Life-Changing One on One Programing Applications for Spring 2025 OPEN 12/9/24-1/5/25

Fall applications are open December 9th 2024 – January 5th 2025!

One-on-One programming is an important part of our full programming offerings at GiGi’s Playhouse Madison and applications are open on December 9th. We would like to share a little more about what we have! As a reminder, cost will never be a barrier to participate – all of our world-class programming is always free of charge to our families.

Our one-on-one programs are Literacy tutoring, Math tutoring and Speech and Language Therapy. Participants are placed with a tutor or therapist and work together one-on-one. These programs are application based, which means you submit an application for each program you’d like to participate in and share your availabilities.

We place students with tutors and therapists based on their shared availability. When submitting your applications, it’s important to list as many availabilities as possible. The more times you share with us on your availability, the easier it is to place students with tutors and therapists.

Math and Literacy tutoring will meet one time a week for a 12 week session. When you are paired with a tutor, you will meet the same day and time each week for the entire session. Read below for more information on our programs.

Speech and Language Therapy will meet on Tuesday’s for 10 weeks. When you are paired with a therapist, you will meet at the same time for the entire session.

There is a chance that you could be placed on a waiting list for the program, depending on how many students apply and how many tutors and therapists we have. We communicate all of this with you once our matching process takes place after applications close. We try our best to match every student in at least 1 one on one program.

For all of our programs, we follow “purposeful progressions” which allow the tutors and therapists to ensure a strong understanding of the skills being worked on and sets our participants up for success! Following is some more information about each of the programs and the links to the program landing page on our website.

Literacy Tutoring

Age: 5 years old through adulthood

Summer session dates: February 3rd – May 2nd

The ability to read opens doors for individuals with Down syndrome in the workplace, schools and the community.  Developing reading skills also leads to improvements in speech and language development, auditory perceptual skills and working memory function.  Our goal is to foster a love for reading and provide an opportunity to develop and master skills, all while building a positive relationship with our volunteer tutors.

Our program is built based on the ways in which individuals with Down syndrome learn best.  We use methodology with documented success based on research by professionals in the field.  We utilize Raising Robust Readers to help teach phonics and phonogram awareness to students, we work on pre-reading skills that include matching, naming and selecting words and pictures in high interest categories, and we enhance comprehension when reading just right books with Raz-Plus.

Click HERE to learn more about Literacy tutoring and to apply. Applications are open from December 9th 2024 – January 5th 2025.

Math Tutoring

Age: 5 years old through adulthood

Fall session dates: February 3rd – May 2nd

Building math skills for individuals with Down syndrome increases independence in their school, in the community, and in the workplace.  The aim of this program is to help promote a positive experience of learning mathematics with a sound foundation of basic number understanding.  Knowing that our participants vary greatly in their abilities and challenges, we combine multiple approaches that utilize multi-sensory teaching with graduated levels of purposeful progressions leading to an increase of skills and self-confidence.

Our program is built based on the ways in which individuals with Down syndrome learn best.  We review and emphasize pre-number concepts to ensure students have the foundation needed to learn what numbers mean in the world. Then we break numbers down into 10s, 20s, 50s and 100s, working on basic number sense principles, counting and addition/subtraction in each group before moving onto higher numbers. Once we know students have a solid foundation of number sense and counting, addition and subtraction up to 100s, we will move onto multiplication and division using repeated addition/subtraction for a visual of what multiplication and division mean. We do all of this using numicons and TouchMath to help provide a multisensory approach to math. On top of basic math, we work on Real World concepts including use of a time/calendar, money, shapes, measurement and more.

Click HERE to learn more about Math tutoring and to apply. Applications are open from December 9th 2024 – January 5th 2025.

Amina Grace Speech and Language Therapy

Age: 2 years old through adulthood

Spring session dates: Tuesday’s ??????????

The GiGi’s Amina Grace Speech and Language one-on-one program provides youth, teens and adults with greatly expanded opportunities to evolve and refine their speech and language skills. Effective enunciation, clarity of speech, word order and message meaning are paramount to fostering greater self-confidence, comprehension, problem-solving, school readiness, social skills, independence, and overall quality of life.

Click HERE to learn more about Speech and Language Therapy and to apply. Applications are open from December 9th 2024 – January 5th 2025.