Website: www.colourblindness.com.au
                    Email: alice@colourblindness.com.au

• Adele Suda - B App SC.O.T
• Occupational Therapy Helping Children

                    Website: www.occupationaltherapy.com.au

How much homework is too much? 
The following link is information from Queensland Department of Education about how much homework your child should be doing per week. Parents, this is a must look, if you think that your child has an excessive amount of homework.

Click here to view the Queensland Department of Education's Guidelines on the amount of homework your child should have.




Auditory Challenges

• Auditory Processing Disorder

We attach meaning to sound with reference to more than just the auditory signals. For example if someone says, 'Look at that tree', the other person must do a number of things. Firstly, they must understand that they are to give visual attention to something. Then they must associate the word 'tree' with knowledge, stored in the brain, of what a tree actually looks like. Lastly, auditory processing allows the person to recognise the tone of voice that the statement was said in (eg. angrily or excitedly) so they can apply appropriate meaning.

Sound can be heard in two different ways, either through air-conduction or bone-conduction. Most people are aware that sound is transmitted through the ear canal but few people realis that sound waves are also constantly hitting the body, and being interpreted by the brain. There is far more to effective listening than merely having perfect hearing. Click here to read more...



Other Useful Websites include:


Hartland Eyecare

This website gives an extremely good insight into how vision affects children's learning. Below is an excerpt from the Hartland Eye Care Website. We highly recommend that you read the information which is contained on this website, especially those parents who are concerned with their children's learning.

Perception&Learning

Among many other things, learning requires the ability to distinguish small differences in form, yet many children are very poor at form perception. How can you tell whether your child needs help in building this visual ability?

Here are some common signs of form perception problems.

• Mistaking words with same or similar beginnings
• Failure to recognise the same word in the next sentence
• Reversing letters/words in writing or copying
• Confusing likenesses and minor differences
• Confusing the same word in the same sentence
• Failure to visualise what is read
• "Drawing" with fingers to decide similarities and differences

Substandard form perception is only one of a number of visual prioblems that may be present in someone who still has 20/20 eyesight, and optometric visual training can be very helpful in dealing with these form perception problems.

Other signs of learning-relatede visual problems are outlined in the pamphlet, "Educator's Guide to Classroom Vision Problems", available by contacting your behavioural optometric office.

• www.optometrists.org/therapists_teachers/school_nurses_eye_exams.html

• www.spectacleworld.co.za/eyecare03.htm

• Australian Visual Behavioural Optometry

                (this site gives the contact details of Visual Behavioural Optometrist in your area)