Taking care of ourselves
A FREE stress reduction workshop for parents and caregivers of children with special needs

Parenting a child with special needs can be stressful. It is important to learn to manage that stress instead of letting it manage you. In this workshop, you will learn and practice simple stress management and relaxation skills that will help you to self-soothe.

When?
Wednesday April 24, 2013, 6-8pm

Where?
Extreme Kids and Crew, Space No. 1
40 Brevoort Place
Brooklyn, NY 11216

www.extremekidsandcrew.org

How do I register?
Contact Sonali via email at: sonali@sonalizoracki.com or via phone at: (917) 274-7248

Register early as space is limited!

Who is leading the workshop?
This workshop will be lead by Sonali Zoracki, LCSW.  Sonali has been working with children with special needs and their families for the past 10 years.  She has a private practice in New York City and specializes in providing psychotherapy to parents, caregivers, and siblings of children with special needs.

For more information about Sonali and the services that she provides visit www.sonalizoracki.com

Click here for a printable PDF flyer.

Brooklyn Letters’ friend, The Drake Bennett Summer School (http://www.drakebennett.org) is coming to Park Slope this summer! Students have six classes daily, plus four hours of rest and recreation. The morning classes are in English, math or geography, and science. The afternoon classes are drama, art, and sports and the Drake Bennett Summer School takes recess seriously.

They offer an enrichment track for thriving students, and an Orton-based support track for students who are smart but need explicit multisensory support.

A Speech & Language Pathologist will be on staff for 1-on-1 and small group therapy. We don’t want students to miss any of the morning core curriculum classes, so kids needing speech therapy see the SLP in daily pull-out sessions during the afternoon.

• Ages: Children rising to 1st-6th grades in 2013-14

• Hours: 8:00am-6:00pm (early dismissal optional)

• Class size: Maximum 12 students/teacher

• August in Brooklyn: August 5th-30th at The Park Slope Jewish Center, 1320 8th Avenue (at 14th Street)

Full-day (8:00am-6:00pm) tuition is $2,800- $14/hour for 200 hours over 20 days

They are a 501c3 non-profit, with a limited number of means-tested scholarships to offer, covering 30-90% of tuition, for families qualified for public school free lunch.

Applications with a 33% deposit are accepted in the order received; the balance is due by May 31. We offer a discount of…

• 10% for deposits paid by April 15

Mention code Brooklyn Letters and receive an additional $100 discount (offer only available to the first 5 parents to sign up)!

The Advanced Literacy Skills Hour is for students reading and writing at or above grade level. Every day we work on oral expression/elocution, informed-ear spelling strategies, vocabulary development, and reading comprehension. Older students study Latin roots, suffix and prefix usage, poetry, Aesop’s Fables, grammar, and syntax. We still diagram sentences.

The Geography Hour covers a subject that is rarely taught at most elementary schools. Kids doing well in math take geography instead. We have a globe for every student, lots of mapping puzzles, geography games, and a rare collection of geographical and historical atlases. Students learn the geographical significance of wet, dry, and moist environments. The continents and oceans are introduced, along with major rivers, mountain ranges, and agricultural lands. Older students learn about latitude and longitude.

During the Science Hour students conduct experiments in chemistry, microscopy, or physics. On microscopy days, we examine plant, animal, or mineral specimens, and record our observations. On chemistry days we make concoctions like white-glue silly putty, cornstarch quicksand, polymer worms, and borax slime. On physics days, we celebrate Newton by launching objects from catapults, crashing things together, and experimenting with inertia and gravity.

