Thanks for all the great advice. A few comments to questions...
- written expression is around organizing your thoughts and getting them down on paper. Ask him to tell you about anything or make up a story, and he can verbally go on at length. If he needs to put it down on paper, it is a big struggle to get the words together on top of the struggle to handwrite.
....
....
For gross motor / core, how much time per week do we need to devote to this to really make progress? How do I know if he is making progress and getting stronger?
I know what you mean by written expression. My DS15 has just been diagnosed by a written language processing disorder. I don't have all the details of what they psych suggestions are as I won't have the written report till Wed. We are going to work with an educational therapist, and the psyc has some specific suggestions for her. For my son this is a TOP concern, as is his anxiety.
I don't know how much you really need, but I imagine more than an hour a week would be helpful. I had my daughter in dance class at this age and that was only an hour a week. But we also did other things. I sorry I can't help much about the what to do with indoors during the winter as I live in CA. Perhaps the Karate teacher can give him some exercises to practice at home. Does it snow in the winter, or is it just cold. There are outdoor winter activities like sledding, or skating, or just shoveling snow. One of my earliest memories is deciding I was going to go ice-skating by myself at 4 on the pond at the park next door, and I ended up with a broken arm. (We lived outside Chicago when I was 4.) Do you have a Y or something with a indoor pool? No necessary for lessons but where the whole family could play.
