The Weekly Review: Week 84

SLP Resource of the Week

I've always felt isolated as a school SLP. Almost always, you're the only SLP at a school. Often you're the only SLP at several schools. Particularly when you're new you have questions and no easy way to get answers from other professionals. Even once you have more experience, you're always encountering a new type of client (apraxia, fluency, hearing impairment, anything less common than language and straightforward articulation) or a client who just isn't responding well to typical interventions. I've often wanted to find an active message board. One where you can post a question or comment and get several replies in a timely manner and I think I've found one. Speaking of Speech has a message board set up and it appears to be pretty active. Check it out. If you know of any other active message boards for SLPs, link to them in the comments. I'd love to check them out.

Weekly Michael

Five!!! Michael turns five this weekend. I am just so lucky that I am one of the people that gets to watch him grow into the amazing person he's already becoming. We are so excited to have my husband's parents coming in to town to help us celebrate. Michael is also having some school friends at his party for the first time. It should be a great weekend.

Weekly Ava

Ava has an under-appreciated generous streak. I say this because she's a bit of a drama queen and is quick to play things up when she feels slighted. This dramatic behavior distracts from her consistent, unsolicited generosity with her brother. She automatically thinks of him when she gets a treat. If he finishes eating first and is still hungry, she will offer him some of her food. If he wants a turn playing with her toy she will often hand it over (Although she will qualify, "Just for 3 minutes DD!"). I love this about her. I have difficulty finding words for the feeling that spreads through me when I watch my children truly care for each other.

Weekly Weight Loss

It's been three weeks since my last check-in here. I'm 3.2 pounds down from that week. Of course that week was so bad that I didn't even report a number. :-) The stress of getting the vowel therapy kit done on such a tight timeline wreaked havoc on both the weekly-review and on my diet. I broke out of low-carb for about a week and haven't gotten fully back in line yet. I'm working on it though. I learned a lot from working with a low-carb diet and so even when I'm indulging in some carbs I'm still not eating like I was before. That helps a little.

I'm down almost exactly 25 pounds from where I started. I am a little miffed that no one seems to have noticed! How is it that I can lose 17% of my body weight and no one notices? (Grumble, grumble.)

Weekly Speech Resource Kit Update

Close your eyes and imagine me doing a happy dance. That's how I feel about having the vowel kit done. The next 6-8 weeks are going to be crazy. During those weeks I'm handling three major holidays, two school breaks, one birthday, one family vacation, and one surgery on a close family member. New speech kits are going on the back burner. I am going to try to do some edits and revisions to the first three kits. If and when I get a revision done I'll either send everyone who has already purchased the kit an email (or just do a post here on the blog) letting you know a revision has gone up so that you can contact me if you want a code for a free copy of the revised kit.

The Weekly Review: Week 83

SLP Resource of the Week

Mel at Classroom Freebies made a free downloadable Snail or Slug game that would be perfect for working on production of /sl/ and /sn/ blends, auditory discrimination, and simple sorting skills.

Ava/Michael Weekly Contrast

Potential spoilers ahead - do not read if you want to watch the new Tinkerbell movie without any hints of what the movie contains.

We watched the new Tinkerbell movie last night. It was a great movie. We all enjoyed it and the children are itching to watch it again today. I enjoyed watching the wonder, joy, and laughter on their faces as much as I enjoyed watching the movie. There were some sections of the movie that were emotionally intense though. I found it interesting that the children responded entirely differently to them.

Michael was in tears when Tinkerbell and Periwinkle were forced to separate against their will and the audience was led to believe they would never see each other again. Ava was relatively calm during that section of the movie. Closer to the end when the fairy dust tree was in danger of being killed by a freeze Ava was sobbing and needed to be held and comforted. That part of the movie had Michael excited and engaged, but certainly not breaking down.

It was fascinating that the children reacted so differently at different parts in the movie. I'm not reading too much into the specifics. I was grateful there was only one child to comfort and reassure at a time.

Weekly Weight Loss

Let's just agree to not discuss the slight backslide caused by our first (delightful) cheat night and monthly hormones, shall we?

Weekly Speech Resource Kit Update

So close. I'm probably working on writing the new table of contents, final editing, and conversion to PDF as you read this. I need to tackle the mechanics of getting it added to the store and writing the details page. But it is close. I should be on schedule for getting the /k/ set available to you all by the beginning of November. I'm particularly pleased with this set. There are a ton of cards, a full printable Speech Switcheroo set for initial /k/, and a new Race to the Top Game I made for the Mixed /k/ section just to name a few highlights.

The Weekly Review: Week 82

SLP Resource of the Week

I saw another activity that would be great for working on sounds in isolation and as a bonus, practices letter recognition as well at the Tons of Fun blog. On her printables page you can download letter paths which are simply a grid of letters where the target letter works its way from a starting point to an ending point like a maze. You give the child a bingo marker, stamp, or stickers and they practice the target sound each time they take a step along the "path".

Ava this Week

Ava knows things I don't even know that she knows. She and her brother like to play together and so if he is playing a game she wants to play too. I have educational games installed on our phones and computers and Michael is playing them regularly. Ava is jumping right in and doing a pretty great job of keeping up. She's doing basic addition problems and learning her letter-sound correspondences. If she's not quite ready to go to bed at night I'll find her in the morning surrounded by books in her bed. There's nothing quite like the sight of your child sleeping in bed surrounded by books. It melts a mama/slp/educator's heart.

Weekly Michael

I grabbed a little map skills workbook from Scholastic when it was on sale for $4.99 to add a little variety to our homeschooling. Michael's eyes lit up when he saw it. It was a bright colorful book of his own that he was going to get to write in! The very first activity was looking at a map of Buddy Bear's bedroom and answering some questions about it and then drawing a map of his own bedroom. He did a great job and even wanted me to label all the things he drew just like the items on the other map were labeled. I was pleased with our first activity in map skills and he was excited and I thought that was the end of it.