The MultiSensory Literacy Hour is for students not yet reading and writing at grade level. We focus on speech development, vocabulary building, phonics, spelling, decoding, fluency, reading comprehension, and penmanship. These concepts are taught in a structured and explicit manner, with all the patience that struggling students deserve, using Orton-based lesson planning and procedures.
The MultiSensory Math Hour is for kids who don’t like math, and have difficulty grasping math concepts. Students not yet performing at grade level in math should benefit from these classes. New learnings are introduced explicitly, patiently, and with real-world applications. Tactile teaching tools are used to create clear mental pictures of math procedures. Color coding helps students understand place value and time telling concepts. We play math games so students can see that math can be fun.
Afternoon Program for All Students

Why play Chess? Chess builds memory. Chess improves concentration. Chess develops logical thinking. Chess promotes imagination and creativity. Chess teaches children to look both ways before crossing the street. Chess develops the scientific way of thinking. Chess is cheap. Chess is fun. The Chess & Puzzles Hour combines chess with other spatial-skill activities.

The focus of the Art Hour is art appreciation, drawing, and painting. Students learn basic color theory, and how to blend in order to achieve rich layers of color. They learn to mix paint, layer colors, and use wet and dry brush techniques. Students who lack fine motor dexterity are patiently helped with their abstract brushwork creations.

The Drama Hour gives students a chance to be somebody else for an hour each day. Kids warm up with improvisational activities, and theater games, then work with Reader’s Theater plays – dramatic presentations read and recited by the players from printed scripts.

The Sports Hour is a PE program providing fundamental-skills instruction in one sport each day over a ten-day cycle. Students learn throwology, basketball, touch football, softball, soccer, tennis, table tennis, fencing, ultimate frisbee, and miniature golf – with no scorekeeping or competition.

Interactive Discovery Consulting and Psychological Services will be giving a workshop for parents on Wednesday, December 5th from 7:00 – 9:00pm. They will focus on such salient topics as

• Strengthening your relationship with your child
• Preventing negative behaviors before they occur
• Dealing with behavior concerns in the moment

The workshop will be held at their Park Slope offices, 163 Prospect Park West (at 11th Street), Brooklyn, NY 11215.

Please RSVP as space is limited; call Melissa Malakoff, Psy.D. at (646) 481-1489 to do so.

We plan to start two social skills groups, both run by a licensed speech language therapist, on Saturday mornings, located at a new office in Windsor Terrace (19th Street and 8th Ave, Brooklyn). 1st session will be on December 1st, 2012.

We are recruiting children between the ages of 3 to 8; we work with children with and without diagnoses, such e.g. autism spectrum (PDD, Aspergers), language processing, speech language delay, social language delay, auditory processing disorder, Sensory Processing Disorder, language based learning disabilities, etc.

All children are screened and matched by social skills, interests, and availability. For younger children, we tend to use theme based learning and play, e.g. superheroes, popular TV characters, e.g. Dora the Explorer, etc, embedding social goals within each activity; Parent involvement is a plus.

Social skills groups typically require a 10 week commitment, and fees vary from $70-$80 per child per session; Sessions are approximately 1 hour long. We are considered out-of-network insurance providers.

For more information: http://brooklynletters.com/social-skills-training/

Best,

Craig

Offering professional reading support in the comfort of your home. Our reading tutors work with all types of reading needs, e.g. dyslexia. We are trained in Orton Gillingham and Wilson, and we travel to:
Manhattan- Upper East Side, Midtown East, Murray Hill, Gramercy, Union Square, East Village, Soho, Upper West Side, Midtown, Chelsea, West Village, Chinatown, Lower East Side.
Brooklyn- Kensington, Midwood, Windsor Terrace, Park Slope, Ditmas Park, Boro Park, Clinton Hill, Fort Greene, Prospect Heights, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill, Brooklyn Heights, Downtown Brooklyn, Ditmas Park, Kensington, Prospect Park South, Midwood, Canarsie, Flatbush, Crown Heights, Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Prospect Heights, Bay Ridge, and Dyker Heights.
Queens– Sunnyside, Woodside, Long Island City, Astoria
Long Island- near Baldwin.

For more information: http://brooklynletters.com/services/reading-specialists-and-interventionists/