Watering the plants or watering me! Kareem the gardener

20^th June 2018

Kareen has such a strong mind and a great determination to do things his way. Today he insisted on watering the plants by himself so he switched the tap on and took the hose around the garden. I had great difficulties persuading him not to water the walls or the grass. The problem was that he suddenly decided that watering is much more fun if he directed the hose from watering the plants to watering me! I reacted angrily because I was afraid that the water damaged my hearing aids- never mind getting my clothes, hair and everything soaking wet.

A little while later, Kareem became bored of spraying plants, grass, walls, me and left the whole operation. Actually, he is not a bad gardener if nothing else, like his brother playing football, distracts him. He had already planted strawberries from a cutting and beetroot from seeds. Whenever he waters the garden, I remind him of his planting. 

Last year he planted and harvested Spinach.

In August this year, as the beans started to appear,  he started to harvests what he can reach. We are waiting for the tomatoes to turn red so that he can pick them up.

Kareem is such a great helper in the garden.

At a fundraising event for Down Syndrome charity

In june this year, a local Down Syndrome charity ran a fundraising day. It was based on walking in beautiful green fields bathing in sunshine. Teams were exhibiting various products for sale and doing different activities and having creative T shirts and signs with the team name.

  

I was proud of my extended family, including very close special friends, who did the walk in 5 countries in 3 continents. Every walker in the team had a sign on his/her T shirt saying “Dream Kareem”.

Kareem himself walked 3 laps in the field and then decided that it was enough and that it was time to play football. He usually plays games and sport like everybody else for a little, then he invents his own style of the game. On this occasion he decided that he would kick the ball with his foot towards me, but I had to bend down to get the ball and threw at him by hands for him to receive it and kick it again!

Afterwards, he decided that he should go with me to the team's tent and to lie down -it was nice to lie in the shade after playing in the hot sun outside. He had fun unzipping and zipping all the compartments in the tent and sliding from one room to the other.

Shadi, Kareem’s brother took the walk very seriously before he enjoyed playing football. He walked 20 lapses- while I was able to only manage 11 lapses.

It was a lovely day and Kareem was, as usual, our joy and treasure with his wonderful caring brother, Shadi. The day was also successful as the charity was able to raise over £36,000. Dream Kareem team managed to contribute just over £500.

I can spell more than a 100 words

“I can spell 100 words”, said Kareem proudly. Spelling has become his latest game. Thankfully we passed the stage of persuading Kareem to spell “is”, “and” when he would rather watch TV or play with iPad. Actually, he has been learning a lot through special TV programmes (the amazing Mr. Tumble) and the iPad but that is for another blog.

Kareem used to go to this sport of the kitchen floor and play games on his IPad

Of course, learning to spell has taken a lot of time and efforts from the school, the family and from Kareem himself. I remember in 2015, we used little coloured words to get him to visually recognise common words. I played the words with him almost every day for long time. We had a big jar of various words and we would put a limited number of common words in a smaller jar and use it day after day. Gradually we would add more words to the small jar until one day we were using all the words from the big jar.

 

  

Recently, Kareem’ mum invented a way of making writing and spelling visual. She would draw a little table for the letters of a particular word then he writes the letters in the squares. Afterwards, he would write it down the whole word. Somehow, he liked this way of learning. Clearly visual learning is his thing.

For example:

T	h	A	t
That

After days and days of doing few simple words -almost- every evening, he started to decide the words, make the table but not use it for writing! Instead he would write the word first then do a table but the cells did not correspond to the number of letters!

Of course, it was not easy to get him to sit down and do “homework”. We use different method like: what do you want to do first? Invariably it is “watch Pippa Pig”. Then the negotiation starts on which homework first-usually after one Pippa Pig.  He decides between English, maths, science, spelling. We do not name these subjects as he now knows them. He also decides whether the work is from books, sheets, computer.

With the writing, Kareem would spell and thus the game started. Almost every day he would verbally spell few words until he reached a hundred words.

Yesterday Kareem was proud to tell his aunt the words he was able to spell. He would say: “I can spell….” and then he spelt the word correctly. Then his aunt would ask him to spell other words. At last, she asked him to spell: “cat”. He said: ta, aa, c. We must have looked baffled. He looked at us and said: “spell back”. Then he liked the new game and started to spell backwards other words: dog, quarter, mummy, dad, Kareem.

Today with friends he spelt backwards lots of the words he knows: school, children, where, when, what, book,…

I cannot describe the happiness of all the family especially his mother with his spelling “forwards”. Now that with Kareem spelling so many words “backwards” we are in ecstasy!

25th February 2018

The boys made a delicious cake

Both Kareem and Shadi love cooking especially making cakes. I must admit that they make delicious cakes. 

It started with the boys helping their mother in adding and mixing the ingredients. Then Shadi started to choose a recipe from one of the cooking books and to make it under his mum’s supervision. Now he can make a cake from the beginning to the end by himself. He has had lots of practice using the electric mixer and is a very careful and caring boy. He knows that he must stick to the slowest speed.

Kareem decides when to make a cake and what type it is going to be. We use the opportunity to get him to measure and to write down the ingredients. He now knows very well the basic ingredients of any cake: flour, butter, eggs and sugar. Then he decides the flavour and whether to add orange juice, milk, coco or coconut or something else.

This time Kareem and Shadi decided to make a chocolate cake together without adult interference. We were watching the use of the mixer, ready to jump in if needed but the two boys handled it really well and were very careful. Kareem named the ingredient while Shadi read out the amount and they both measured it. Shadi was controlling the mixer and Kareem was happy to help by putting his hand on Shadi’s. Then they both worked to pour the mixture in the tin and mother helped putting it in the oven.

The result of the cooking was one of the best cakes I have ever tasted. It was so hard to stop eating it!

Well done boys!