Later that day, after I finished putting Ava down for nap, I went in to check on Michael in his room. He explained, "I just moved you from Ava's room to my room." I brilliantly responded, "Huh?" Then he showed me the "map" he had made of our house with various small toys representing people and pets in various rooms. When he heard me opening his door, he took the small toy representing me and moved it from the space on his map that was Ava's room to the space on his map that was his room. That boy never fails to amaze me.

Weekly Weight Loss

And one week later I'm down another 2.8 pounds. That's much better than the two-week stall that preceded this week. At this point I'm down 20-25 in the four months or so we've been dieting. I'm hoping to go another 10 before switching from weight-loss mode to figuring out a reasonable maintenance plan.

Weekly Speech Resource Kit Update

The /k/ kit is well under way. The initial section is complete and has a vowel worksheet, 44 illustrated one-syllable therapy cards, 18 sets of minimal pairs, three pivot phrase worksheets, 3 homework sheets, two story booklets, and a speech-switcheroo game to print out and use.

The final section is complete and has a vowel worksheet, 59 illustrated one-syllable therapy cards, 18 sets of minimal pairs, 3 pivot phrase worksheets, 3 homework sheets, 2 story booklets, and a speech caterpillar printable activity.

The medial /k/ section is also finished and has 44 illustrated two-syllable therapy cards, 9 minimal pairs, 3 pivot phrase worksheets, 3 homework sheets, 2 story booklets, and a Speech Match printable activity.

The mixed section, introduction, and appendix are still in progress.

Weekly Communication Fail

I had a customer contact me for help downloading the speech kits she had purchased. (Thank you again, to everyone who is buying the speech kits.) One thing I did to assist her is resend the email with the download link. When I emailed her to let her know she should look for it I said, "I resent that email..."

Somehow, not once in my life, did it occur to me that resent (I sent that again) and resent (take offense) are spelled in exactly the same way. She thought that I was telling her I was offended that she had emailed me with a question. I felt terrible! Nothing could be further from the truth. I immediately sent her a very apologetic email trying to clear up the completely unintended confusion. I hope she received my apology. I was actually quite happy to help. And so, from now on I will always hyphenate. "I re-sent that email." Hmm. Perhaps I'll just rephrase that entirely so there is no chance of ambiguity at all.

The Weekly Review: Week 81

SLP Resource of the Week

SpeechLanguage-Resources.com has an excellent set of guidelines on eliciting /s/, /sh/, /k/, /l/, and /f/. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to find the links.

Ava this Week

Ava is in the midst of a huge developmental growth spurt. She's taking 2 hour naps daily. Shoes that were loose six weeks ago are snug now. She's understanding concepts and communicating on a whole new level. She's also feeling needy. She will come to me as I am busy with some task and sweetly ask, "Mama, when you are done with your work can you please come play _____ with me?" She's learned that I have much more difficulty resisting specific activity suggestions. If she just asks me to play, I can often say no. If she names the specific activity she wants to play (build a marble run, play with squinkies, color with her) I have much more trouble resisting. They can be so sweet when they're little and all they want is some of your time and attention.

Weekly Michael

As we were walking to school last week we stopped to examine a patch of clover. I showed the children how each clover has three leaves. I told them that very rarely, a four-leaf clover grows and people search for them because they are supposed to be good luck. I said it happens so rarely that I had never found one in my entire life.

One afternoon this week I had sent the children into the backyard to play. Michael came running inside calling that he had found something for me. He was trembling with excitement and anticipation and was obviously incredibly proud of himself. "Mama, I brought you a six-leaf clover!" he declared. I figured he had pulled up two that were tangled, but as he brought it over to me I could only see one stem. I took a close look. He had carefully torn each leaf of the three leaf clover in half. He explained that he was going to make me a four-leaf clover, but decided a six-leaf clover would be even better. It was so sweet and creative.

Weekly Weight Loss

I am off the antibiotics and have started probiotics. I am down 1.3 pounds from last week. Essentially, that is a net stall for the last two weeks. I went low-carb five weeks ago. I lost about 9 pounds in the first three weeks and then gained and lost a pound in the two weeks after that (the antibiotic two-weeks). I am sincerely hoping that I will return to losing a little weight for all this effort and willpower over the next week. Time will tell I suppose.

Weekly Speech Resource Kit Update

The survey is complete and /k/ was the clear winner. I have started the /k/ Resource kit. I've finished the initial /k/ section and I'm most of the way through the final /k/ section. I still have to do the medial and mixed /k/ sections and work on the intro and appendix resources. I'm hoping to have the kit up by the beginning of November. I'm going to try to stick with a schedule of adding one new kit a month to the store.

The Weekly Review: Week 80

SLP Resource of the Week

We Give Books is a website that has dozens of fiction and non-fiction books for children 0-10 years of age available for free online. Sign up for a free account and then sort books by age-range, subject, or author and a bookshelf full of amazing titles appears before you. Many of the nonfiction books are DK Publishing. Other familiar titles are classics by Jan Brett, the Skippyjon Jones series, and the Llama Llama series.

Ava this Week

It sounds like a little thing, but Ava finally let me buy her a leotard for gymnastics. She absolutely refused to put one on before now. Then, this week, she saunters over to the leotard display they have in the waiting area and asks why I hadn't gotten her one? I asked her, rather suspiciously, if she'd actually wear it if I bought her one. She assured me she would, so we picked out her favorite and I bought it. She wore it for the next 24 hours before I peeled it off her and told her it was just for gymnastics from now on.

Weekly Michael

Michael and I have been homeschooling while Ava is in speech. So, twice a week for 45 minutes we do a RightStart Math Lesson and work with our Usborne Very First Readers. We have the best time. The child takes in math like breathing. Reading takes a little more effort, but for 4 1/2 he's pretty darned good.

Weekly Weight Loss

This week I'm up a pound. I have to say that compared to the 3.5 pounds a week I've been losing on the low-carb diet I was very disappointed. I was hungry all the time and craving carbs for the first time in weeks. I had started to slowly increase my veggie intake and even add a slice of apple or two here or there and I thought that was the problem at first.

