Miss-Delectable
New Member
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2004
- Messages
- 17,160
- Reaction score
- 7
wcco.com - Northern Voices: Helping Deaf Kids Enjoy Nature
A special group of Minnesota kids are part of a one-of-a-kind program that uses nature to teach deaf children to talk.
The children who attend Northern Voices have significant hearing loss anywhere from mild to profound. Most use cochlear implants, which is a small, electronic device that can help to provide a sense of sound to a person, to hear. At school, they learn to listen and talk.
Tracy Lindemer's 3-year-old daughter, Mae, is a student.
"It's given her the earliest start possible to grow up in a speaking, hearing world and have a normal future," she said.
For the past couple months, the teachers have taken the school outside to the Dodge Nature Center in St. Paul. There, they learn about things like chickens, bees and gardening alongside their hearing friends at the Nature Center pre-school.
The program is funded by a grant from the Osilas Foundation in New York, a long-time supporter of Dodge.
"It would seem that it would make it more hands on and easier for them to learn words when they are excited about something," said Ben Van Gundy, Executive Director of the Dodge Nature Center.
Many of the children don't hear the same way as their full-hearing friends so they don't learn words as easily. Northern Voices focuses on repetition and experience.
"In the classroom now they are going to go back and talk about the drone bees, that those are the boy bees. And that would be a vocabulary word that they'll work on and then they'll hopefully integrate into their vocabulary," said Northern Voices Executive Director Kristina Blaiser. "It really helps them to expand the types of words and languages they're using."
The program directors believe this is a one-of-a-kind partnership. They hope it can be a model for other states.
A special group of Minnesota kids are part of a one-of-a-kind program that uses nature to teach deaf children to talk.
The children who attend Northern Voices have significant hearing loss anywhere from mild to profound. Most use cochlear implants, which is a small, electronic device that can help to provide a sense of sound to a person, to hear. At school, they learn to listen and talk.
Tracy Lindemer's 3-year-old daughter, Mae, is a student.
"It's given her the earliest start possible to grow up in a speaking, hearing world and have a normal future," she said.
For the past couple months, the teachers have taken the school outside to the Dodge Nature Center in St. Paul. There, they learn about things like chickens, bees and gardening alongside their hearing friends at the Nature Center pre-school.
The program is funded by a grant from the Osilas Foundation in New York, a long-time supporter of Dodge.
"It would seem that it would make it more hands on and easier for them to learn words when they are excited about something," said Ben Van Gundy, Executive Director of the Dodge Nature Center.
Many of the children don't hear the same way as their full-hearing friends so they don't learn words as easily. Northern Voices focuses on repetition and experience.
"In the classroom now they are going to go back and talk about the drone bees, that those are the boy bees. And that would be a vocabulary word that they'll work on and then they'll hopefully integrate into their vocabulary," said Northern Voices Executive Director Kristina Blaiser. "It really helps them to expand the types of words and languages they're using."
The program directors believe this is a one-of-a-kind partnership. They hope it can be a model for other states.