Color blind screening online for free!

 I have suspected that my 4yo is color blind and have been meaning to research it, but of course never think about it at the right time. Last night I was watching a show that mentioned color blindness, so I paused it and looked it up immediately.

I had no idea that 8% of males are color blind. That seems like a lot, 2 out of every 25 males!!! Females, on the other hand, are the ones who carry the gene, but only .4% of the female population is actually color blind, which is about 1 out of 250. Then there are different types and varying degrees of color blindness. Whew! It's been interesting reading up on it and testing all my kids just for fun. :)

Everyone passed with flying colors (pun intended), but I have to say, my 4yo was a challenge. In the end, it was easy to see that he does see colors, but for whatever reason he just cannot seem to remember the names of each color for more than 2 seconds! And come to find out, shapes are the same way. He is a bright child, but he just doesn't seem to be getting these down! It just doesn't interest him right now.

On the other hand though, he immediately and correctly labelled ANIMALS, and is quite knowledgeable of the animal world for a 4yo. In fact, there was one that was a picture of some type of canine....I would have just said "dog", but he said it was a fox.....and it does look kinda like a fox! That little booger can see colors just fine!

I know this is GOOD news! Now I just need to focus more on colors and shapes when playing and reading books. I'm not worried, I know he'll eventually get them (most average or above average intelligence people do, right?), and he's not going to go to school since we homeschool, so whatever. But at least I know a little more about his strengths and weaknesses from these simple pictures.

Maybe we should play just a little more LeapFrog shows and a little less Wild Kratts. Nah. Whatever.  This is a perfect example of how we ALL learn things that we are either interested in or anything that becomes necessary. Colors and shapes have not become necessary to him yet, but he is highly interested in animals and knows a lot about them. He'll pick up colors and shapes (among other things) whether I work extra with him or not. He just prefers books, toys, clothing or ANYTHING with animals on it rather than having a favorite color or shape, and that is totally fine with me! He is such a sweet, happy, bright child, and I love him just the way he is! :)

Taking a time-out from Wild Kratts for a picture!

If you suspect your child may be color blind, there are some free online screening tests that can be done. It is important to note that everyone's monitors could be different, so these would not be accurate enough to diagnose OR rule it out. I'll still be taking my kiddos to the eye doctor soon, and I suggest you do that as well. Here is one very useful web site, especially if your child is familiar with numbers. The Ishihara testing is nearly 100 years old now and is the most widely used. This web site  has a few shapes in the images instead of numbers, including one of a ship. For pictures of animals, I just searched for different things, and most of them came from this web site. Perfect! I love the images that this dad created for his young son!

There are other types of tests as well, I just liked these as they are pretty common and seem to be accurate and an easy way to test. Enjoy your research!

Sorry I haven't blogged on here in a while but I have to copy my post from my blog to this one.I just wanted to share the love of learning of what my daughter has always loved doing.The point of this also is that she learned the training herself and the training paid off.

Ok, I have to blog this.Yesterday on our way out the driveway to go to church we saw that the neighbors horse Pepper was out.We knew that he would soon end up in our yard b/c he always likes to come bother our horse Penny(a female).So we couldn't call him(the owner) b/c he had already left for church.By the time we got out of church he was in our yard.Well, Britt called the neighbor and he said he would come home and get him.BTW, he goes to church all the way over by the Dell corp building in OKC.So it was going to take him a while to get home.

Ok so he gets here and the horse(he's really just a large pony) just runs from the guy.Of course he is going to run from the guy b/c that guy starves him and beats him.And yes we and everyone else has called the authorities on him for animal cruelty.

So anyways here is the part that Britt is so proud of.In the past Britt is the one that broke this horse and she has shown this horse tender loving care.Ok, so Britt just walks partially up to the horse and says come here Pepper and the horse practically runs to her b/c he loves her.All horses seem to love her.Another reason why she was meant to be a horse girl.

I just had to blog that.Not a real big deal just her and I both are real proud of her being who she is and what she does for animals.Like me I guess! Giving shots to my dying goat at midnight to save her life! W/Britt holding the goat down while I give her the shots! LOL! I guess I taught all that animal love to her while she was growing up!

Without any formal training in spelling, grammar or handwriting, Jonathan is working on his first "official" comic book. (He has written a story before, but this one is comic book form with lots of pictures and bubbles, etc.) Super-heroes are his passion in life, apparently, that and animals of all kinds (we caught a snake today, in fact). He has created over 20 super heroes and villains. Some are still being developed and some he created a couple of years ago.

So just now, Jonathan got a quick lesson in writing. Daddy was reading his comic book and just *had* to correct him. There really weren't that many errors, but he spelled two words wrong ('arownd' and 'thru'....they look right, at least!) and was hyphenating words incorrectly. We didn't mention the misspelled words. In about 2 minutes though (maybe less), he learned about syllables and hyphenating and correctly hyphenated about 5 words! He's a quick learner, especially since we didn't push it on him but waited until he was ready! Now it will stick, and he doesn't feel horrible for doing it wrong! :)