Then I realized the weight gain, cravings, and water retention began at almost exactly the same time I began a 10 day course of antibiotics. I did a little research online and found that water retention, cravings, and other unpleasant side effects often accompany antibiotics due to all the good bacteria in the gut being wiped out along with the bad germs. Too bad I wasn't prepared with a really good probiotic a week ago.

I took a closer look at my data and realized that although the scale has gone up by a pound, my fat mass (as measured by my fancy scale) had gone down 1.2 pounds which seems to confirm that the gain I'm seeing on the scale is water weight. We'll see if things turn around next week after I finally finish off these antibiotics.

Weekly All Consuming Obsession

Not working! Other than daily blog posts I took a complete break from working on the speech resource kits this week. I needed a break after the big push I made getting the first two products ready to go and getting the store and back end stuff set up. I took the opportunity to survey you all to see what phoneme you'd like to see in the store next and I'm glad I did. I wouldn't have guessed /k/, but that has the lead by quite a bit. This week I watched some fall tv on Hulu and read several books. I'd better not count up quite how many books I've read this week, but they were a great change of pace. I'll start working on the /k/ resource kit next week. I'm hoping to have it up by next month, but until I get into it, I can't be sure how quickly the project will come together.

The Weekly Review: Week 79

SLP Resource of the Week

Organizing materials is a huge pain. I think Jackie at Teal and Lime has come up with a perfect, compact way of organizing card decks. She uses index card holders in a tray. Click on the link and take a look. It is adorable. If you're using full-size, commercial decks, you'd fit one deck per index card holder. If you're using my free decks, you could probably fit all the decks that go with a particular phoneme in a single index card container. I would probably take the step of labeling the top of each index card holder with the phoneme of the cards inside so I could grab the one I want in an instant.

Ava this Week

I believe I've already mentioned pneumonia 2.0. What impressed me most about my little girl this week is how she just doesn't let much get her down. Even through five straight days of 102.5ish fever she still woke up at her usual time, played (in a low-key manner), and was relatively cheerful. She was handling it so well we didn't even give her a fever reducer most of the time. I need to keep her fortitude in mind the next time I'm trying to decide if she's "sick enough" to make a pediatrician appointment.

Weekly Michael

Michael: "Mama, there's a girl at school and Guess What?!?, she wants to marry me."
Me (thinking-not saying): You've got to be kidding me! It's preschool!
Me: "That's nice sweetheart. Maybe when you're grown up. What's her name?"
Michael: "I don't know."

Weekly Weight Loss

This week I'm down 3.2 pounds. That's exactly the same as last week. Everyone's got a unique set of genetic, dietary, medical history, exercise patterns, etc, but here's the evidence for me. I used a strict calorie-in/calorie-out method of dieting for 11 weeks and lost 9.5 pounds (0.86/week). Then I eliminated carbs from my diet. I eat as much as I'm hungry for, as long as it isn't carbs. (Ok, there are a few here and there in veggies, but not much.) I've been eating low carbs for 2.5 weeks and I've lost 7.9 pounds (3.16/week). That's a pretty dramatic difference. For whatever reason, drastically reducing carbs in my diet works really well for me.

Weekly All Consuming Obsession

I have been working every spare minute on getting the books ready for opening the store next week. My mother generously offered to watch the kids a little bit a lot of extra time and my husband is helping out with some of a lot of the technical coding. The pieces are coming together. My proofreaders were amazing. It looks like the store will go up sometime next week and will have two books available at opening: /s/ and /s/-Blends. Once I take a break, I'll be working on adding more books regularly. (One a month or perhaps one every two months? These things take a lot of time to put together.)

The Weekly Review: Week 78

SLP Resource of the Week

Sometimes a fun game to use as a reinforcer makes all the difference with children. I found a tutorial for making an adorable bean bag toss game out of a cardboard box. The box sits on a slant and is decorated to look like a monster's mouth. A large box and a little floor space would be a great way to keep active preschoolers-early elementary kids engaged. A smaller tabletop sized version and smaller beanbags or even ping pong balls would keep older kids entertained.

Ava this Week

Ava has rediscovered a pair of Hello Kitty rain boots we had gotten in the spring. We put them away one day and promptly forgot about them until very recently. She loves them. She'll strip off her other shoes as soon as she gets home and put the rain boots on. She tromps around in the backyard in them for nearly an hour in the afternoon before deciding she's had enough and heading back inside.

Weekly Michael

My husband's parents kindly packed up all of his old Legos from when he was a kid and mailed them two us. Two big boxes arrived at our house. It was like Christmas morning. The children dumped them out all over the living room floor to dig around in them and find treasures.

Michael was beyond delighted when he discovered a working lego motor. Who knew there were such things? His dad hooked him up with the motor, the wires, and the batteries and then we left him completely on his own while we started dinner. 10 minutes later he had built this:

I forget what he called his creation, but it involved a spinning gear and functional light.

And then they started in on the lego train tracks.

It was wonderful. My husband told me that he had fond memories of playing with these same legos at his late grandmother's house. He felt like he could feel her presence in the room and it made him happy.

Weekly Weight Loss

This week I'm down 3.2 pounds. Low-carb appears to work very well for me. I'm sure walking 9 or so miles a week taking the children to and from school doesn't hurt either.

The Weekly Review: Week 77

SLP Resource of the Week

Have you ever wanted one of those way too expensive plastic "whisper phones" for working with artic students? These are the phones that redirect the child's own voice into their ear so they can better hear their own productions, maintain focus, and have more fun during articulation practice. I found a link describing how to make your own adorable whisper phones using two elbow pieces of PVC pipe and some cute duct tape. (Just scroll down a bit to get to the whisper phone section of the post.)

Ava this Week

Ava has begun to carry around a baby doll. She wasn't much interested in dolls before now. She preferred her small, cuddly, stuffed "friends". Lately she will rush outside to push her doll in the swing, sit with her on the sofa helping her watch the television, and generally have the doll mimic much of her play. It's fun watching her enjoy playing with a baby doll a bit.

