They have been so wonderful for us. We did a bit of signing with Colleen and benefited greatly from it. As we found a word was needed, I looked it up and we taught it to her. Just a few words greatly reduced the screaming and tantrums. So, we were sure that we would use signing with William too.
With him, we found Signing Time. ( www.signingtime.com ) They have the videos at the library. We've been getting them since October I think. We all have picked up a lot of signs. It's much easier to learn signs this way and with everyone learning them, it's that much more exposure William gets.
On Monday I counted up 197 signs that William knew. Last night (Thursday night) I counted up again because we had borrowed three more videos that he hadn't seen in awhile and I knew he had picked up some more. He now knows 245 signs!
It's so amazing to be able to communicate with him this way. I can't recommend the Signing Time videos enough. I wish every parent knew how helpful signing with their baby can be. At 17.5 months he still doesn't really talk (he has maybe 1 or 2 words), but he communicates beautifully. :)
Also, Rachel Coleman, the creator of Signing Time, has a blog. You can read about her families amazing journey there. It's a very moving story.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Snow!
Did I mention that we got about 5 inches of snow? The kids have been thrilled. It's the first real snow of the winter too. I'm trying to put up some pics, but I'm not sure that my phone is cooperating. We'll see. :)
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
It's freezing out!
Below actually. I think it's only 16 as a high today and my phone told me it was -3 when I got up at 10. Yeah, it's cold out there. Thankfully, the kids and I don't have to go out in it. We had to yesterday and it was no fun. Actually, going out wasn't all that bad. The day was horrible though.
Started out with me having a migraine and once I got the pain to go away it still was messing with my brain. I couldn't think real straight. I was glad I had the kids' lessons all laid out for the week already. It made it easy to keep us all on track. I wasn't sure about getting us all out to the library and clogging though. Thankfully, Josh was able to come home and drive us. We were late everywhere we went, but we got there. :)
Colleen had her first clogging lesson and did a great job. She is really looking forward to going next week. Eric learned two new steps, so he was excited and Fiona was glad to get back to non-Christmas music.
Now I'm going back to taking care of the fire in the wood stove and getting ready to make supper. Something warm and cozy. :)
Started out with me having a migraine and once I got the pain to go away it still was messing with my brain. I couldn't think real straight. I was glad I had the kids' lessons all laid out for the week already. It made it easy to keep us all on track. I wasn't sure about getting us all out to the library and clogging though. Thankfully, Josh was able to come home and drive us. We were late everywhere we went, but we got there. :)
Colleen had her first clogging lesson and did a great job. She is really looking forward to going next week. Eric learned two new steps, so he was excited and Fiona was glad to get back to non-Christmas music.
Now I'm going back to taking care of the fire in the wood stove and getting ready to make supper. Something warm and cozy. :)
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Schooling in the New Year
Welcome to 2011! I can hardly believe we have passed a decade since 2000. Seemed so crazy as we approached the year 2000 and here we are. Anyway...
We took most of December off because Fiona and Eric had a lot of clogging performances to go to. Six total and 4 in one week. Add to that all the Christmas stuff we needed to do and there just wasn't time for lesson plans. We eased back in by having the kids visit www.sheppardsoftware.com and www.multiplication.com along with www.learningplanet.com (they love Lemonade Tycoon!) and www.pbskids.org. Colleen loves www.starfall.com and nickjr.
Then we spent a week talking about Christmas and New Year's traditions and snowflakes. Now we are back to more typical schooling.
Fiona has started back at www.time4learning.com. You may remember that I did a review about them a while back. It worked so well for her with math, that I decided to subscribe her to it again. It seems to be a great fit for her. She learns well with it and I like being able to see where she is on the subjects.
Eric and Colleen are doing well with our other plans, so we are keeping with that for now. I use www.lessonpathways.com to make up lesson plans for them. It's free and a great resource. They also love to visit www.brainpop.com and www.brainpopjr.com so we went ahead and subscribed to those. They love to explore them on their own and I also use the site to add to my lesson plans.
The multiplication site I mentioned above has been great for helping Fiona (and now Eric) to learn the multiplication facts. It is full of games that work to simply expose them to the facts over and over. Once they do a set amount they get to do some art or something else fun. Some of the games are set up so the fun stuff is the fact part. Eric is just getting started, but Fiona has learned most of her facts playing there. Colleen even goes and does the 1 times facts to get to play on it. LOL
Sheppardsoftware has been great for exposing them to the addition and subtraction facts more. They can do them all, but I'm hoping to help them be a bit more fluent with them.
On Thursday, Jan 6th, Eric had a basket weaving class. He had a great time and made a nice little basket. I'll try to get a picture posted before long. All the kids had a great time playing with their friends during the day also. We look forward to more chances to get together with them.
We took most of December off because Fiona and Eric had a lot of clogging performances to go to. Six total and 4 in one week. Add to that all the Christmas stuff we needed to do and there just wasn't time for lesson plans. We eased back in by having the kids visit www.sheppardsoftware.com and www.multiplication.com along with www.learningplanet.com (they love Lemonade Tycoon!) and www.pbskids.org. Colleen loves www.starfall.com and nickjr.
Then we spent a week talking about Christmas and New Year's traditions and snowflakes. Now we are back to more typical schooling.
Fiona has started back at www.time4learning.com. You may remember that I did a review about them a while back. It worked so well for her with math, that I decided to subscribe her to it again. It seems to be a great fit for her. She learns well with it and I like being able to see where she is on the subjects.
Eric and Colleen are doing well with our other plans, so we are keeping with that for now. I use www.lessonpathways.com to make up lesson plans for them. It's free and a great resource. They also love to visit www.brainpop.com and www.brainpopjr.com so we went ahead and subscribed to those. They love to explore them on their own and I also use the site to add to my lesson plans.
The multiplication site I mentioned above has been great for helping Fiona (and now Eric) to learn the multiplication facts. It is full of games that work to simply expose them to the facts over and over. Once they do a set amount they get to do some art or something else fun. Some of the games are set up so the fun stuff is the fact part. Eric is just getting started, but Fiona has learned most of her facts playing there. Colleen even goes and does the 1 times facts to get to play on it. LOL
Sheppardsoftware has been great for exposing them to the addition and subtraction facts more. They can do them all, but I'm hoping to help them be a bit more fluent with them.
On Thursday, Jan 6th, Eric had a basket weaving class. He had a great time and made a nice little basket. I'll try to get a picture posted before long. All the kids had a great time playing with their friends during the day also. We look forward to more chances to get together with them.
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