Flowery's girl

I replied to a post last night on Facebook from a lady looking to teach her son with autism how to read and seeing as I managed to teach my darling girl Charlotte to read and she is only five and a half, I thought that my method might be worth sharing and so here is my response (cleaned up a lot since I wrote it last night) to her. My daughter is five and a half and reads at the level of a nine year old. It was very difficult at the beginning but she suddenly got there last Christmas and is now reading fluently and beautifully. When I began teaching Charlotte to read just after she turned four I originally started to try and teach her to read phonetically. This means learning to read words as they are spelt. We firstly learnt what every letter says (Two things that were a great help were firstly the alphablocks on the cbeebies website. They are fun and entertaining and she could watch them for hours and the second thing was an alphab...

Charlotte Marie Culligan was born on the fifth of September 2007 weighing 8 pounds and 8 ounces and when I heard the words "It's a girl" it was without a shadow of a doubt the happiest moment of my life. We had a twelve month old little boy, Andrew, already at home and it just felt as though our family was now complete. From the very start Charlotte was an absolute angel. She slept soundly nearly all the time, hardly ever cried and when I held her she just used to lie so still and gaze into my eyes as though we were connected by the soul. My husband Jason will verify that I used to say that there was something so deep and mysterious about her and I really and truly felt that she was such a special child. She was a small bit slower than Andrew had been to meet her milestones such as smiling and sitting up but we weren't concerned. We felt that Charlotte just liked to do things at her own pace and she really was such a happy contented baby that we felt blesse...

Who the hell can resist bringing their children to see Santa Claus when you read that that the man in red is arriving nearby on the fourth of December in a helicopter? Certainly not this Mammy so after our lunch today the entire family bundled up against the cold, braved the icy, snowy roads (although probably more slushy than snowy at this stage) and made our way to our local Meadows and Byrnes store full of excitement and anticipation. Santa was due to arrive at one O'clock and so we cut it fine and pulled into the car park at exactly five to one as my children unfortunately are not blessed with the greatest amount of patience so I did not want to have to wait too long for the big show to begin. Thankfully there were a number of Elves on hand to help keep spirits buoyant. I am guessing that the Elves were sourced from the local transition year in the nearby all-girls school as every single Elf was female and none of them looked a day older than sixteen. Now call me a cynic if y...

I rarely write anything terribly serious in my blogs as to be honest they are usually just something I use for a little bit of light heated escapism but this time I need to make an exception. Megan Malone is just three years old. She is beautiful, bright and fun-loving. Very recently Megan was diagnosed with a very rare type of cancer after just one week of being ill. She has multiple brain tumours and the cancer has spread to her spine. The survival rate in Ireland for this sort of cancer in Ireland is just 20%. Megan will need to travel to America in the next few weeks if she is to have any hope of recovery. Megan's Dad John was one of my neighbours growing up in Ennis and I am very lucky to consider his sister Aine one of my best friends. The entire Malone family are just nicest people you could ever hope to meet and for life to deal them such a harsh blow is just unthinkable and so unfair. I have two small children myself and the thought of either of my children suffering like...

I am a huge lover of the performing arts which is no doubt due to the fact my parents who like to consider themselves ‘culture vultures’, introduced me to the theatre at a very young age. I was hooked from the very first opening curtain and when I spied an advertisement last week for Lambert Puppet Theatre’s Cinderella playing in the Strand Theatre in Carrick-On -Suir, I seized upon an opportunity to familiarize my four year old son and three year old daughter with the wonderful world of live entertainment and booked four tickets for the family immediately. I had been advised when I booked that the doors were opening at half one and the show would be starting at two o’clock sharp so we arrived at the comfortable time of quarter to two which I felt meant that we were in plenty of time for the performance but weren’t so early that the children would get bored and start asking to go home or worse – begin to dismantle the theatre seat by seat, row by row out of sheer boredom (it could...

So many people thought that it was the end of MacDonald's fast food restaurants after Morgan Spurlock's documentary "Super Size me" where he spent 28 days living solely on MacDonald's food. The effect on his psychological and physical well being was so dramatic on such a negative scale that it led to the common public agreement that MacDonald's was knowingly promoting poor nutrition that was both physiologically addictive and physically harmful for its own profit. MacDonalds's responded to this documentary by discontinuing the Super Size meal and by promoting salad options in the store. Also the quality of meat and produce in their meals dramatically improved as well. I don't think that they need have bothered. Firstly, all people love what's bad for them. Cigarettes, chocolate, alcohol, a self-centred egotistical boyfriend (take comfort in the fact that you will probably grow out of this one. I did and eventually married an absolute honey but ther...