After our normal morning routine, singing the 'A' song and going over our memory verse of the week (Romans 3:23), I read from a book that I forgot to mention in yesterdays post. Big Thoughts for Little People: ABC's to Help you Grow by Kenneth N. Taylor is such a great addition to the Letter of the Week, in my opinion, I just had to make it part of our curriculum.
Each page is a letter of the alphabet and also has a bit of a memory verse (wrote in a way that young children can understand) as well as a description of whats going on in the picture. It then asks a couple of questions like, If the bears in the picture could talk what would they be thankful for? Just because Vada isn't extremely vocal yet, I don't assume that the wheels inside her noggin' aren't spinnin'! So I often do the talking and thinking out loud. The bear question was one that was asked and I answered it by pointing to the bears and telling Vada to also look at them. I of course counted them (more by habit than anything) and then pointed out that they were having a tea party and that maybe they would be thankful to God for their tea party. I then asked Vada what she was thankful for. Giving her an extra second to process the question and even answer it if she wanted to or could, I waited and after a few seconds I began to give her things that maybe she might be thankful for like her Daddy, her Sisters, her toys and so on. I then said things that I was thankful for and ended it with being thankful for her and gave her a big squeeze and kiss.
When I was reading to her I read that the dad in the picture was praying with his two children and Vada immediately bowed her head and started to say her own prayer. Love it! Love it! Love it!
We began our Letter of the Week curriculum with some pre-handwriting! This is a first for Vada, other than the coloring and free scribbling that she does.
I had to help guide Vada's hand over the "dots" to connect and make the letters correctly and there was some resentment here and there on Vada's part but over all she was interested enough in accomplishing this task that she let me help her and together we did it! I am very curious how many letters/weeks of pre-writing we will have to do together before she will be able to do this on her own. It's very exciting stuff for me!
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| Letter of the Week Curriculum was created by and purchased from Confessions of a Homeschooler. |
After we did the letter both twice, we erased the sheet completely and I let Vada have a go at it all on her own and with no help from me.
After pre-writing we moved onto Jasmine's pom pom magnets.
And then we worked on a six piece 'A' is for Apple puzzle.
Were continuing with The Rainbow Fish as our book of the week and since I know how much my girl loves her Goldfish crackers and I planned on using them for our next project, I thought that I would give some to Vada as a snack while I was rereading our story today. My hopes was to curve her appetite for these tasty little crackers so that I could use them for our lesson...
One.
One, is how many fish crackers I was able to get Vada to put on to the fish bowls! I did the rest in my attempt to show her what I wanted her to do. She just kept shoveling those darn crackers in! Oh, I don't know what I was thinking! I should have known, she is only three and these are, by far, her favorite snacks! Too funny! Too funny!
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| I originally found these fishbowls on Pinterest but was sent to Celebrate Everyday With Me for the free printables. |
Today we also watched "Meet the Letters", a DVD that specifically focuses on the letters of the alphabet. Yesterday we watched a Leap Frog movie and that one focused on the letters and sounds, which I love! However, Meet the Letters only focuses on showing the letters in a preparatory fashion and in different fonts and colors so that the child or children who are watching the video can learn to identify the letters in different settings, which is also an important factor when teaching reading to all children but especially and importantly in the beginning of learning the letters, with children who have Down syndrome.
After the Letters video we did a fish craft. I stepped away from Vada about midway through the video to "sculpt" a fish body out of Crayola air-dry clay and set some pieces of decorations on the pan for her to fancy up the fish with.
Then we went color fishing!
Its been awhile since we've had this game out. I got it from Lakeshore Learning about a year ago and its been maybe that long! I got to admit, I really like the concept and the fish in this game but the bowl is pathetic! It is so flimsy and floppy and just out of shape! It came that way too, which made me disappointed from the very beginning! But you make the best of what you have and so I changed the game a little by putting the fish onto the desk and having Vada "catch" them from there and then remove them from the pole and place them into the bowl.
We ended up playing two rounds of color fishing.
Everyday, we end our day by reading this alphabet book. Kids Like Me... Learn ABC's. I like this book for many reasons. Almost all of the children have Down syndrome (with the exceptions of some who have siblings with them) and another off of the top of my head is that the book shows the sign for each of the letters.
After we read the Alphabet book together I take the pointer and sing the Alphabet song while pointing to each letter as I sing it. After I have finished the song then Vada gets her turn to point while I sing. She is starting to hum a little and sway back and forth when I sing which is pretty exciting for me. Vada likes using the pointer and has a really hard time waiting until the end of the song but its funny because she knows when the end of the song comes for her that she is suppose to put the pointer back on top of the counter, and she does!
Today we added the uppercase letter 'A' and the lowercase letter 'a'. When it was Vada's turn to use the pointer, I asked her to point to the Letter of the week, the letter 'A' and she did! I was super proud!
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