'B' is for Books

Our BOTW has been Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See? So, I thought that it would be fun to go to the library and get more books about bears.

 I had actually spent most of my morning talking with my husband verses teaching Vada which is something I normally wouldn't do because he would either be working or sleeping but we got caught up in conversation and time slipped away from us. It was really nice actually. I miss him, he's been working a ton lately. So, Vada and I would have got a late start to school anyway.

I did start Vada out like I would a typical school day so she was on a "B" mindset at the library and then we were off...

We began our hunt for any and all bear books that we could find. I wanted easy readers and first facts mainly -books with lots of pictures but also with some good information or fun stories. We were able to find both!

We also got out some books that pertained to Earth Day and read about how we could make a difference in our world. Vada happens to be a "pro" at throwing things into the garbage cans here at home! Now, if I could just get her to distinguish which things are suppose to be thrown away and which are not! The recycling aspect can come later! 

Vada loves books. The library is like a toy store for her. At least I would like to assume. She seems content and happy here. I know I am!

I like knowing that she wont rip the pages in the books. She has only done that twice and it was accidental and she was so upset that she had done it. She brought me the books each time for me to fix and I did.

Next weeks letter is the Letter 'C'. The theme is caterpillars so along with the bear books we also got some butterfly books. Apparently, you cant get books just on caterpillars, their lives just aren't interesting enough. I think that we will probably be reading The very Hungry Caterpillar for our BOTW as well so it'll all go well together.

Thursday night we read a few different bear books before bed...

Please pay NO attention to the disaster of a bedroom in the background... "Spring cleaning" is going on.

Old Bear even had a page full of Butterflies in it. 'B' is for butterflies.

I was able to find a really good children's Dvd by Disney called Animal World: Bears and Deer. You were able to choose (in the main menu) if you wanted to watch a video on bears or deer, which was perfect because I actually thought we would end up having to watch both!

After Vada and I watched the video and she put her babies to bed we cuddled up to read some more books about bears...

The educational books were interesting but these other books I saved for the last day of reading because they are such great books. The three of them are such fun books for different reasons but Can't You Sleep Little Bear has to be the sweetest bear book that I can think of, by far the sweetest that we checked out!

Vada's Family Recognition Book and Literacy

I am almost finished with Vada's family recognition book! Finally! It's been hard to stay focused on it due to the fact that the process of making it has been so redundant for me. 

I used an 8x8 scrapbook photo album and created it myself. I think it'll help Vada identify her family members as well as possibly vocalizing who they are. That's the goal anyway.

 I have been going through the book; Teaching Reading to Children with Down Syndrome and in combination of this book with what I have learned through GiGi's Playhouse Literacy Training Program, I have put this family sight word kit together.

The way this kit works is pretty simple. I start off with Vada's photo and one extra copy of her name. I ask her to place her name on her photo/name. Once she has completed that I then add a blank "distraction" card into the mix and ask Vada to choose her name from the two sight word cards and again to place them on her photo/name. Once she has completed that I can add another photo or I can add another name and take out the blank distraction card. After she has successfully gone through all of the cards I can then do two to four photos with their corresponding names at a time.