The Weekly Review: Week 38

Online Post I Enjoyed this Week

Linda Sharps wrote a post on The Stir that I really enjoyed this week. It listed some of her favorite posts about parenthood. My favorite was, "You don't really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around—and why his parents will always wave back. — William D. Tammeus."

The Weekly Holiday Tradition

I shamelessly stole this tradition from one of my aunts who did this same thing for her two children. Each Christmas of her children's lives she chose and bought a special ornament for each of them. Then, when they moved out and had their first Christmas tree of their own, she gave them all of their ornaments to use on their own tree. I've been trying to choose ornaments that represent what my little ones have really loved for the year. The ornaments of the year get a special place of honor on the fireplace mantel. Here are the children's ornaments for this year.

One of My Absolute Favorite Christmas Treasures

We moved away from New Orleans right before my eighth grade year. Every year since then, our family has traveled back to New Orleans to spend the holiday with our extended family. We didn't have Christmas trees of our own after that. One of my aunts had the most beautiful tree every year. The same aunt who bought the special ornaments for her children actually. The highlight of her tree, for me, was the beautiful handmade garland she had made for it. Every year, I would joke that she'd have to leave it to me. Her daughter would say, "No way! It is mine!" Shortly after I got married, she surprised me by making me my own. I treasure it. I love it because it is beautiful, but I also love it because it was handmade for me with love.

Ava this Week

Ava is starting to compete with her brother for conversation space. It is both beautiful and painful to watch. They'll both run up to me just brimming over with something to say. His words will spill out. Hers will often stutter and stop. For a child with motor planning problems, she's actually more fluent than usual, but in this particular high pressure situation, her fluency tanks. I love that she's trying though. If I slow it down a little bit, and make him wait quietly while she talks, she has so much to say. That part is wonderful.

The Weekly Michael

I wrote about how sensitive Michael seems lately. We've decided to try OT style brushing with him twice a day. It worked miracles with Ava, so we figured it couldn't hurt. We've only done it for a couple of days now, so it is to early to tell if it will help. He enjoys it (and the attention), so that much is good either way.

Our first try with the final /k/ pivot phrase pages

I made the final /k/ pivot phrase pages a few days ago for Ava (and shared them with you). We sat down during our after dinner at home therapy session to try them. It looked like it was going to go well. She was excited about the new pages. They were bright, colorful, and looked new. She was excited about the treat she was going to earn. A necessity, as I've discussed. Things all went downhill from there.

Here was my reasoning for trying the pivot phrases. First, she was blasting through the pivot phrase exercises in the Kaufman Speech to Language Protocol Workout Book. All of those use early emerging sounds and she's pretty much got those now. She's even starting to add final consonants on the medial words in therapy without prompting. So, doing those exercises is good practice and review, but not challenging any more. Second, she was starting to get that final /k/ in single word practice at least 60-80% of the time. I really thought we might be successful at moving up to the pivot phrase level.

Well... not so much. I don't know if she was just having an off night, but she could hardly produce the final /k/ sound at the single-word level. The pivot phrases were a complete bust. I should have taped it. It was prototypical motor planning problems. No two attempts were the same. One time the /k/ would pop in at the beginning of the phrase even though she can't actually produce initial /k/ sounds. Another time, the /k/ would pop in in the middle of the word and then there would be random /t/ sounds thrown in for fun. Everything was disjointed and there would be long pauses while her system just struggled to sequence.

After trying for several minutes unsuccessfully to get some /k/ productions at the single-word level and watching her frustration increase exponentially I shifted gears. I simply used the picture prompts on the pages and made up 2-3 word phrases with them working on getting all the final consonants in the short phrases. At that point we were in familiar territory using all early emerging sounds and she was able to experience some success. Every so often I would probe the /k/ again, but without success.

I guess I'll try again in a few days. I hope someone else had more luck with these.

One Activity - Many Skills

I've been wanting to do this cork/pushpin activity ever since I wandered across the idea.

Pinning Shapes

Disclaimer/Warning: Only use this activity with children you are sure aren't putting things in their mouth any more. And even then, closely supervise.

I found cork squares at Joann Fabrics for about $2. Use a marker and draw shapes on the coasters. You could use cookie cutters to trace simple shapes. (I did dots, but if I were to do it again I would just trace lines.) Bring cork, pushpins, and the children to the table.

Introduce pushpins to children. Explain that pushpins are for grown-ups and children only get to use them during very special activities because they are sharp. Remind them that if they ever find them at any other time they should carefully bring them to a grown-up to put them away. This introduces basic safety rules and also has the side benefit of making the children very excited about the activity.

Let them use the pushpins to fill in the shapes.

Skills/Objectives addressed here:
Vocabulary/Concepts: Shapes, colors (we only had red pushpins, but if you had many colors you could address colors and patterns), patterns
OT: Fine motor / pincer grasp / hand-eye coordination
Speech: Use this activity as a motivator. The child gets to push a pin in after every X repetitions.
Pragmatic: Listening to directions, turn taking, attention span, eye contact