And just because I like adorable hair pictures, here is a hairstyle that turned out particularly well this week.

Weekly Michael

Well, the saga of interpreting the concrete decoration continued this week. As we were walking to school one day this week Michael stopped, noticing the line drawing of the penis that had been scratched into the setting concrete many moons ago. He looks up at me with stars in his eyes exclaiming, "Mama, look! It's a rocket ship!" I kept a remarkably straight face. My two preschoolers gathered around the penis on the sidewalk and held an animated debate. Ava was still voting for scissors and Michael firmly believed it was a rocket ship. He bent over and traced his finger along the horizontal line drawn across the top of the "rocket" telling his sister that *this* was the proof. Scissors didn't have lines like this. She ceded the point and thereafter each morning we walk to school the children eagerly anticipate the moment in the walk where they will see their rocket ship.

Weekly Weight Loss

This week I'm down 1.5. Every bit of that happened in the three days since I went low-carb. Thank you, by the way, to all of you who took the time to email me with your thoughts and experiences with low-carb diets. I read every email and they were all helpful. I learned that I was responding so badly because I was going too long between mini-meals. If I eat smaller meals more often I keep my energy level constant and I feel much better. Of course I miss all the yummy carbs, but I have to say I feel great. My energy level has increased and is much more consistent. Food is something I do regularly to fuel up, but I'm not thinking about it all the time. It's actually been a nice change of pace. Oh, and losing 1.5 pounds in 3 days has been pretty rewarding too.

And I should correct my statement made earlier this week about my husband and I both losing 10 pounds in 12 weeks of calorie counting. Actually he lost a little over 15. :-)

This Week's Special Event

Tonight my dad and a family friend are taking the children on their second overnight camping trip of the summer (my mom's not much of a camper). The children are beyond excited and are spending most of their spare moments discussing what they need to pack. Ava seems to have conveniently forgotten that she kept everyone up half of the night last time crying for her mama. I'm sincerely hoping they will be skipping that part this time. :-)

The Weekly Review: Week 76

SLP Resource of the Week

Rebecca at Adventures in Speech Pathology has put together a great beginning of the school year post on 10 Things You Need for Articulation Therapy. The post lists the 10 things along with links to free resources she found browsing the web to give you materials in the 10 areas. I particularly liked the beautiful, accurate informational handout on the hierarchy of speech therapy Rebecca linked to in #3 from Mommy Speech Therapy.

Ava this Week

As we were walking to school one day this week, we came across some art that had obviously been traced into the setting concrete by some adolescent males. Ava stopped, entranced by the foot long line drawing of male genitalia before her. Then she excitedly shouted, "Look Mama! Someone drew scissors on the sidewalk!" I sure was grateful she interpreted that picture as scissors especially given that she decided to shout her observations to everyone walking by on the street.

Weekly Michael

Michael is a conservative soul who tends to learn well from his mistakes - sometimes too well. He was trying to keep up with his running sister one day on the way to school and fell, scraping the palms of his hands. I helped him up and comforted him. The next day, as he could tell Ava was gearing up for another spontaneous run, he cautioned the family, "Now, we can't run anymore on sidewalks because we can fall and scrape our hands." I haven't been able to persuade him to run again. He'll discontentedly watch Ava and I run ahead, but refuses to break out of his conservative, safe pace even as the distance between us lengthens. I don't know how to encourage/reassure him. I worry about that boy sometimes.

Weekly Weight Loss

This week I'm down 1.6. Taking last week's bump up into consideration, that's an average weight loss of a little less than half a pound over the past two weeks. Given that we had out of town guests for an extended weekend and a couple of extravagant meals here and there I'll consider this a win. It's nice to be back on track though.

I've also started walking the kids to school in the morning weather permitting. I spend 30-35 minutes (round-trip) walking and so that adds some consistent activity to my routine. We usually have a great time. We examine rocks and flowering vines. We talk about the dewdrops shining in the sunlight. We say hello to the construction workers setting up for their day's work patching the road. We discuss sparing the lives of the bugs on the sidewalk rather than squishing them. We discuss and practice staying aware of the traffic around us and safe street crossing procedures. All in all, it's much better family time than driving.

This Week's Special Event

I'm beginning to have senior moments. (And I'm not all that "senior" as my 40th birthday is still well on the horizon.) I typed out this section heading with something in particular in mind and then promptly forgot what I was intending to write about. Let me just say - that is darned irritating. Oh well, sorry about that. :-)

Have a great weekend everyone!

The Weekly Review: Week 75

SLP Preview of the Week

Stay tuned. Next week I'll be telling you all about a set of /s/ resources that I've been working on putting in printable ebook format. The rough draft is completely done except for a cover. I'll be asking for volunteer proofreaders and some other feedback next week.

Ava this Week

Ava is discovering movement. The other three members of her family are drawn towards somewhat sedentary pursuits. We like to read, play computer games, build with legos or other construction toys, sew, do art projects, etc. Lately, it is becoming apparent to me that Ava likes all of those things, but she is drawn towards active pursuits as well. She wants to kick a ball, bop a balloon, play ping pong (she can actually serve a ping pong ball - she's only 3), swing a bat, climb a climbing wall, run as fast as she can, and slide over and over. She loves the activity and the movement. I need to find a way to build more active activities into our schedule. It fights against my nature and inclination a little, but she's worth it. And the activity would be good for all of us anyway.

Weekly Michael

Michael, as a contrast to his sister, has completely fallen in addictive love with his first real computer game. His father installed a game called Minecraft on his computer. It is an open-ended building game that involves placing a wide variety of cubes into a 3-D environment. There are landscape blocks (grass, dirt, bricks, trees, glass, lava, snow, etc), industrial blocks (dynamite, levers, buttons, train tracks, etc), and animals and people. He loves it. It is the last thing he thinks about before bed and the first thing he thinks about in the morning. He wants to know if the day is a "home" day or a "school" day primarily because he wants to know if he's going to get to play his game. As a parent of a preschooler I'm somewhat terrified of the addictive power of the computer screen. As someone who has had her fair share of gaming addictions, I'm enjoying watching him find his first gaming love.

