My Quivers Full - Tot School -- Week 12

Oct. 30, 2009 - Tot School -- Week 12

or visit this weeks post HERE.

I'm back in the swing of things...mostly. This week was much more on track than I have been, however I was still overly busy with some things that made our Tot-School time be cut back a little. If you were to ask Peanut (4) if he did his boxes some days this week, he would tell you no. What he didn't realize (insert sneaky giggling here) was that some of the "games" he was playing with mommy were his boxes for that day. One thing I wasn't good about this week was pictures. I only have a very few (sorry grandmas!)

Monday:

Button practice with felt pieces. *Woo Hoo! He was able to do these without much of a problem. This is a HUGE step forward for him*
J letter page: J is for Jellyfish
ABC-123 page
Book on Tape

Pictures from Monday:

He loved this one so much. He had to tape it to our letter wall right away.

Tuesday:

Handwriting Without Tears page & sand letter J
Kumon Sticker Book page
Math U See page
Jump Start video game

Wednesday:

Letter jump game (where I hold up a sand letter & he jumps on the matching letter that is taped to the floor)
Cutting page (not as good he has been...we need to do more of this)
Make a jellyfish (with clear contact paper, glitter, & yarn for tentacles) I forgot to take a picture once it was finished. Bad mommy!! We are hanging it in his bedroom window to catch the sunlight :)

Pictures from Wednesday:

He's loving the glitter here! We had to shake a *little* glitter off to get the contact paper to stick

Thursday:

Vision therapy website Eye Can Learn Explanation is toward the end of this post.
Buttons: putting a giant stuffed Pooh into a doctor dress up coat with simple buttons (this was harder than the other buttons he's worked with)
Letter Bingo (with Daddy)
Hit the Ball game -- I didn't know what to call this one. Just call me creative.

Pictures from Thursday:

Yes, that's a dog toy. I have it hanging from a string. He has a Nerf Sword. I was gently swinging it and he had to hit it with the sword. It's a visual coordination builder. Hard to take a picture while doing this, though!

Friday:

Kumon coloring page
Handwriting Without Tears page
Vision Therapy website Eye Can Learn (doing something different today)
Developing the Early Learner page....kind of

Developing the Early Learner is a workbook put out by Sonlight. It works on some visual skills we're trying to develop in Peanut. Unfortunately, it's all in black and white. Peanut has really bad visual discrimination when it comes to black and white drawings. So, I took the general idea from the workbook (which picture would go with the first picture: i.e. picture of a match. which would go with a match, a campfire or a forest) and I used pictures from the internet (thank you again Google!) to piece together my own worksheet. He did quite well. If you did the same thing, but with black and white pictures, he wouldn't have any idea what any of the pictures were supposed to be.

Why is a Vision Therapy website now being included in our days? Well, welcome to this weeks rant! We found out last weekend that we have gone over the allowable number of therapy visits for 2009. Since we can't afford a couple of thousand dollars per week, Occupational Therapy had to be stopped immediately. Since O.T. was also supposed to be doing some eye exercises in hopes of avoiding all out vision therapy, I'm frantically searching for things to do at home. I don't feel very comfortable with this, since I know nothing about vision therapy. The sensory therapy I am comfortable doing at home since we've gone through this before with Little Monkey (7). I just need to make sure I am consistent about putting together weekly plans. My at home O.T. things we've done thus far have been under the direction of our therapist, but I don't get that luxury now! I'm scouring the websites I know about as well as the books I have to put together things to keep Peanut moving forward with his sensory problems.

As far as vision things, I've found a couple of resources I'm excited about. One is the Eye Can Learn website. It has a few things that I know Peanut needs help with, and you do it right online. It's very neat, and even the older boys have tried their hand at some things. No one wants to be left out if there's fun to be had! The other resource I'm looking at is a book from Amazon. Developing Ocular Motor and Visual Perception Skills is a workbook written for O.T.'s, etc. to help them put together treatment activities for children with certain diagnosed vision problems. This is EXACTLY what I was looking for! However, with a $43 price tag and us with a multi-thousand dollar payment coming up (thank you insurance for going a month before letting us know we were out of covered visits!), I have to wait on this book until I have a couple of Amazon gift certificates. I'm chomping at the bit to get this book, but I know we're close to getting a couple of those gift certificates. I'm trying my very best to be patient!

Lastly, the younger boys wanted everyone to see their pumpkins:

Big Man has decided he's just about too old for Halloween. I have a suspicion that it's the influence of his best friend (whose family doesn't go Trick-or-Treating). He is going out for candy this year, but has announced a few times this week that it is his last year. We'll start the night at a party given by someone at church, then go hunting for some candy, then we may just end up back at the party :) I'll be glad when Halloween is done, I can't keep myself out of those Kit Kat bars I've got in the top of my closet!