A Rainbow-rific Day

 This post is actually a day late. Our internet has been all wigged out and I was unable to post it on time. 

On many posts I have shared Vada working on different color recognition coloring books. I've never followed up on what we do with these books and recently I have had a couple of emails from curious parents wondering what we do with the books after Vada colors in them...

I save them. I laminate them all, place little rings in them to keep them connected and we keep them by the rocking chair in Vada's room where I read to her before her nap and bedtime and where she has easy access to them.

Today Vada and I read through her color recognition book once all of the way through and then on the second time around we matched the colors on the pages to the colors on Elmer the stuffed elephant.

We followed that activity up with an Elmer's book.

And continued to do some more color recognition activities with this gear puzzle from Melissa and Doug. 

We did more color sorting with the Farmer's Market set from Learning Resources. She seemed to have a hard time with this certain activity the other day. I am having a hard time knowing if it comes from not knowing the actual colors, not paying attention or being bored. So I thought that we should try again, at least once more this week.

She did great with this when she was focused but she really had to pay attention. Again, it was hard to tell if it was just luck when she was getting it correct so I brought out the crayon color sorters again as well. She really likes those and I figured repetition of a good thing never hurts.

The same thing went with this color sorting activity. Was it by chance or was it on purpose? Hmm...?

Vada and I did two interesting coloring worksheets. I say interesting because it was hard for Vada, yet I really wanted to have her finish the activity, yet I wasn't for sure if it was age appropriate and should press it. It turns out that we did two of the worksheets. The uppercase 'E' and the lowercase 'e' worksheets. They had Large, medium and small sizes for each upper and lowercase letter and for each size you were suppose to color each a different color. It was difficult and took a great deal of restraint on Vada's behalf but with my help and guidance, she did do it. She yelled at me a bit, she got frusterated a little but she completed the pages and I was proud of her but I did question myself...should I have stopped the lesson when she got frustrated? or what it good to push her a little even though she wasn't pleased about it? Seriously...Im looking for opinions and advice here...what do you think?

While Vada did put up a stink about coloring the upper and lowercase 'Ee's, she was all for writing practice, We used an orange dry erase marker for our hand over hand practice writing but Vada used a purple marker on her own. If you haven't already figured it out, I chose these two colors because they are are our colors of the week.

Vada's grasp does seem better with the mini markers. Thanks Christy, your awesome!

Check out Vada's horizontal line attempts! Not bad for a three and a half year old, ehh?

Notice the little 'v' as well...

Now check out this uppercase 'V'. Pure accident? Probably, but I am telling myself that there was some effort put into this letter 'V'.

I asked Vada to connect the "big E to the little e" and look what she did! All on her own! With NO, assistance or guidance from me! She is awesome, right? This is great, right?!? Oh my gosh, I am just smitten with this little girl!

After Vada had her own practice writing time we moved on to shape tracing. 

These last two sheeting activities came from 3Dinosaurs.com.

After talking about the tracing sheet we moved onto another puzzle-like activity. 

We also turned this activity into a math and color recognition activity.

At first Vada had a hard time getting the shape pieces off of the posts but once she figured it out she didn't want to stop. We did this activity two times.

Since I used the last activity as a counting activity (as well other things) I also used it as a sort of transition activity. We went from the puzzle onto the number one TouchMath flash card and counting single object activities.

After doing everything we did in our last activity yesterday, I added another step. It was simple but added more counting. I had Vada put each object, one at a time, into the cup. As Vada added objects into the cup I would count them, "One orange Numicon, One gray cat, one purple cup", and so one. I just wanted to highlight on the fact that we were focusing on one.

After Vada put everything into the cup I brought out the book that we worked on the previous day and we read through it then began coloring more in it.

And that was our rainbow-rific day.

When am I Going to Start?

I have been asked by several people when I am going to start homeschooling Vada. The funny thing is that I have already begun. I started the moment I brought her home and quite possibly on the very day that she was born because that's what we do as parents, we teach. It's a funny question, when worded that way but it's also easy to understand what people are really asking from me. Preschool. When am I going to start teaching Vada the essentials of preschool. It seems that while I am preparing and planning Vada's preschool curriculum others are also getting wrapped up in the concept of homeschooling and if I am really going to do it and were all forgetting that Vada is only two and a half years old.

Typical youngsters usually start preschool when they are five, sometimes four years old but that's pretty early (imho) and actually, I may be completely wrong on the ages. Because Vada has Down syndrome the state has an early intervention program for her to get the extra help that she may need, so I have really begun working with her on the basic stuff, such as colors and numbers, animals and their sounds, sorting, counting, letters, reading, continued sign language and following directions.

I plan on officially starting a structured curriculum (Horizons Preschool) when Vada turns three years old, just like her peers who share having a bonus chromosome in common and if I can wait that long, im pretty excited. For now we do a lot of playing, singing, signing and reading. We are working on potty training because I feel that Vada should be fully trained by three years old because that is when she would be at a school, if I weren't homeschooling her and also because I want her to be fully trained before she goes into the preschool room at church.

Everything though, comes in stages. :)

Were still having a ton of fun with the abcmouse.com online preschool and toddler site.

We start out by playing a few songs.

If I can, I incorporate signing into all of the songs with actions. Vada's favorite song is The Five Little Monkeys. She always pats her head when asking for it.., you know, because the monkey's fall off of the bed and bonk their heads. It's cute.

Today we focused on animals and their specific sounds.

Primary colors.

And then we checked out the color wheel, just to see what it was all about.

So, our house is small. Its two bedrooms to be exact! J and K share a room and V gets the smallest room to herself. We have a room in the basement which is also where I have made a "school room", as my children now call it.

Its an unfinished basement, not pretty but not overly (scary anymore) either! 

I'm getting the Brilkids little reader program for Vada this month and then I think its pretty safe to say that I am pretty well equipped for teaching Vada all she needs to know for Preschool and even Kindergarten, if my husband lets me go that far! (Which I am not so secretly hoping for!)

We are using the Your Baby Can Read program right now. Its great for Vada and tots with Down syndrome because our kids have an easier time learning to read through memorization of site words than earning phonics first. And this program teaches in just that fashion! Your Baby Can Read is a great place to start your child on reading but I believe that Brillkids is where the true learning is at, as far as reading programs go

This is our desk, our working area. 

Today we also worked with these fantastic flash cards that I found through Oriental Trading Company awhile back called Touch and Feel Picture Cards. They should just be called sensory cards because they incorporate visual touch, smell, sign language and braille! I went back to find the link through Oriental Trading and they no longer carry them so here is another place to find the cards, if your interested.

Vada liked the cards a lot and I realized that the touch factor of the cards brought out her pointer! This is something we have been working on with her OT, now we need to get her to put all of those other fingers into a fist! 

We did some color sorting today, along with everything else. I bought the muffin pan from a local Dollar Tree Store. I could have gone to my kitchen and used the pan I had but I like to keep things together so I paid a dollar to have that luxury. We used the large buttons that I also bought through Oriental Trading Company, oh ow I {heart} that store!

The Horizons Preschool Curriculum is Christ centered, which means in all of the lessons Jesus comes first. We bought the full curriculum verses needing to buy the DVDs and CDs later on. One of the videos happens to be on obedience, while I think obedience is good for everyone to know, I only picked this DVD because it was the first in the series and the only reason I picked watching a video just to see if Vada's attention could be held being where she was at. She did well.

Finally, I ordered this book below, Slow and Steady Get Me Ready. It was suggested by a friend of ours who home schooled her four children, she said that this was her curriculum for all of her children. The book should be here soon and I am really excited to read through it!