Weekly Weight Loss

This week I'm up 0.7. It was hard to maintain the calorie tracking with guests in town. I also think last week weigh-in registered a little low and this week is registering a little high. C'est la vie. Next week is a new week.

Last Week's Special Event

We had an amazing visit with my in-laws. The children are in love. Grandma played ping pong and "bat the ball" with Ava every time she asked. Grandpa pretended to be a bear and chased giggling children all over the back yard.

The highlight of the visit was a trip to an extraordinary children's museum here in town that is essentially an indoor/outdoor playground created from recycled stuff for adults and children to play in together. They take donations from all kinds of companies and turn ordinary things into an extraordinary playground. They have a bus hanging half off their roof and you can climb into it (we did). They have airplanes suspended around a courtyard connected by wire tunnels and you climb around from one to another. They have castle turrets and a maze of concrete tunnels, slides, and stairs under the floor of one of the rooms. It is a place where you can explore, push boundaries of fear a little, and get a ton of amazing exercise. My fitbit told me I had climbed the equivalent of 31 flights of stairs by the time we left. I didn't take many pictures because I was too busy chasing children into scary places. Here's one I caught of my husband, son, and a friend at the top of a wire tower (at least three stories up) and another a friend caught of me following her daughter and my children up one of those wire tunnels to an airplane. I wish I had more. The place is amazing.

The Weekly Review: Week 74

SLP Resource of the Week

Heidi at Mommy Speech Therapy put together a really nice free downloadable articulation screener. Two pages contain 46 picture prompts. Results are tallied on simple, attractive scoring sheets separated into phoneme organized by age of acquisition. This is definitely a resource worth checking out.

Ava this Week

My little girl is loving preschool. Up until the very last day, Ava protested being left at daycare. She didn't look forward to it and clung to my legs when I dropped her off. She was fine, but she didn't love it. Now, she loves school. She looks forward to going, and doesn't even watch me go when I walk out of her door. The preschool teacher and teacher's assistant in her room are wonderful and do an amazing job of making the children feel welcome in their room. They have a routine in place for the children's arrival which works really well for Ava. She knows exactly what to do when she walks in and looks forward to the routine. I am enjoying watching her do well at school.

Weekly Michael

Michael is also doing really well in his new pre-kindergarten classroom. I was worried he'd be jealous of Ava moving into "his" old room, but he hasn't worried about it at all. He's much more social this year. He has a group of friends that he enjoys playing with and when they all walk out at the end of their morning they walk out together in a group and head over to me talking all the while. Some of their topics of conversation are... interesting. The waiting area at the school has some benches and one has a memorial on it for a teacher who died a few years ago. Several of the boys are convinced she's buried under the bench and I have to reassure them every day that there isn't a body under their feet. Michael also announced that they've all chosen his future bride. I, shamefully, have forgotten her name. I have been informed that Michael will be getting married to her though. It's fun and rather entertaining to watch the social "skills" of a group of four year olds emerge.

Weekly Weight Loss

I'm down a somewhat inexplicable 1.5 pounds this week. I haven't really done anything different. I'm still walking the calorie/activity tracking path trying to stick pretty closely to my allocated number of calories per day. I'm guessing that "natural variations" in weight just happened to swing in my favor this week. Still, it's encouraging to see things continue to head in the right direction. I'm down about 10 pounds from where I started. Not bad at all.

Weekly Special Event

Our entire household is excitedly anticipating visitors this weekend. My husband's parents are driving into town to see us for an extended weekend. They are wonderful people who adore their grandchildren and are adored in return. We'll spend one day out on the town visiting a children's museum and having lunch out. The agenda for the other two days is still up in the air, but I know we will enjoy their company. I will be taking a blogging hiatus during their visit. I should be back early next week. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend too.

The Weekly Review: Week 73

SLP Resource of the Week

If you're looking for more picture prompts by phoneme, Caroline Bowen's website has a wide selection of worksheets with picture prompts. The page sorts phonemes by manner of production (stops, fricatives, etc.). Scroll down to the phoneme you're looking for and click on the link and it will bring up a multi-page .pdf with pictures and words for that phoneme. Many of the words are CVC in syllable shape. Some of the words include vocalic /r/ and final consonant blends. Still, this is a great resource if you're looking for a phoneme I don't have or to supplement your collection for a specific phoneme.

Ava this Week

Ava started "big girl school" this week. She does beautifully when being dropped off. She seems to enjoy her day and will share something simple about what happened at school when asked. So far, she's melting down at pick up though. The teachers, understandably, want the children to line up when they get outside rather than scattering in every direction instantly running to find their parents. That would be a dangerous recipe sure to end up with a lost child. Ava hates seeing me and not being able to run over to me immediately. She bursts into tears every time. I need to remind her when I drop her off about the class rule for pickup time. Perhaps she just needs more mental preparation?

Weekly Michael

It is like "boy" is bubbling out of every square inch of skin lately. All of a sudden, it's all about making rude noises and thinking it's funny, pretending things are weapons, crashing toys into each other or the floor, and talking at three times the speed and volume necessary for any given situation. How long does this stage last exactly? Where did it come from and how do I return it?

Weekly Weight Loss

Things have been much more on schedule this week both in life and trundling along on the calorie tracking plan. This week I'm down. 1.2 pounds. I was looking back over the past 7 1/2 weeks. 7.5 weeks is how long I've been tracking my weight accurately. Over the past 7.5 weeks I've lost 6.5 pounds. Given that I'm eating about the minimum an adult should eat in calories a day, and I haven't yet managed to dig up the time, energy, motivation, or willpower to increase my activity levels that's about as high a rate of weight loss as I could reasonably expect. And so, success. At this reasonable rate of weight loss I only have to keep this up until the end of the year to reach my target. Then I get to tackle the issue of maintenance. It is humbling to realize that I've been consistent for over two months and it takes months and months of consistent work to take off weight that sneaks on so easily. I'm trying to keep a positive attitude that this is a learning and recalibration experience that will reap long-term benefits.

