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.


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.


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.


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!


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.


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.)


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


Aria loves swimming

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


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:

  
 
Low altitude clouds
  Types of triangles



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