Sorry if I've been a little spotty on posting. We're in the process of moving to/renovating an old school house. It seems kind of funny for a homeschooling family to move into a school, but we're excited.
In the meantime, we haven't let the chaos deter us from our early leaning goals. At this point Arden is reading more and more individual words. Even more exciting she recognizes them in books or if she sees someone writing them. Here's a video of her reading some of her words with her dad.
Currently, she does Little Reader in English and French 1-2 times a day. She also does Little Musician. She watches "The Letter Factory" to work on letter recognition and sounds, although I suspect she knows them all. She likes to sit at our keyboard (which has letter stickers on it) and play the keys saying the letter on each one. To help with sight words she has been watching meet the sight words and doing some corresponding flash cards.
Her other recent fascination is with books. She will have me read the same 10 books to her about 3-5 times a day. Her tastes lean heavily towards Dr. Seuss and PD Eastman. She also enjoys "reading" by herself and talking about each page and what it says from memory.
With the Olympics in full swing. I thought I should post an update about
our mobility program. We continue to give Arden as many opportunities
as possible to be active through the day, and she definitely takes
advantage of them. When people meet Arden they say one of two things.
Either: "she is the happiest baby I've ever seen. Does she ever cry?" or
"Wow! She is really active!".
Some of her favorite activities including climbing up the ladder, jumping on the trampoline, walking up and down stairs, and doing forward rolls.
We have continued to use a mobility program based off of the "How To Teach Your Baby to Be Physically Superb". She is currently in Stage V. The best part of stage V is the introduction of early gymnastics. Arden has loves this! She had been watching her brother do forward rolls and when given an opportunity picked it up right away. Now we will often catch her doing them on her own. We also have some 4x4s that she enjoys using as a balance beam.
My number one recommendations for teaching forward rolls (or anything with younger children) is get someone they look up to to do it first. Anything her brothers do is instantly tantalizing, and if mom does a forward rolls she finds it hilarious and can't wait to copy. We started off by having her "touch [her] toes" and then helped her roll over. It didn't take long for her to start rolling down the hall on her own. Here is a video of her forward roll. I love her head tuck and arm swing. I can't watch without smiling.
We've been working a lot on small motor activities lately, and I thought I'd share a few of my favorites. Today's activity was a really simple activity. All I did was dive Arden an old empty spice container and some dried beans. While I worked with the boys on their school she amused herself putting all the beans in the container, dumping them out and starting over again.
Another favorite activity is drawing.
Intent on her artwork
Some other fun activities include Play-doh (also great to help strengthen hand muscles), bottles and boxes with lids to practice placing and removing, and other sorting/threading activities. It's fun to mix it up using different activities to practice the same skills. We recently bought a shaker and some party-color toothpicks for her to practice threading. So far that seems to be a hit.
So, the big day has finally arrived and our little miss has turned one year old. It's hard to believe an entire year has gone by. But, at the same time it is amazing how much she has accomplished.
For mobility she has graduated to Stage V on the Institutes Mobility Development Scale. About one month prior to her first birthday we went to a swim meet. While there we spent most of the weekend between races in a large gymnasium, and Arden spent the whole weekend walking back and forth across the gym trying to be like all the big kids. By the end of the weekend she had graduated to a full time walker.
This video is from shortly after that weekend, in it her arms have been freed from the primary balance role and she is free to bend down and pick up toys:
Since that time we have been trying to walk as much as possible. Several times a week we will go to a playground where we park about 100 yards away. Arden will walk the entire 100 yards through the grass uninterrupted. Once at the playground she enjoys climbing up the steps, walking over to the slide, sliding down and then sprinting back and doing it again. We also practice walking on a variety of terrains including a long paved hill and rugged ungroomed terrain. Our next step is to aim for 30 minutes of non-top walking at a time.
She continues to enjoy hanging on the pull-up bar. For fine motor skills we have been using a shape sorter as well as a circle stacking toy. She is improving at both of these.
She continues to use the toilet consistently and I can't remember the last time she had a bowel movement in her diaper. She will urinate consistently on the toilet, but still frequently has wet diapers. She will indicate to us she wants to use the toilet, but only if we are already in the bathroom at this point.
