yeah; that's what FatherSir taught me to do, which is why I notice stuff.

I feel like I've been a Bad Parent when I don't do everything FatherSir did that I approve of...

Searching...

[woggie.livejournal.com]

It's called a negative hallucination. The only thing I've ever done that works for me is to tell myself that I can see what I'm looking for, and then I usually do. When I've searched the house three times and I'm getting frantic, this is the tactic I use.