Fun Activities - OT is Kind of Cheesy:)!

 

K was pestering to help grate cheese for supper the other night. I was grating it by hand, which isn't the safest for little fingers, of course, so I let her try it with this cheese grater.  I think she ate every little scrap of cheese that she managed to get out of it - so much for the help making supper!

Fun Activities - Folding Crafts

One of the activities we like to do with K on a regular basis is to work on folding skills.  Often we use ready made books that are so simple just to tear out the page & practice folding. We have run out again though, so we have been trying to find some on the internet, which isn't the easiest task.  

We made these little snack holders the other day, filled them with popcorn & watched a movie - K was so excited that we'll have to do this again!

 

Here is a link to a post I did on the same subject a while ago - Paper Folding

Fun Activities - 5 Little Penguins

We've been having fun using these little penguins to learn about math lately.  It is a simple song about 5 little skating penguins. We have been using the story for reading practice and speech.  Most of the activities we have been doing are math related.  We have been counting the penguins on our fingers and using the equations to help work on subtracting the penguins. 

 

For kids who don't know colours yet, these little penguins could be used to match alike colours or to match the colour to the matching word.  Likewise, the penguins could be numbered to work on numbers & number words.

Here is the website that I got the penguins & story from.  They have tons of free printables in a large range of themes & include a daily free printable.  Here is a link to their site:

Child Care Land Free Printables

Fun Activities - Cooking With Chef K

First, start with premium ingredients - rice, beans, sparkles, little Christmas & winter snowflake  & star decorations & whatever else Mom has available.

Measure all of the ingredients carefully.

Pour back & forth between each bowl several times. Then stir well.

   ................and make sure you clean up the kitchen when you are done...............right K?...........K?

Fun Activities - OT With Pompoms!

OT..................and math, & speech and................

I thought I would do a series of posts on some of the fun activities that we do with K.  I rarely seem to have time to post about that sort of thing  & that probably gives my audience a narrow view of what learning looks like in our home - yes, we love flashcards, but there are so many other ways to learn!

 

This is one of the activities we did when K was little, but I dragged it out of the closet the other day just for fun.  Because she hasn't seen it in quite a while, K had a great time with it.  If I remember right, she was about 2 when we played with it a lot.  

The tongs were to help with fine motor skills.  The different sizes of pompoms varied the difficulty level & we used various types of tongs too.  

We sorted by colour and size, talked about the colour names & which ones were bigger or smaller.

I wrote a different number on each cup & K would count that many as she was putting them in.  

I think K's favorite activity was just pouring the pompoms from one cup to another.

For as simple as this activity is to set up, there are tons of ways to learn!

The view from my entryway window................

This is totally off topic, but I thought I'd share anyways!  I took this through my front door window so it is a little fuzzy.  I love wildlife, but this is a little too close!  I think our big guardian dog was sleeping on the job today.

Huge Big Brag! Drum Roll Please..................

 As I write this post, I find myself in awe of my little girl once again.  I think I have said before, that I only learned about early reading when K was a baby, so I was never able to try it with my older girls.  I had never seen a child a 4 year that could read even very simple books.  It still seems so amazing even to me & I see it every day. 

Anyways..............here is the big news:

K had her neurodevelopmental evaluation yesterday. Back in September, K was evaluated as reading at a 2nd grade level. She is now reading at grade level 3.9!  Meaning 3rd grade, 9th month! That's almost 2 grade levels in 4 months!

I should explain though, that this doesn't mean that she would willingly pick up a 3rd grade chapter book & read it from cover to cover - she has the ability to read the majority of the words, but she prefers not to. She does easily read shorter grade 3 level stories though. She can read at that level of vocabulary, she just chooses not read that length of story. Although I think K has a good understanding of what she reads, I'm not sure if she would follow the storyline of a long chapter book, but at this point, I have learned not to underestimate her either.  She  also still prefers to read books with larger print. This could be vision related though, & I am planning on trying to get her in with the pediatric opthamologist a little sooner if I can.

Houston.....................We Have Steering!

After preschool the other day, K enjoyed riding it up & down the hall at the school.  The music in the background is being played by the Jr. High class who were playing basketball in the gym, but K enjoyed that too!

Another Way to Make Your Blog Pictures a Little Safer

Again, there is no way to completely protect pictures that you post on your blog, but here is another tool that may help

Transparent cover for your pics

I haven't tried this yet, but it looks very promising.

Happy New Year Everyone!

We've had a wonderful start to our new year & been incredibly busy.  Too busy to blog!  The alpine ski racing season has started for my older 3 girls, & the oldest 2 are both on the Jr. high basketball team.   My 2nd oldest has also qualified for the winter games in our province in alpine skiing, so we have been running from practise to race or game & on to the next practice.  K has also had another neurodevelopmental evaluation recently, so that & her program as well as preschool has kept us busy!

The other reason that I haven't blogged until now, is that just before I hit publish on anther post, I got thinking that maybe K should have the first word in 2012.  I have a whole list of other blog posts that I have been working on in the meantime & will post soon, but first, here is her Happy New Year's message from our family to yours!  This is the first take - no practice runs because with our busy schedule, we may not find time again until June!  I think my sleepy little girl (it was bed time - she yawns 1/2 way through) did a great job!

Oh, & my other news for the New Year is that I am now on Facebook! You can find me here: Down Syndrome Up Up Up & Away

Hope you enjoy the video!