Puffy Paint on a 3D Cone

I was inspired by a couple of ideas I found on pinterest.

Source: delawarecountymoms.com via Jamie on Pinterest

Source: housingaforest.com via Jodi on Pinterest

First we made our own "puffy paint" combining equal parts flour, salt, and water (we used 1/3 cup of each to make about 5 oz.) and then mixing in some liquid tempera to color. The children chose to make red, purple, and orange. I then used a funnel to put the paint in small 2oz squeeze bottles.

I then set the kids up with some white cones I had made from cardstock and trimmed so they would stand up straight. I also taped them to a base to catch spills and keep them from tipping over while they were being painted.

We ran into a problem right away. The paint wouldn't squeeze. I found a small pair of embroidery scissors and managed to make the holes larger and that worked for a while. We continued to have trouble during the activity with the holes getting blocked by small lumps of paint or because the paint dried up in the tip. We would shake and tap the bottles and I'd use the scissors to clear out the tips of the bottles and that helped. I honestly think the children would have played much longer if we hadn't had the technical difficulties though.

My only suggestion would be to use squeeze bottles with much larger holes than ours - perhaps ketchup style holes. Or just use a paint brush.

They had a blast though. From the start of the project (making the paint) through then end of painting the cones, the kids were engaged for a full hour and a half.

The Weekly Review: Week 35

Favorite Blog Quote this Week

I identify strongly with the following quote from this post: "Children are wonderfully wonderful but they are also bottomless gulleys of sucking need..."

The Weekly Procrastination Update

With the 2 additional hours of CEUs I managed to get this week I now need 10 more in the next 12 days... Hmm. I don't seem to be gaining on this situation.

The Weekly Celebration

Four years ago, in the wee hours of the morning, following 19 hours of labor, we welcomed our 8 pound, 6 ounce firstborn into this world. We joined all the other parents who have experienced this profound transformation.

In the four years since then he has grown from a helpless (and rather incessantly noisy) infant to an amazing young boy (still incessantly talking). He loves cars, tools, building things, fixing things, and destroying things. He loves petting a kitten and watching her purr. He takes pride in being a big brother and loves his sister's company. He can read three-letter words, write his name, and will listen happily to any story. He carries a tune nicely and loves to sing for an audience or just to himself. He began preschool this year and is doing amazingly well there.

I am simultaneously excited about what the next year will bring, intimidated by the challenges it will hold, sad at how fast the time will go by, and curious about the little boy he will be when he turns five. Raising a child is such an adventure.

Ava this Week

Twice a year, we have parent conferences at Ava's preschool. They use a checklist of skills and write (N-not demonstrating, S-sometimes, A-Always) next to each item. 6 months ago Ava's sheet was full of Ns and Ss. This time almost everything was an A - even in the communication section. The combination of speech services, OT services, and preschool has been so powerful.

The Weekly Michael

This is really the first year Michael has fully understood what a birth day means and what birthday celebrations are about. We've been celebrating off and on all week. First his grandparents came into town and we had his party. Yesterday they did some special things at school. Tonight we will give him our gift, a gift from his godmother, and his gift from his other set of grandparents. He has been so mature about all of it. He is excited, but not crazy over-excited. He's been grateful, polite, and appropriately thankful when receiving gifts. He's been good about sharing with his sister. All in all, I've been struck by what a sweet, mature new 4 year old he is. It's been a wonderful (and busy) week.

Stimulability from a New Perspective

As I was taking a course dutifully working towards earning my 15 continuing education credits for this year I came across an interesting article that reminded me of several concepts in articulation/phonology treatment that I hadn't had time to think about recently.

In a nutshell, I was taught to address the error sounds a child is stimulable for first. That seems to make sense. In theory they would make progress faster and with less frustration than with sounds that are harder for them.

The article I read claimed that more recent research (I have not had time to look up the source articles yet, so take this with a grain of salt until I can confirm.) shows that often, children will acquire the sounds they are stimulable for on their own given time. Therefore, time in therapy should be spent on the sounds they are least stimulable for. If you spend 3 months establishing and working on /k/ and in the meantime, the /t/ which they were stimulable for pops in on its own, the child now has some mastery of two sounds at the end of that time period instead of just one.

This therapist chooses two targets to work on with a child at any given time. She chooses the two most complex sounds the child is not stimulable for that have the most contrast (voicing, manner, place). This is an entirely different model of choosing targets than I was taught to use, but the idea is intriguing.

I have two questions for any readers that might want to discuss this:

1. Have you encountered this approach to articulation/phonology therapy before, and what do you think?
2. If you agree that this approach has merit, do you think that this approach also applies to children with motor planning problems (apraxia)?