Statues, Stars and the Letter 'C'

                           Remember Saturday's post? It was all red, white and blue and themed right along with the Fourth of July. Well, today's activities as well as the remainder of this weeks lesson's will all be focused on patriotism. Well, kind of.

After our morning routine I had Vada color her Statue of Liberty color recognition book that I downloaded from 3Dinosaurs.com. Last fall it took two days for Vada to finish a recognition book, she would get bored half way through coloring and not want to continue. This year one of her goals is to finish entire activities that are given to her before moving onto a new one. She did very well at pushing through this activity. I could tell that she was a little bored towards the end but with my persistence and help in coloring she continued and completed the book.

Today, together, we wrote in red. For her free time, she wrote in blue dry erase marker.

You may only see scribbles but I am seeing circles being formed. This is good!

We did a little pom pom magnet activity and then turned it into a power magnet activity, just to switch it up on her to see if she would easily adjust to the difference. She did. She's cool like that.

We stayed with the stars and strips theme of the american flag and focused on shapes with with these single shape puzzles from Lakeshore Learning.  I made the star our first shape of focus.

At first we took all of the shapes out of their placements and we looked at them, talked about them and played with them for awhile. Vada got two of the shapes to stack onto each other, which I thought was pretty impressive considering how they are only about have of an inch wide.

We went through all of the shapes and placed them into their correct puzzle placements one at a time and then I steped it up a notch to challenge Vada a little. I gave her two empty puzzles with only one shape. After we did all of the shapes that way (and she flew through it easily) I did it again, only this time giving her two empty puzzles and two shapes that matched. 

Eventually, we were up to three puzzles with three shapes and she was figure it out all on her own!

She even began to stack them, once she had finished each individual puzzle, like I was originally.

She was very proud of herself and I cheered and cheered for her because I was extremely proud as well. To me, she is just amazing! Everyday she is learning something new and continues to show me how determined she is.

Next we worked on colors, red and blue to be exact, to go with the colors of the American flag.

We went through both crayon containers individually and then I had Vada show me her understanding of each each color by having her put them back into their correct crayon containers. She. got. them. all. correct! (and with no help from muah). Well, that isn't the full truth, she actually, truthfully got two incorrect but that was because she was being a Miss. Sassy Pants and looking at me while she attempting to put them into the right places. So I don't actually count them as being wrong. 

We then moved on the our Letter of the Week (were refreshing still so its more like Letter for three days and then move onto the next letter in the alphabet). Now 'crayon' and 'colors' also begin with the letter 'C' and I made sure to highlight on that as well. I also do this when ever our Letter of the Week comes up anytime through out the day or even night (more like whenever I think of it), not just when were doing school. I believe that it is important to point out the many different things that can be related back to our alphabet letter learning. My theory is that something I point out might help that specific letter and sound "stick" in her memory.

As you can tell, we are currently going back over letter 'C'. Were having fun with this letter but she is refusing to make the actual letter sound. She may have forgotten how..? It is an odd sound that comes from way back in your throat. So we may end up spending a who week on this letter again, which is fine. It is what it is. 

"Catch" starts with the letter 'C' so we caught bugs today with one of Vada's Melissa and Doug puzzles. She loved it!

'Caterpillar' starts with the letter 'C'.

We did the Alphabet Soup can for letter 'C'.

Like Vada's sign for "cat"? The ASL sign is to make whiskers, like a cats whiskers on your face. Vada like to grab her cheeks and pull. She hasn't always done this, it's a new thing. It's a cute thing. 

We then colored a page that I downloaded from 3Dinosaurs.com, everything on the sheet had to do with the letter 'C'. We printed the whole alphabet out and put them into our binders for Letter of the Week activities. They are great to have and a wonderful addition to helping learn and teach the letters of the alphabet.

Usually during our Letter of the Week lessons we do have more structured curriculum pages. I have kits for each letter of the alphabet that I have purchased from Confessions of a Homeschooler and I love them. However, since we are just refreshing on these letters, I am keeping it pretty easy going. Once we get to letter 'F' we will be back into lessons but I will remain keeping it fun and playful as well. 

Starting this school year (officially) we gave Vada a book bag (just like her big sisters) and I have been having Vada wear it to and from her bedroom to the classroom. I have been having her work on putting it on, removing it and hanging it up. On the six day of school she hung up the book bag for the first time. I was so ecstatic! I couldn't believe she had got it in such a short amount of time! This will help her in her goals towards independence in her self dressing skills. 

 On the seventh day, today, she wasn't satisfied with just hanging the bag up any ol' way, no, it had to be correctly done and she knew what way the correct way was, without being told. She worked hard and on her own, she hung her bag up the correct way! 

Rainbow Fish and Letter 'A': Day Two

 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!

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! 

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.

Vada really likes playing this fishing game, although she would much rather pick up the fish with her hands than to use the pole but I make her use the pole -it's good for her.

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!