On Saturday, my good friend got married to her long time boyfriend, Brad. I spent a lot of the week putting together a wedding day emergency kit for the big day (I'll post more about that on a 'Freeday Friday' post). On Friday night we had a lovely rehearsal and then the next day the main event was held at Casa Blanca in Round Rock. It was a beautiful wedding and below are some of the pics that I snagged.
Also on Saturday, I woke up to a great surprise...The sun. For the first time in, I don't know when, the sun was up and shining before I woke. At first I panicked; had I missed my alarm? And why weren't the kids screaming to be fed? And then I realized that not only was my alarm (my phone) missing, but so was the monitor and my husband. I found the latter in the nursery with my three laughing babies. He woke up early and took my alarm so I could have a chance to sleep in. How sweet!
On Sunday, we spent Mother's Day with my family up in Belton. We had brunch with my mom and dad and grandma and grandpa and then played with the kids for awhile. From Jenya and the kids I got a really great hand painting kit. It contains four square, colored canvases, a tray, and five colors of paint for me to make prints of the kids' hands.
On Monday, I found out the hard way that the lessons I had just started with the kids last week are no longer available. So I've decided to come up with my own lessons. We will keep calendar time, morning prayer, and weather (not in that order) and then we will follow with phonics and word identification, songs related to a certain topic and then a story also about the same topic. Later in the afternoon, we will work on an activity also relating to the topic of the week. Inspired by my Mother's Day present, we are starting off with hands as a topic. This morning, I held up a picture of a hand and repeated hand over and over. Then we learned it in Russian, 'Rooka', again over and over. Next we learned the sign for hands. We then sang 'Head and Shoulders' (we are doing an entire 'chapter' on body parts and this is our theme song) and then we sang and watched a You Tube video on 'He's got the Whole World in His Hands'. Next we read a story about 'Helping Hands'. We ran out of time for our activity, but it would have been the Mother's Day canvases. Anyway, with my lessons up and running, I've decided to change Tasty Tuesdays to Teaching Tuesdays.
Monday night I didn't post, because we had ECI out (here is my previous post on ECI). When the kids left the NICU, they recommended we had Early Childhood Intervention do a follow-up on Charli Kate and Adrik since they were born so prematurely, and they recommended two follow-up sessions for Tali since she was the smallest and she had the most difficulties. So Tali's second follow-up was yesterday and I've got to take a couple of moments to brag on her. For her fine motor skills, she is testing at a 19 month level. Now remember that they go by their age adjusted for prematurity, so even though she is 13 months, they were looking at her as a 10 month old. For cognitive skills, she tested at a 16 month level. The only thing that she did not test excessively high at was grand motor skills, which we already knew to begin with. They were slightly concerned about her 'Tali crawl' just because it could lead to bad habits in walking that could ultimately be bad for her joints. So they gave us the option to have her go through six months of therapy to correct it before it becomes a problem. We went ahead and decided to go with the therapy...What could it hurt?
So that's what's been keeping me away from posting. I wish you all a great week!
What a pretty wedding! Here are some sites with lessons for babies and toddlers that I have used. They are really great to pull ideas from and refer to: letteroftheweek.com and abcjesuslovesme.com We also use a lot from DLTK kids - though that site is more a collection of activities than a curriculum. Remember, though, that small children learn most from just playing and exploring independently.
ReplyDelete