Advent Calendar Book

Derek's mom just gave us this wonderful advent calendar! It is The Story of Christmas Advent Calendar published by Abingdon Press. Each day in December has it's own little book, mostly quoted from the Bible. I love that it is a countdown to Christmas, but each little book has it's own focus and Scripture included. It's quite large, too, with a trifold cover.

Day 1 is called "A Child to Be Born." Each of the little books can be hung on the tree, too, by their silver string! Since this year we don't want to put up the tree right away (due to an active 1 year old), I removed all the books but Day 1, so that we can place the proper book in the "calendar."

By the way, each book does have a title on the spine and a large number on the cover. This is a beautiful set and I know M will love it.

Oh, it looks like we might begin it today since M saw it before school this morning and was super curious about it. I told her it would be a surprise for later.

Thankful

Our family is greatly blessed. Tomorrow we will be among our family members that live hours away from our home. After a five hour drive, we will see (in relation to the children) six grandparents, three great-grandparents, great aunts and uncles, aunts, uncles, and cousins! And we'll stay on the farm! FUN! With some of our health issues, I suppose it would be easy to just ask, "Why?" However, it just reminds me that every day, even with the fussing, fighting, tears, and tantrums, our lives are greatly blessed with two little children. Of course, not every moment is difficult and filled with tears. However, both of them had situations (E's , M's)that were life threatening, yet they were protected. And we are thankful to our Creator who has plans for each of us. Happy Thanksgiving, Friend.

She Painted!

After posting the earlier post today about not being impressed with the crafts at school, I just had to share that M painted a turkey at school today. It was the first time in five weeks that she used paint! Yippee for a new medium!

School Projects

M attends a speech and language classroom. Their main objective is speech, not art. Last spring I began doing crafts with M on a regular basis, so I have not been too impressed with the crafts that she has brought home from school, though I remind myself that what we did was one on one. Most are crafts are pictures colored with crayons, cut by an adult (which is fine), and glued. However, this past week M brought home two cute projects, and I thought I'd share. I think this scarecrow is adorable! It's covered in short bits of yarn. The yarn adds lots of color and texture. I thought it was pretty clever.

This little project is a new twist (for me). It could be used for any song that is a "Five Little...(turkeys, monkeys, apples, frogs) song. Instead of making finger puppets for real fingers, the little turkeys were placed on a paper hand that has a "bracelet" to help a child keep it on his or her hand. During the song, M easily bent each paper finger down and was able to hold it down until the end of the song. M's teacher does send home songs and poems to read with the children at home that are often related to the craft.

Multi-Crafting

It seems that I am multitasking my crafts these days. I have several things I am working on at once. I can't say that I like the idea of working on so much at once, but that's just the way it is, I guess. They are all related to Christmas.

• A mouse hand puppet.
• A Jesse Tree. I am making my own tree, but using Nicole's ideas at Tired, Need Sleep. If you are unfamiliar, it basically is a way to show the lineage of Jesus Christ in an advent calendar way. I will make a felt tree, but paper ornaments, hung with ribbon. The tree will have buttons to hang the ornaments. The button idea came from a real life friend, and I thought it was very clever.
• Salt dough ornaments. Classic. Simple. Fun. The two that are painted only by me are finished!

I will post details on all soon. I hope.

Speech and School Update

M started school five weeks ago. She goes four days a week and loves it! She doesn't talk a lot about it, but she will answer questions. She can always tell me what she had for snack! Her favorite activity seems to be the jungle gym. She seems to like her teachers and speech therapist (and calls them by name). Though it is a speech and language classroom, I can't say that I have seen huge improvements in her speech. By this I mean that her articulation has not noticeably improved and she doesn't seem to be stringing longer sentences together. However, her vocabulary has been expanding. She also seems to talk throughout the day more. M has improved her alphabet, and she counts better, too. She counts past ten now (correctly, for the most part). Other than when we were counting steps, I never counted past ten with her. Oops. She also likes to try to remember the letters in her name, too. M rides the bus daily. This past Thursday I picked her up from school since I was in the area, as I am every Thursday. She wanted to ride the bus! She cried for about ten minutes, but at least she didn't throw a tantrum. Her bus ride is long, about 45-50 minutes. The classroom is about 25 minutes from our home, so it's not a surprise. Personally, I look forward to spending some time in the classroom. I want to see how it operates and how speech is incorporated into everything. When we visited before, we were quite the interruption, and I was not impressed with the speech incorporation. However, as a former teacher, I fully understand that what happens on a regular basis may not happen when a visitor comes. We will be changing the goals on her IEP to better meet M's needs. Basically, she can already meet the goals, so she isn't being pushed to do more. The SLP has to work on the goals, not go past them. The SLP and I have already spoken about changing goals. I am hoping to get paperwork this week. In case you are new to the blog, M has a speech disorder called apraxia. It is not outgrown, but is overcome. M is doing a fabulous job of overcoming it! She is still hard to understand, but she is doing wonderfully. If you are interested, you can read about M's situation.

Behavior Chart

Last Thursday when M had a second day in a row of some small, but irritating behavior problems, I decided to start a behavior chart. The are not all big problems, nor are they all daily problems. I wanted to include some easier things that she was more likely to have success.

The chart addresses a few issues.

• 
  
  brushing hair (She has long hair. She tends to put up a fuss when it's brushed.)
• 
  
  bus (Two days in a row last week she went to the back of the bus instead of getting off it.)
• 
  
  nap time (She will put up a fuss, run away, and anything else she can think of to delay it.)
• 
  
  eat dinner (A few days before the chart started, she started eating better.)
• 
  
  bed time (Same as nap time problems.)

The chart does not have days of the week. I just wanted it to be a simple chart.

M's response: At first she was indifferent, even saying no to stickers she earned. Now she loves it and is earning a lot of stickers daily. "Oh, boy! Oh, boy! Oh, boy!" has been said about getting a sticker.

My response: I think this was a good tool to get M involved in thinking about her behavior. However, I think M is strong willed enough that the stickers don't really motivate her. If she doesn't want to do something, a reward won't matter. (Dessert doesn't even entice her if she doesn't want to eat dinner.)