The Weekly Review: Week 48

Blog Post of the Week

Swistle gets the nod two weeks in a row, this time for her amazing OpportunityThink post. If you too are frustrated when someone offhandedly remarks how much you must enjoy your "free time" when the kids are in preschool, you would probably love this post as much as I did.

Ava this Week

I have a new trick for pleasantly dropping Ava off at daycare. She is no longer traumatized by drop-off. She hasn't been for months now. She continued to put on a performance for the attention though. I finally decided enough was enough. One morning late last week as we were walking in I simply told her that I didn't want any more whining and leg hugging when I left the room. We were going to play a new game instead. We're going to make silly faces at each other through the window before waving goodbye. It was a simple idea, but rather effective. Now she can hardly wait for me to exchange a few words with her teacher before pushing me out the door so she can make a few silly faces at me. The other children rather enjoy it too and I'm collecting quite a crowd of silly faces on my way out. It's cut my drop off time in half and made the process infinitely more pleasant.

Weekly Michael

I went to Michael's preschool Valentine's Day party. He knew I was going to be there. When I got there the class was in the gym and only a few parents were in the classroom. A few minutes later the class returned to the room. The look on his face when his searching eyes found me was priceless. The run to my side and tight hug was even better. It completely made the trip worth it in the first 30 seconds.

Weekly Procrastination

Hmm... I still haven't done anything to get ready for Ava's birthday. I really, really need to fix that before next week's review.

Ava's Weekly Home Therapy Focus

Yesterday's long-winded post on blends was probably already way more than you wanted to know about Ava's therapy focus this week. Let's just say that she's continuing to make great progress on final /s/ and /sh/, /l/, and a few blends. Now that her accuracy on /s/, /l/, and /sh/ has improved so much I'm doing the cards in pairs (for example, "Say rush, wash."). At first she was dropping the targeted consonant at the end of the first word in the pair, but with appropriate cues she's getting them now.