Monday, April 20, 2015

Week 29 Early Learning Program

Week 29 Early Learning Program
Aria getting ready to hang from a trapeze bar to help develop her hand muscles & upper body strength. She has a strong enough grip to hang freely for a few seconds.

April 12-19, 2014

Age: 29 weeks old (6.5 months old)

Curriculum: inspired by and based loosely on Glenn Doman's How to Multiply Your Baby's Intelligence and Fit Baby, Smart Baby, Your Baby.

Week 29 Early Learning Program
Looking at cloud types together

We had a lovely little week. Besides the fact that it was cloudy and rainy almost every day, which really put a damper on my spirits, it was a lot of fun watching Aria develop her knew skill of pulling to stand.

All week she has been pulling to stand on just about everything. Gone are the days where she mostly played on her stomach, and pivoting around or getting up on her hands and knees to crawl to a new destination to play on her stomach again.

Week 29 Early Learning Program
Aria pulling to stand on our step stool

Late last week, she started pulling herself up to a kneeling position. Then she started pulling herself up to stand in a very bent over way.

Week 29 Early Learning Program
Almost in a complete upright position

By the end of the week she had gotten to the point where she was almost completely upright. It's her preferred position lately. It seems like she just crawls around to find a new place to pull up on. It's so incredible what a week can do!

Week 29 Early Learning Program
Standing in crawling track

She most certainly, definitely does not use her crawling track to crawl in anymore. Last week she would sit in it and play. Now she is just so obsessed with standing all she will do in it is stand. She hasn't managed to climb out of it yet. But I suspect that is likely only days away.

Week 29 Early Learning Program
Playing on the window.

One of her favorite places is the window. I think that may have been one of her main motivations to learn to pull to stand - so she could see out the window. (And lick it. She really enjoys the feeling of her lips and tongue smearing across the cold window.)

Week 29 Early Learning Program
Won't lay still - crawling like crazy

Her crawling is getting to the point where she only crawls because she wants to find something new to pull to stand on.

Week 29 Early Learning Program
Crawling off bed into crawling track

Also, she has no fear of heights. She has multiple times went to crawl straight off the bed. I'm trying to let her learn, a little? I will let her crawl and "fall" into the crawling track. But it doesn't bother her at all, so I'm not sure she is leaning anything.

Week 29 Early Learning Program
Finger food

Aria has been eating a lot of finger food lately. We started with Gerber Puffs, Cheerios, and Rice Crispies. She just started solids less than a month ago and has no teeth, but she really does great with them. She pretty much just puts the food in her mouth and it dissolves.

Week 29 Early Learning Program
Working hard on the prehensile & pincer grasp

Starting finger foods early has the additional benefit of being a great tool for practicing the pincer grasp! It's a great daily fine motor workout for her.

Week 29 Early Learning Program
Our picture cards

Our picture cards this week were low altitude clouds & types of triangles. For math we did progressions of 7 (skip counting by 7) with randomized subitization quantity cards. And for written language immersion we had two sets of fruit words & pictures!

Our classical music piece this week was The Barber of Seville: Overture by Gioachino Rossini.

Week 29 Early Learning Program
Eating sand

It rained a lot this week, but we did manage to sneak in a photo session at the beach Saturday afternoon, before the storm hit. Aria was loving the sensory sensation of the sand, as usual.

Week 29 Early Learning Program
Aria loves swimming

Sunday we had another break from rain for a period in the afternoon, so we took the chance to go swimming.

Week 29 Early Learning Program
Blowing in face to help Aria learn to hold her breath

The last few swim sessions we have done, we had just been getting accustomed to the water. She is quite comfortable and happy in the pool now.

So I started teaching her to submerge in water and hold her breath, the first step in independent swimming. The technique I used is to hold her horizontal, rather than vertical. When you hold a baby vertically and dunk them under, water rushes into their mouth and nose simply by the force of gravity. But when a baby is horizontal and you dip their face in, they will only inhale water if they gasp once they're under water.

So, hold baby horizontal, say the prompt (I use: "One, two, three, under!"), then blow in baby's face so they will close their eyes and mouth and hopefully not gasp. Then dip baby's face into the water as quickly as possible - honestly I was only doing it for a half second at a time.

We did this quite a few times and she was happy each time. A little surprised. And a once or twice she did slightly gasp and so she coughed very briefly (I am estimating she only swallowed drops of water, considering how briefly she was underwater and the position she went under).

But that is ok, because it is part of the learning process. The baby has to learn what not to do - what will happen if they don't hold their breath.

However, I do keep it down to three times per session. If baby has swallowed or inhaled water more than three times that day, I stop doing submersions. Even though it is only possible for her to swallow / inhale the most minuscule amount because of my technique. It is just not healthy to inhale or swallow lots of water so I always err on the side of caution.

Looking forward to the rest of the summer and her learning how to swim! Hopefully next week's weather will be kinder to our swimming habits.

Resources used this week:

Free Quantity Cards printables (Glenn Doman dot cards)  Free Printable Reading Word Cards (for baby or toddler learn to read program)
 
Low altitude clouds
  Types of triangles



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Friday, April 10, 2015

Website Problems (That I Hope Are All Over)

Website Problems
Website problems are no fun

To everyone who has tried to access my site over the past few weeks and has failed, I'm sorry.

