Books To Read

Storytelling and book-reading is building up momentum in our home, not only is it sometimes more fun than bedtime cartoons, but we have a good collection, I slowed down because they were not interested, but am getting excited about books again.

 this one is easy to read, and makes statements about accomplishments in daily self-care routines! fortunately for us, most of it was true.

 Milo's eyes and mouth change with a spin of the dial, to match the situation he is in.

 Princess CleoTasha is bossy, unappreciative, and never says please or thank you.. until the end.

As you can safely assume, the little brother in this story, is loud, has screaming fits, sometimes takes precedence over family activities, and makes messes, shows the older boy how to look past these things.

The wonderful Mind

Today's fine motor work and introduction of new concepts! Not only did he organize them, and his thoughts, but combining the playdough with the straws is a new idea. 'A' also loved having help with this. Why do we need hand over hand unless you need help in Doing it!

'A' has an amazing eye for measurement and detail. This was a full fun Friday, where we listened to culinary documentaries, and worked on personal projects all day. 'A' created this series of masterpieces.

smoothing out the borders of chaos

We have been laying the foundation for appropriate times to be silly and goof around. Now 'D' seems to be more comfortable expressing himself to the best of his abilities. Short videos of his favourite shows serve as a current future reward for practicing writing skills. I guide him along and use quantity in short spurts to encourage him to discover his proper pen grip. I aim to take it one practice session at a time, and at the same time extending the seated-time for each. We follow what he is okay with at the time, and I simply take the most opportune times of the day for it.

Right now we are working with mazes and numbered dot-to-dot books. He is finding more comfort in simply getting it done, and when we learn he is struggling with his motor strength, we find fun ways to guide his fingers to something more comfortable. I often will ask him to do 10 pages in one sitting. It's working wonders, he does have to remain aware so that he doesn't make obvious mistakes, and train himself to hold a writing tool in an efficient manner.. he picks and chooses what his work is, he gets rewards for pushing himself, and not for what he accomplished on the paper. We add stickers to his collection simply for sitting down and doing it, and for a fun break afterwards he usually gets to watch a video on the computer.

I'd like to point out that, a) he chose the workbooks, b) we discussed what I hoped he would be able to do, and what he wanted to get out of it, c) this way allows him to express his creativity gradually, and with a lot of help.