This last week has been filled with tears as Livia has worked her way through her homework. And when asked how her day at school went the response was always somewhere along the lines of, “Oh, it went well but I hate math.” One of the ways that Livia stims is through humming and even at times Opera singing. So, the day she came home and admitted to getting in trouble during math class for “warming up her vocal cords” I knew it was time to find a way to make math fun and help some of the concepts she was struggling with concrete themselves in her mind. This Even and Odd Number Hop Game was a solution to our math problem.
With Livia she was able to identify even and odd numbers up to 10. The minute we got up to 11, 12, 13…she would begin to scramble and stim. The key to creating a memory is attention; being able to focus on the sensory input long enough to make a working memory (and eventually a semantic memory).