I've been having the most difficult time getting everything up and running again ever since mid-January when I accidentally deleted everything while trying to switch to a cheaper hosting plan.

Terrible, terrible mistake.

It's been nothing less than a nightmare. I've spent hours on the phone or on chat with a dozen different customer service agents trying to fix each new problem that came up. I spent days procrastinating about fixing the next issue because I just didn't have the time to sit on support for an unknown amount of time. It was all fixed for about two weeks then a new issue came up. And one thing would get fixed only for another one to go haywire.

It was a costly, time-consuming, mind-numbing mistake, and I'm glad it's finally (hopefully) over.

Anyway, I'm thankful that it was eventually fixable. I'm thankful that I now have a real backup. And I'm thankful that in the process of this I was forced to have to find a new design for my site, because I'm liking the new theme a lot (it's not drastically different, but I do have a new homepage which will eventually be really cool).

I'm working on updating blog posts for the past ridiculous amount of weeks that I haven't posted about baby Aria's progress. Once I get that done I'll be sharing about Damien's progress, and eventually Hunter's too.

Here's a little photo teaser of some of the things that have happened in the past few weeks:

Update
Damien (3yr9mo) learned how to ride a two-wheeler

Update
Damien (3yr9mo old) started working through a complete first grade curriculum

Update
I made this cool dot math addition poster

Update
Aria started to crawl (at 4.5 months old)

Update
Aria, at six months, is starting to climb on things and pull herself up to stand

Update
Aria started solids (at six months old)

Update
Hunter (at age 9.5) started going to school, and instead of homeschooling we are doing afterschooling. It's working great!

Update
We built some monkey bars for the kids to develop hand strength (to help with writing and small motor skills), cross patterning, and general upper body strength and fitness.

Update
We added some trapeze bars to those monkey bars for Damien and Aria to build up hand strength on

Update
We started swimming occasionally (mid March), and are getting ready to start this year's "swimming season" where we get in the habit of swimming daily

Update
Aria had her first "real swim" in a big pool and loved it - even though it was a bit chilly. So happy I was lucky enough to be blessed with another "fish baby".

Monday, April 6, 2015

27 Weeks Old Early Learning Program (6 months old)

Week 27 Early Learning Program

March 30 - April 5, 2014

Age: 27 weeks old (6 months old)
Curriculum: early learning program based loosely on Glenn Doman's How to Teach Your Baby to ReadHow to Teach Your Baby Math, How to Give Your Baby Encyclopedic Knowledgeand Fit Baby, Smart Baby, Your Baby.

Week 27 Early Learning Program

This week Aria's cards included flags of North American countries (part 2), everyday scenes by Vincent Van Gogh, progressions of 4 with subitization math dots (skip counting by 4), furniture words and pictures, and toy words and pictures.

She loves her cards, especially her math dots!

Week 27 Early Learning Program

I had a busy week preparing some future cards for her. She is always super interested and wants to "help".

Week 27 Early Learning Program

I spent the beginning of this week finishing up our monkey bar set to help all three kids develop hand strength (good for fine motor control), cross patterning, and general fitness. Aria is getting her very own trapeze bar to hang from!

She spent many hours hanging out on my back while I worked on this project.

Week 27 Early Learning Program

Aria has spent a lot of time standing lately. Not fully standing, but leaning over "standing" on a low surface that she climbs up to on her own.

The above picture shows "standing" on my mattress. Her crawling track is next to it.

Week 27 Early Learning Program

Playing in her crawling track next to the bed. She pretty much never crawls in it anymore and will either pull herself to stand or sit and play with toys. She reserves her crawling for the floor or bed!

Week 27 Early Learning Program

We went to the beach this week. And besides taking a relaxing nap breathing in the salty air, sucking on some fresh watermelon, sipping chilled water and crawling around on the blanket, she had a BLAST playing in the sand.

She had no problem with the texture. She just went to down digging her little hands and arms in it.

Week 27 Early Learning Program

This week was also her "first swim". That is, the first time she got into a big pool and got accustomed to moving around in the water. We even dipped her face underwater a couple of times, and she was totally fine with it.

I suppose this marks the beginning of this year's swimming season, here in Florida. April to November, roughly. Getting excited about teaching this little one how to swim!

Week 27 Early Learning Program

She tried out some crackers this week too. At first it was fine and she was just sucking on them until they turned to mush. But then she started getting excited and ended up breaking big pieces off, so I had to take it away.

She was not happy about that! We will be getting her some more baby-friendly solids soon.

Week 27 Early Learning Program

We celebrated Easter this week. She had fun exploring some new toys and playing with plastic eggs.

Week 27 Early Learning Program

Hope everyone had a great week!

Resources used this week:

Free Quantity Cards printables (Glenn Doman dot cards)  Free Printable Reading Word Cards (for baby or toddler learn to read program) Everyday Scenes by Van Gogh (set 1)   Flags of North America (set 2)


 

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