The Weekly Review: Week 72

Weekly Monumental Road Trip

We did it. My mom and I took my three and four year old children on a road trip to visit relatives in the New Orleans area. It took us a little over 12 hours to drive there and a little less than 12 on the way back. The children were wonderful. Both drives went very well. We spent entire days in swimming pools. We visited extended family many of whom went out of their way to make sure they got to see us in the three short days we were there. The children loved everyone and can't wait to go back.

As some of you may remember, I went a little lot overboard preparing for the car trip (car activities for young children, more car activities for young children, oh look, yet more car activities for young children, could I possibly need yet another set of car activities for preschoolers?, one more set of car activities for good luck). The sad part is that there are at least one more post full of activities I made that I ran out of time to post about. The good news is that the activities worked really well. The less good news is that I only needed about half of them. When I realized that I hand picked the best ones of the lot and passed those out first. I'll save the rest for the next trip.

At first I tried to micromanage. I would turn the tv off and give each child a bag. Let them play for 10-15 minutes and then instruct them to switch. Then have them clean up and return the bags to my mother before turning the tv back on until the next stop to stretch our legs. As it turns out, a much more relaxed approach worked better. We ran the tv most of the trip. Ava was more interested in the tv and less interested in the activities. Michael was very interested in the activities. We just let him play until he got bored on his own. Then he'd pack up the bag and ask for another one. Michael went through twice as many bags as his sister and that was fine. Letting him play while watching television worked better for Michael than forcing him to alternate between the two types of activities. Live and learn. His favorite activities were the make-a-wand kit, the geoboards, the duplo kits, and the notepad with stickers and pens.

Another focus on the drive was to keep things moving at all costs. We stopped only at rest stops and kept those stops to under 10 minutes. We stopped at every other rest stop instead of at each one. We timed gas stops to coincide with meals and my mom took the kids to the bathroom at the gas station while I filled the tank. Then we went through a nearby drive-through for food to eat in the car. For us, it was more important to keep the drive from stretching to 13 or 14 hours than it was to take a more leisurely approach to the stops and it worked well.

Ava this Week

Several people commented on our visit about how far Ava has come in the past six months both socially and in terms of her speech. She was much less shy and overwhelmed. She talked a lot and rarely had difficulty making herself understood. I was so proud of her and relieved to see her able to participate so well in the visit.

Weekly Michael

Instead of saying, "When I grow up..." Michael has taken to saying, "When I'm an engineer..." He has a long list of things he'll do when he's an engineer from telling me all the things he'll build for me, to the foods he'll eat and the games he'll play. He added something new to that list on the trip.

Michael saw his first roach on the trip. What can I say, it was a home in the deep south in a rural area. He also got to see his first roach get squished. Then we got to learn a great new vocabulary word in addition to the word "roach" - "guts". After that 60 second lesson in the wildlife of Louisiana we moved on and I didn't give it another thought until the next day when Michael came up to me and shared this nugget about his future: "When I'm an engineer I'm going to have an oach (roach) for a pet. I like them because they're so big." After a brief speechless moment I replied, "Sweetheart, when you're an engineer you can have whatever kind of pet you like, including a roach."

Weekly Weight Loss

So it's actually been two weeks since my last update in this area. Checking back I realize that I've lost all of 0.2 pounds in the past two weeks. To be honest, that's a little depressing. I'm reminding myself that this is a marathon, not a sprint. I'm reminding myself that I went on a trip during that time where I had less control over my food choices and I did a rather terrible job of staying hydrated and getting enough sleep. I'm reminding myself that this is about improving my health, learning new long-term habits, and reversing an upward trend rather than about a weight-focused "diet" and negative thoughts about my self-image. And so, it's ok. Next week is a new week.

The Weekly Review: Week 71

SLP Idea of the Week

Take a 12 cup muffin pan and cut speech cards into circles that fit into the bottom of each cup. Also gather 12 small tokens of some kind (pom-poms, cotton balls, squinkies, etc. Have the child (gently) toss a token at the muffin pan and practice the word at the bottom of the cup that their token landed in. Then they toss another token into another cup practicing that word. The goal is to get a token into each cup practicing all 12 words along the way.

Ava this Week

Ava will be starting preschool soon. We're less than three weeks away from saying goodbye forever to our part-time daycare. The daycare was fine. I was perfectly happy with them and they did a great job of taking care of my children. I am not in the slightest bit sad to say goodbye to them (or to the monthly check I wrote to them). It does feel strange to think that soon I will pull out of their driveway for the last time. After all, I've been taking at least one child (and often two) there twice a week for almost three years. It feels nice to be moving on to the next stage though.

Weekly Michael

Originally I had intended to enroll the children in preschool five mornings a week in the fall. In order for Michael to attend the second level preschool room, they require five day enrollment. As fall rapidly approaches I have been realizing that I'm not ready for them to be away five mornings a week. After all, I'm still seriously considering keeping them home and beginning homeschooling a year from now.

So, I decided to keep Michael in the less structured preschool room and enroll the children only four days a week. I may reduce that to three days a week later. A side effect of this decision is that the children will be in the same room for preschool this year. Michael will be repeating in the same classroom (along with all the other students who won't be attending full-time including his best friend). Ava will enter the room for the first time. I think they'll enjoy being together.

Weekly Weight Loss

This week the scale reports a loss of 1.3 pounds. That makes up for the token drop from last week with an average of 0.75/week over the last two weeks. I'm doing fine with the calorie reduction portion of my agenda. I'm having trouble trying to change my lifestyle to regularly include more activity though. I always seem to have higher priorities than exercising (and those priorities are invariably sedentary). I need to remind myself that even 15 minutes a day is so much better than nothing and that I can exercise with the children around.

