By the time I’ve started working with her specifically on her letters and numbers, it’s mainly the challenge of expanding on what she already knows. H3 is a sponge. I rarely have to tell her something more than once and she gets it. At this point she loves learning and any time I get out her flashcards or books she starts squealing for joy. This week we worked a lot on shapes and numbers.
I pulled out her shape pages that I printed off of the Fisher Price website.
Since I don’t have flashcards with lowercase letters only on them, I decided to do some myself on note cards. H3 seems to like them just as well, even without the pictures, and will flip through them and name each letter.
More of her regular flashcards.
More on shapes with play dough. The hexagon is still her favorite. Though she would rather have them all, we just take out one color of play dough at a time. She asks me to cut specific shapes and once I have all of them done, I’ll ask her to point to each one as I say it.
I thought this was too cute so I had to take a picture. I’ve left my cheesehead out since the game and have let her play with it. Wednesday, I was making bread dough in the kitchen and H3 brought it in and put it on the kitchen table. Then, she started putting her little people in the corners and a few in the middle and told them “night night, sleep tight”! I’ve seen her tuck in her baby dolls, but this was a first.
One other thing that I’ve been working with H3 on again is sign language. H1’s sister, Mercy, blessed us with a baby signing curriculum on DVD when H3 was several months old. I’ve shown those videos to her regularly and have worked with her on specific signs. This summer Sean, the health director at MSC (my boss) gave me a detailed book on sign language for adults. He signs and he told me that this book was very well done as far as being able to read and learn to sign correctly. I’m working to teach H3 some of the signs from the books now, since she’s learned almost all of the ones from the DVD set—60-80 signs in total. Most she can sign to me, but a few of the more complicated ones I will sign to her and she will tell me what the sign means. Signing has proved very helpful, especially with some of the words that she has a harder time pronouncing. We’ve always taught her to say the word and sign it at the same time, and this way we’ve been able to understand her better.
~H2
4 comments:
Good Job Jess!
What are the first signs to teach a child? That is one thing I am really interested in, both for my own family later, but also with working with children now.
The easiest signs to teach are:
1) milk, which is done by opening and closing your fists, with one hand or two.
2) eat, which is to bring your closed fingertips up to your mouth and tap them on your lips
3) all done. Hold both hands in front of you and twist your wrists back and forth, like you're brushing something away from you
The food signs were the ones I taught her first, and then expanded as she began to understand them, adding the signs for animals and "potty". We used Baby Signing Time (www.babysigningtime.com) and their products are geared toward babies and toddlers. There are quite a few books out there too for little ones that illustrate the signs.
She's absolutely brilliant, and you're an amazing mommy! :D I've seriously never met a kid her age who could recognize her letters and numbers the way she can! :-O :D
Talia was the only one I taught any sign language to at all - and it worked great so I don't know why I never did for Jules! She would sign for milk, juice, when she was tired, hungry, and 6 or 7 other things... (just the basic communication stuff - it was wonderful!) :)
(btw... can you get into my blog at all.. I changed the privacy settings and I may have been overzealous accidentally in what I "clicked" lol)
Also - see you in a few days!!!!! yaaay! :)))
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