Hi moondog, hope you are well, you haven't been on SN much recently.
In this thread www.mumsnet.com/Talk/special_needs/865977-moondog-and-others-any-brilliant-visual-ABA-things-for-how
you recommended buying the Fun Decks product.Just wanted to come back to you on it.
I got the products 6 months ago, and realised that DS2 wasn't really ready for the language concepts. My feeling is that a child really needs to have the "why" and "how" concepts (even if s/he still muddles them) before being ready for these cards. (It wouldn't hurt to be able to read either as my lovely assistant DS1 (7.5) didn't "get" what some of the pictures were saying and had to read the written account to make sense of them.)
Now, however, at 4.8 with some fluency in "why?" questions, and a basic understanding of some early narratives like 3 Little Pigs/Goldilocks/Hungry Caterpillar/basic rescue stories, I have tried again, and this time Ds2 is ready for them. I introduced the "what's wacky?" and "that's silly" set first which he adored to get him attracted to them. Then yesterday we spend a happy hour on the "Before" and "After" set. Obviously he didn't magically master those concepts in a day, but he was really excited, and we spent the rest of the afternoon doing the following routine:
"before the cuddle"
"cuddle!"
"after the cuddle"
which was very pleasant.
I'm going to try the "comparatives" set next.
Of course, sometimes the cards assume knowledge that he doesn't have - eg that large orange vegetables are called pumpkins, and that we cut them up when it is Halloween. There are also some specific American cultural references - like a girl using an American football with a baseball bat in the "wacky" series, but no-one's perfect.
So thank you for the recommendation - they seem to be really good for a visual learner. He loves seeing langage reduced to pictures.
In case others are interested (and they are not cheap) I will index them here:
What's Wacky?
That's silly!
Before/After
Comparatives (big/bigger/biggest)
Idioms
Classifying
What does it do? (ie what can you name that flies?)
irregular verbs
let's pretend
phonetic awareness
understanding negation
understanding inferences
what's being said?
synonyms
compound words
irregular plurals
multiple meanings
opposites
compare and contrast
prepositions
what's different?
I am happy to give more detailed descriptions also.