Friday, March 25, 2011

The Weekly Review: Week Two

Blog Post I Enjoyed Most: I really liked this post on Balancing Everything. I’m a teacher and an SLP so education themed posts always interest me. I’m also fascinated by the idea of homeschooling. I don’t think I could do it, but I admire the people who do it well. This is a post by a mom who homeschools four children. She describes the activities they did during a week of science exploration. She includes great pictures of some of their projects.

Interesting Apraxia Article: Speech and Language Development in Infants and Young Children by Caroline Bowen. This isn’t actually an article about apraxia. It’s an article about speech and language development. You have to know what is typical before you can decide how worried you need to be.

Sibling Moment of the Week You know the kind of awkward hug you give an ex-boyfriend when you encounter them on the street and you aren’t even sure that’s the appropriate way of greeting them? Well, I missed the very beginning of the interaction, but I walked in on Ava and Michael giving each other a very awkward hug. Then they just kind of stood there for a second. So, I said something to the effect of, “Oh, are you guys wrestling? How fun!” They immediately started giggling and kind of pushing against each other. Michael promptly pushed Ava over and fell right on top of her. They both busted out laughing and scrambled back to their feet with Ava pleading, “more, more.” So they go through the awkward hug process again, and again Michael topples Ava right over landing on top of her. Much laughter ensued. This went on several rounds until the game was ended by Michael’s head connecting with Ava’s check hard enough to leave a bruise. So, it didn’t end well but it was still a beautiful five minutes. Those moments when my children are playing with each other (not both playing with me, but truly playing with each other) captivate me. I love watching them bond as siblings.

Michael’s Question: We were reading Mouse Soup at bedtime. Michael knows his letters and a lot of sound correspondences, so I’m doing a little pre-reading skills work during our reading time. For example, I’ll point to each word of the title as I read it. Then I’ll ask, “Which word is mouse?” Then I pointed to the “m” and said mmmm, the “ou” and said ow, and the “s” and said sssss. I just kind of skipped the “e” since I figured that explanation was a bit too complex for now. He never misses anything though and interrupted the beginning of the story to ask, “Mama, why is that E there at the end of mouse?” To be honest, I didn’t quite know how to answer him. I said something about how sometimes “they” add a silent e to the ends of words even though it really doesn’t make much sense. I was so proud that he thought to ask the question though.

Ava’s new favorite word: No. (and not) She loves using it in the typical toddler defiant fashion. She’s also using it in a large percentage of her sentences. She’s obviously exploring the concept and testing it out. So, she’ll say something like, “Ava pink shoes. No mama pink shoes.” Or, she’ll say, “Mama no tickle.” Now imagine a negative attached to most of our conversations and you get the idea.

Birthday of the Week: Happy birthday to my wonderful husband. It was the first year the children could understand and participate in celebrating the birthday of one of their parents. They had a great time blowing up balloons and “helping” me put the letters on the cake. We were getting ready to surprise Daddy when he came home from work, but the kids managed to let the surprise slip before he got around the corner to where he could see the kitchen table. It didn’t matter though. He loved it anyway.

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