Verbally her her expressive vocabulary as well as her ability to follow directions continues to expand rapidly. We continue to use Little Reader on a daily basis. We also started showing her "Your Baby Can Read" almost daily for the past week and a half. She was bored with the videos a few months ago, but now is very engaged with them. Especially, She loves to point at body parts when you ask her where they are. She reliably will point to her eyes, ears, mouth, nose, belly button and toes. When looking at her flash cards/"Your Baby Can Read" cards consisting of the word with the picture she will respond to clap, mouth, toes, arms up, wave, hi and dog. She will say clap, hi and dog after seeing those cards, the others she will point to that part of the body. I think she actually knows the word, but likes to pull out the card before responding. I might have to make some less exciting cards, to see. Also, she may recognize more of the words, but as she hasn't yet said those words, and as they aren't body parts I don't think she can indicate it.
She likes to kick the soccer ball while walking and will say "kick, kick, kick". She also likes to throw the ball back and forth and will yell "catch" at the same time.
She is also beginning to have a longer attention span for books and appears to be enjoying them more. She will sometimes sit and flip through the pages on her own or bring a favorite to us to read.
Quick post today, but I just wanted to share an Elimination Communication success from today. While we were getting ready for bed Arden got her toilet seat, carried it over to the toilet, set it on top and said "Momma".
I took off her diaper, set her on the toilet, and she quickly went before raising her arms to be taken off.
I don't remember how old the boys were when they started indicating when they needed to be put on the toilet, but I am so proud of how hard she's working to communicate.
At 10 months old Arden is really starting to speak more. Currently she can say: Mama, Dad, brothers, dog, go, bye, good girl and yay.
One of her favorite things to do is call for her brothers, especially when she first wakes up. We'll hear a loud "Brothers! Brothers!", and then when they come running she has a huge grin.
She uses Little Reader once or twice a day, and although she is not saying most of the words, I know the exposure to so many object names and concepts is incredibly important.
Today I'd like to give you an update about my sweet little buddy who is now 6. Mason continues to amaze me in everything he does. Particularly with his math skills. He recently finished Saxon 5/4 and is moving on to 6/5, which is written for the average 6th grader or advanced 5th grader.
I wanted to give you guys an idea of exactly how amazing his math skills are. Here are 2 videos. The first shows him speeding through an assortment of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division problems over a 5 minute period with perfect accuracy.
The second shows me asking him complex 2 and 3 digit division problems with remainders which he solves in his head.
A regular day for Mason starts with French and Music on the computer with his brother. They use Little Reader French and then Little Musician together. Afterwards, they listen to the skip counting songs up through 12 on the Classical Conversations CD. Following that he does a math program in which he practices his math facts (this usually takes about 5 minutes). He then does a lesson of Rosetta stone French. After French he does a lesson of cursive writing.
The cursive writing program is based on historical facts so he is learning important dates while practicing writing. It also incorporates a daily art lesson.
When he is done with cursive he moves onto his math lesson for the day. He reads the lesson and then does the lesson and mixed practice and then brings it to his father or I for correction. Anything that is wrong we have him re-do, which usually solves the problem. Any problems that are still incorrect are worked through together.
One of Mason's last lessons in his math book.
We then move on to reading, both him and his brother try to get 2 hours of "school" reading in a day. Theses are books I've chosen that span classical literature, history, science and just old favorites of my own.
The last subject we try to work on almost daily is writing. Mason is constantly writing his own stories and drawing diagrams for machines he'd like to build. For a formal writing program we have been using Writing Strands and he is at about an early 4th grade level, however we are considering transitioning to Saxon Writing and Grammar to get a more rounded language arts education.
A recent writing assignment from Writing Strands creating a story with conversation between the characters.
Mason also recently started swimming competitively and loves swimming, skiing and soccer. He hopes we'll get manage to spend more time on the beach so he can take after his big brother and become a better surfer this year.
For the most part, we have been trying to follow the physical program outlined in "How Smart Is Your Baby" by Doman. Arden is currently working on Stage IV.
Mobility Program:
I mentioned in a recent post that one part of this is gaining the ability to walk 40 feet nonstop. Arden is still working on that. She will walk about 10 feet or so before something on the ground catches her interest and she will sit down, or she will simply lose interest in the walking and sit down. Because it is so wet where we live she does not have may outdoor walking opportunities and inside of course we do not have a 40 foot open area for her to walk, so for the most part she walks across her main play area many times a day, but has not really increased the distance per a single walking episode.
The second part of the mobility program is balance exercises. I have to say that we do not do these as a rigorous program, but we do most of them on a regular basis as just part of playing and while she is being held/carried.
Manual Program:
For cortical opposition we mainly focus on using small pieces of food. She has been picking up and eating Cheerios and yogurt melts since 6 months. We also give her things like small pieces of cubed fruit or meat. This is a great activity for her to work on while I am doing dishes or preparing food. It keeps her happy and occupied, and still in sight.