The Weekly Review: Week 70

SLP Idea of the Week

Think one piece of white paper, a bunch of matchbox cars, and some free printable car pattern templates (you can custom color them with the colors of cars you happen to have) and you have a great game most young children will love to play. During the game, you work on colors, directionality, patterns, following directions, turn taking, counting, etc. It is a simple, entertaining early language activity. Find it at Toddler Approved.

Ava this Week

Ava will occasionally (twice a month perhaps?) wake up in the middle of the night for no apparent reason and wander into our room extremely upset and disoriented. She can't seem to articulate any reason for the nighttime wandering. Someone (usually my husband, his nighttime response time is better than mine) simply has to reassure her gently that everything is all right and lead her back to her room and tuck her in again. She goes right back to sleep and doesn't seem to remember any of it in the morning. Strange.

Weekly Michael

Oh my goodness. I witnessed the birth of potty humor in our household. I was sitting at the table eating a weekday lunch with my children when our world went from one with no awareness of potty humor to a world where small children fall off their chairs laughing hysterically at the word "peepee".

We were innocently discussing nicknames. That led to increasing silliness where the children were rhyming with nicknames and pausing to see the other person's reaction to their rhymes. Ava, discussing a friend she calls "DeeDee" rhymed, "DeeDee PeePee" and paused for her brother's reaction. I turned to look at him. There was an exaggerated pause where I could practically see the wheels in his head turning and then he cracked up belly laughing. I started laughing because he was so funny. Ava just looked at us like we were crazy. Then, after Michael repeated , "DeeDee PeePee" about five times in a row, she understood too.

Things spiraled quickly downhill from there. The children took turns attaching "Peepee" to the name of every family member, friend, and casual acquaintance we know. The children laughed every-single-time. Next they moved on to every animal they could think of. And then it occurred to Michael that if "Peepee" was funny than "Poopy" must be even funnier.

I wish I had taped it. It was actually pretty amazing to watch them have so much innocent fun. Of course, I should probably mention that those jokes aren't appropriate for school...

Weekly Weight Loss

As I discussed last week, I'm using a combination of an online/app food diary and an activity tracker to work on reversing my weight's upward creep. Since this time last week I've lost 0.2 pounds. Not great, but on the positive side I'm still working at it and still motivated. I've dusted off my husband's old bowflex introducing a little weight resistance exercise into the mix which I enjoy. And I fought through several days of increased cravings and bloating that were, I think, related to monthly hormonal changes. So, all in all, an acceptable week in (comparatively) healthy living.

The Weekly Review: Week 69

SLP Idea of the Week

I saw this fine motor activity post and thought it would make a fun reinforcer during articulation therapy for preschoolers. Gather a piece of styrofoam (or a large lump of playdough), several golf tees, several marbles, and your articulation stimuli. First let the child hammer the golf tees into the styrofoam (or playdough). Then have them balance the marbles on top of the golf tees. You get to work on articulation and improve fine motor skills at the same time all while keeping a young child completely engaged.

Ava this Week

Ava gave me one of those heart-stopping moments of terror this week. Here's what happened.

Ava has discovered clothes. I am not a clothes person. I have two pairs of jeans and 6-7 t-shirts and I simply rotate between what's clean. I am perfectly happy that way. Ava has this gorgeous chest-of-drawers full of little girl clothes because I have a good friend with a little girl two years older than Ava and we get her hand-me-downs.

Ava loves digging through her chest of drawers and pulling out something new to put on. She needs a stool to get into the top drawer and even then, she has to be on tippy toes to see into that drawer. One night I was getting her ready for bed and told her to go pick out a shirt to sleep in. I watched her drag her stool over and pull open the top drawer hanging onto its edge to try to peer inside. And then it happened.

The entire dresser began to tip. I watched it pull away from the wall and time slowed down. I said something, but I truly don't remember what. The dresser is heavy. It's a really massive piece of furniture. It was going to crush her. I wasn't going to get to it in time. I was sitting in a chair completely across the room. Just at that moment she lost her balance. I don't know if it was my panicked voice that startled her, or just coincidence. It was a wonderful happenstance though because when she lost her balance she also lost her grip on the drawer and the dresser thumped back against the wall. Another half an inch and it would have fallen the other way. Onto her.

Just thinking about it makes me sick. I have forbidden her to go into her drawers until we get one of those straps to childproof the thing and attach it to the wall. Perhaps in about seven or eight spots just to make me feel better.

Weekly Michael

Once a week my parents come over and we have a three-generation family dinner. It is a ton of fun and we all look forward to it. My dad has a joke he tells the kids regularly that they always laugh (and groan) at. He'll ask them, "What's worse than finding a bug in your piece of bread?" They'll respond, "What?" After a slight pause he delivers the punchline "Finding half a bug in your bread." At that point they giggle, groan, laugh, and complain, "Eww Grandpa!"

This week Grandpa told his joke again getting the usual laughs from the children. Several minutes later during a pause in the conversation Michael asked, "What's worse than finding half a bug in your piece of bread?" He had instantly captured the complete attention of all the adults at the table. We were wondering where exactly he was going with this. We dutifully asked, "What?" He delivered his punchline "Finding a quarter of a bug in your bread!" It doesn't sound funny typing it all out. Perhaps you had to be there. We all busted out laughing. It was hilarious. Michael's first joke and it was a punchline based on math.

______

I have another Michael story this week. We were trying (I think ultimately, unsuccessfully) to make homemade rock candy. The activity gave us the opportunity to discuss concepts like dissolving, solutions, boiling, and super saturated solutions. I, however, forgot to refresh my memory on exactly what those concepts mean in detail and of course Michael called me on it. "How does the sugar dissolve into the water? Why does more dissolve when the water is hot? Why does even more dissolve when the water is boiling? What happens when the solution cools back down?" Darn it. I couldn't answer those questions. Perhaps it will be a good thing, a week from now, when the experiment fails and we have to try again. I'll study up on the answers to those questions before our redo.