The second part of the manual program is brachiation/manual competence. Quite honestly, she is crazy about using the pull up bar. I bought a pull-up bar on Amazon that we could hang in the door, but is also easily removable so it doesn't need to always be up. It has worked great. When we have it up she will reach out and say "ah, ah, ah!!" whenever we walk past it in the hallway. I will then usually give her an opportunity to hang and that will prompt my older boys to beg for turns to try pull ups. Of course, when she sees her older brothers on it she wants another turn as well. She easily hangs for 30 seconds and then we lift her down. Here she is at 9 months, showing off her skills:
At this point she is ready to begin using a brachation ladder (monkey bars), but unfortunately we haven't been able to put any up yet.
It's hard to believe, but she's about ready to graduate from the motor portion of "How Smart is Your Baby?" book into the "How to Teach Your Baby To Be Physically Superb" which goes up to age 6.
With each child we have modified and streamlined our approach to reading. Although we are early in the process with our youngest. I thought it might help to give a sample of the progress we saw with my second child who is now 6.
Here he is at 22 months. At this point he was just recognizing letters and knew their sounds:
Here he is at 24 months sounding out words on Starfall.com:
At 2.5 we started "The ordinary parent's guide to teaching reading". This has been my go to for scripted reading lessons with both of my older children. Although they have both been reading fluently long before I got to the end of the book.
Here he is at 2 years 9 months:
And
right around 3 we discovered the Peter and Jane books, which I have
found are amazing. They are a series of books using the most common English words. They introduce the words one at a time, and the books are only composed of words that have been taught.
Here is 3 years 2 months:
Then just a few months later his reading had progressed significantly. Here he is reading book 7 in the Peter and Jane series:
At this point (age 3.75) he was an almost fluent reader. He was able to pick up his older brother's copy of the Wizard of Oz and start to read it as seen on this video. At this point I stopped recording his reading progression.
Now at age 6 he reads anything he can get his hands on, from high school biology texts to Harry Potter.
So, no one ever accused us of being "normal parents". In particular, I'm sure that when we told family and friends our 6 month old was using the toilet there were some raised eyebrows. When we went to a family wedding and we said she had not had a "poopy diaper" in over a week there were definitely some questioning looks. But, the truth is that with persistence and communication with our child toilet training has been almost stress free, and we have had to change almost no "poopy diapers since she was about 7 months old. We used this same method with our now six year old, and although we didn't start as early with our eldest child, even he was diaper free by 18 months old.
How did we accomplish this you might ask? First of all, we do not use "potty chairs". We use something similar to this (Infant Toilet Seat).
There are many similar seats, but this is the variety we've used and I know that a 6ish month baby can sit on it without falling through. Also the handles are nice so that when they want something to hold on to so they feel stable they are not grabbing the dirty toilet seat. The reason we do not use potty chairs is two-fold. First, your baby will not just stand up and walk/crawl away before they are done. Second, there is no clean up. Instead of having to wash the toilet out every time they go poop or pee you just flush the toilet. Not only is this much easier. It makes you more likely to put them on the toilet many times a day without worrying if you have time to deal with scrubbing poop. Since part of my motivation for early potty training is avoiding the hassle of dirty diapers, I don't want to create more work for myself.
Although many people begin Elimination Communication at birth we waited until 6 months when we began introducing solid foods. At this time she began having less frequent and more solid bowel movements.
When we first began putting her on the toilet I would sit on the toilet and then hold her with her between my legs so she was sitting on the toilet but I was behind her supporting her. After she was comfortable with that for a week or two we moved on to the toilet. At first shen she sat alone on the toilet I would sit right next to her on a stool so she could get used to it and to make sure she was stable. Once she got used to the routine we can just sit her on it on her own.
In general, our strategy is to put her on the toilet before and after every nap and meal. We also put her on the toilet if she is acting like she needs to have a
bowel movement or when she has a wet diaper we will set her on the
toilet while we gather the supplies for a diaper change. Because around meals and sleep are natural times for a baby to go you are likely to be successful just with a luck right off the bat. When that happens we like to clap and cheer and of course the baby will join in. After a few weeks they figure out what the toilet is meant for and will make a concerted effort to go each time you put them on. For us it is rare for her not to pee when placed on the toilet. She usually will have a bowel movement around breakfast and dinner.
Like I said above there really is no reason not to try early toilet training, for us it has always just made sense. Baby is not getting used to soiling their diaper, and knows from early on what the point of the toilet is. You avoid the power struggles of training a toddler, and best of all you almost never have to change a poopy diaper.
I'd love to hear what you think, and if you did something similar how it worked out for you.