The Weekly Review: Week 68

SLP Idea of the Week

Nest 3 styrofoam cups (click here for pictures and original post) and then turn the stack on its side with the bottoms to your left and rims to your right. Write targeted initial phonemes on the rim of the cup on the left. Write vowels on the rim of the cup in the middle. Write targeted final phonemes on the rim of the cup on the right. Rotate the cups to form a wide variety of real and nonsense CVC words for practice. Simply remove the cup on the left to practice VC syllables. Remove the cup on the right to practice CV syllables.

Blog Posts of the Week

I had no idea hatching chicks was so complicated and exciting.

Ava this Week

My husband and I switch off every night. One night he'll put Michael to bed (brush teeth, read stories, sing songs, etc.) while I put Ava to bed and the next night we'll switch. Ava has taken to sneaking out of her bedroom on the night her Daddy puts her to sleep and coming to find me. She'll sweetly ask if I'll just come sing her "two more songs, please Mama?" How can I resist? I always go. It just takes a few minutes and it really settles her down.

Weekly Michael

I used to have to beg and plead to get Michael to leave his legos, erector set, marble run, or other indoor activity and go spend some time outdoors. Ever since we installed our DIY water park on the deck he's begging to go outside and will often disappear for an hour or more at a time. The deck is a mess. There's water in the sand table and sand in the inflatable pool. The ground under the deck is mostly mud and buckets of mud are scattered about the deck. The children dig up weeds and "plant" them in the buckets. I don't mind the mess though and I love seeing them play happily and independently outside this summer.

The Weekly Review: Week 67

SLP Idea of the Week

There's a really great graphic for voice levels here. It's designed for teachers, but easily could be modified for voice therapy.

Blog Post of the Week

Just some a light fun post over at Swistle.

Ava this Week

Oh, Ava is letting me do her hair and I'm having a blast. She's been letting me pull it back in an elastic for a while, but now I can use a comb to part the hair and she'll tolerate some tugging and so I get to try things like this:

Weekly Michael

Oh my. New stages of development are always... fun extremely annoying interesting. Michael has always been really respectful of random things left around. I didn't need to go crazy putting things like scissors, paint, or personal belongings out of reach because he automatically respected the rule that "grown-up things" were not for kids. Now he's getting into everything. I don't think he's doing it maliciously. I think he's off working on some project making a creation out of a variety of recycled materials and thinks to himself I need "x". Fill in the blank with any number of items he isn't supposed to be using. Then he goes off and takes "x" and proceeds to break it or make a mess with it. I am trying to be patient and understanding and not crush his amazing creativity but it is driving me crazy. It's like I need to baby proof my house for my 4 year old.

Art Projects of the Week

Ava - with beans - tree, night sky

Michael - colored sand and glue - beach with shells, water, boat, sun

The Weekly Review: Week 66

This week's weekly review format will be slightly different. I'm going to highlight several memorable events searching for my favorite one.

1. Taking my daughter to school I discovered that all the other children were dressed in swim clothes while she was not. The school had announced the splash day on Wednesday. We aren't there on Wednesdays. It all worked out though. I just told them to let her play in her clothes and then change her into her spare clothes afterward. -- Not my favorite event of the week.
2. Michael, now being four years old, is eligible to go on field trips at school this summer. This week was his very first field trip - to the zoo. He was so excited about riding the bus with his friends and wearing the special shirts and going to the zoo with his teachers. It was such a shame that he also got his very first bee sting on the trip. -- Also not my favorite event of the week.
3. There was the delightful morning that started off with laundering one puke-soaked and one urine-soaked set of sheets. -- Do you really need to ask if that one was my favorite?
4. Leaving for school one morning our little escape-artist feline managed to sneak into the garage. I went ahead and buckled the children into their car seats hoping she'd choose to wander voluntarily back into the house. Nope. Then, as I oh-so-casually approached her she darted right under the minivan well out of reach. I spent the next 10 minutes waving a broom under first the front of the minivan, and then the back of the minivan, and then the front, and then the back while listening to the children giggle hysterically in the car. Did I mention the garage was really, really hot? -- Not really a great candidate for my favorite event, however I can see how the children thought it was funny in retrospect.
5. And then there was the lovely dinner with my friend of nearly 18 years and husband of eight years on our wedding anniversary. I am so fortunate. -- Definitely the highlight of the week.

The Weekly Review: Week 65

SLP Idea of the Week

Take bubble wrap, the big kind, and plosive sounds or affricates on each bubble. For Ava, /k/ is the perfect target. Better yet, do 2/3 of them with your target letter and write a foil on the rest of them. So, 2/3 could be /k/ and the rest /p/ or something like that. Then, let your child find all the targets producing the sound as they pop each one they find. Simple, fun, and inherently rewarding. Find my inspiration (and a picture) for this idea here.

Blog Posts of the Week

Jessica at Balancing Everything has written an outstanding series of posts about her son's struggle with Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Read part 1, part 2, and part 3 and then stay tuned for the next promised installment.

Ava this Week

She's three. I know she's been three for 3 1/2 months now, but as she continues to grow in independence it hits me more every day. Ava completely, 100%, knows her own mind and will not be persuaded by peer pressure, bribery, or reason to consider changing her mind. She's dressing herself, getting into and out of the car on her own, handling all of her (umm...) hygiene on her own, and pretty much trying to assert control over her world. She is a joy and wonder to me.

Weekly Michael

My son is avidly listening to chapter books. He still enjoys a good picture book, but he begs for the next installment of whatever chapter book we're reading at the moment. First we read the Catwings series which was amazing. Then we read the Moongobble books by Bruce Coville. We've just started Little House in the Big Woods. He'll ask, "Mama, can we read Laura? Please mama."

Not to go off on an aside but...

I hadn't read Little House in the Big Woods since I was young. I suppose it always had all that butchering in it. I did manage to read most of that first chapter with minimal censoring and the children handled it well. But goodness, did it always have so much spanking in it? I have been liberally switching in time outs, yelling, fussing, etc. for the many spankings. It's a bit exhausting.