How Smart is Your Baby Program Weekly Logs & Checklists

Weekly logs for various stages of brain development and stimulation 

Seven pages.

If only you knew what went into these seven pages.

For the past er, week or so I have devoted almost every spare moment to perfecting this little document.

This may or may not have resulted laundry that didn't get done and other menial tasks put off for another day.

I have been working on making my own, customized versions of weekly logs for the Doman motor and sensory stimulation programs as outlined in How Smart is Your Baby.

Am I the only one who ever asked why the book didn't come with these?

Oh, I know. The book has checklists. But the checklists in the book are a full page per day. And that is a full page per day for each aspect, which actually would come out to three full pages per day. Not only would that make for an unusually high paper budget, but I needed something a little more compact, at a glance, all-in-one.

So I made my own.

I am publishing these documents now as some sort of appeasement to myself for all the hours I spent on them. Don't ask me why it took so long. It just did.

And now that I am done, Hunter might have some more clean socks.

Hopefully some other people will find some benefit out of my toil. If you've got a newborn or a little baby (or are expecting one) and are planning to implement Doman's book, enjoy!
Stage I-III Doman Program Motor & Sensory Logs

If you've never read the book that these logs are meant to be a companion to, they may seem a little, er, weird. I'm certainly not going to even try to explain everything right now, but essentially the exercises on these logs were developed as a means to intentionally help your baby develop and grow, and in turn reach their milestones sooner than if it were left to chance. It is also a means of evaluating your baby's neurological health, noting any issues long before they would be otherwise apparent.

The exercises were developed after years and years of research from the IAHP on how the brain grows and why, with the original focus of helping to heal brain injuries in children. Many of these same exercises are still used today to help grow and heal the brains of brain-injured children.

I will be writing much more about the program in time come!

"And he appointed certain of the Levites to minister before the ark of the LORD, and to record..." 

1 Chronicles 16:4

Baby boy #2 is currently 25 weeks, 1 day gestation

Learning the Order of the Scientific Method

Putting in order the steps of the scientific method

One of the things we have been learning about in our biology lessons is the definition of hypothesis, theory, and scientific law.

With a hypothesis being an educated guess, a theory being a hypothesis that has been tested with a significant amount of data, and a scientific law being a theory that is consistent with generations of data. On a side note, we have also discussed how even if something is a "scientific law", that does not necessarily mean we have "proved" it. Many, many "scientific laws" of the past have been overturned by new data, and many more of today will be found false in the future. Simply put, science has it's limits, and we can never truly say that science has "proved" a fact. Science is wonderful, but isn't the "god" that humanistic cultures make it out to be.

Nonetheless, this lead us to explore the steps that one takes to test a hypothesis ("like a real scientist") and how a hypothesis, through many generations of testing and collecting data, can turn into a scientific law.

I made a puzzle of the six steps of the scientific method and, as usual, it was presented with great fanfare and anticipation of the "secret steps that real scientists use" and, quite frankly, he loved it.

We discussed each step and what it meant, this time using the example of something very simple - wondering whether or not blocks would float in water. We went through each step using block floating as an example of what we wanted to find out. (Hunter's hypothesis is that it depends on what kind of block it is)

Then we practiced mixing up all the pieces and putting them back in order. We also "chanted" to steps, hoping to aid in auditory memory - "The Scientific Method: purpose, research, hypothesis, experiment, analysis, conclusion!"

Not too original I know, but it'll hopefully get the job done.

Here is a printable of the puzzle we used, this time with a "board" to match the tiles to the correct number. Enjoy!
Scientific Method Puzzle

"That through them I may prove Israel, whether they will keep the way of the LORD to walk therein, as their fathers did keep it, or not." 

Judges 2:22

This post is linked to Science Sunday at Adventures in Mommydom

Hunter is 5 years, 10 months old

Finding the Difference: Word Problems

Finding the difference between 37 and 19

"Rob caught 73 shrimp. Tanner caught 25 fewer shrimp than Rob. How many shrimp did Tanner catch? How many shrimp did Rob and Tanner catch in all?"

Hunter just (finally, my bad) started his first official "word problem" text: Skill Builders: Word Problems 3rd Grade Math.

Sure, we've done tons of real-life "word problems" and math application, but this is his first time working with it textbook-wise.

So far the computation aspect of his word problems book has been extremely simple for him. The skill here, of course, for him, is determining how to solve the problem: what operations, and in what order, etc.

One thing I have found useful here in helping him determine how to solve the problem is by using the math vocabulary words such as difference and sum.

A visual explanation of the equation

For example, if the question is "Ken has 37 goldfish, and Rob has 19. How many more goldfish does Ken have than Rob?" it makes it a lot easier when you explain what we're doing here is finding the difference.

And when we know that the definition of "difference" is "the quantity that remains after one quantity is subtracted from another", it's pretty easy to see that what we need to do here to find the answer is subtract.

I like visual aids. We used large graph paper and checked off 37 purple boxes and 19 red ones. Then I asked, "They want to know who has more. Does Ken or Rob?"

As he already knew, Ken.

"Well how many more? Does he have one more? Ten more? A hundred more? How can we find out?"

To find out the difference, we crossed out with a black marker 19 of Ken's 37 goldfish. I explained, "If they both had 19, this is what it would look like - Rob's red fish over here and Ken's black fish over here. But they don't both have 19, Ken has 37, which we can see is this many more than 19."

This led to the discussion and realization that what we had really done was subtracted 19 from Ken's goldfish to find out how many more he had - to find the difference. We did a few more problems with this type of visual representation and then it was pretty comprehensible to Hunter how to do this type of problem (finding the difference) - and why - with just using the numbers and no visual aids.

The word sum has also come in handy when the problem involves addition - "We need to know what the sum of both of their fish is. How do we do that?".

Since these words have suddenly become so useful in handling our math discussions, I have finally made up some defintion cards of my own (included are the words sum, difference, product, quotient and augend/addend, subtrahend/minuend, multiplicand/multiplier, dividend/divisor, factor, and remainder) Definitions and examples are the back. Enjoy!

Arithmetic Operation Vocabulary Cards

"Ye shall therefore put difference between clean beasts and unclean, and between unclean fowls and clean..." 

Leviticus 20:25

Hunter is 5 years, 10 months old


This post is linked to Math Links at Joyful Learner

Rush Hour Game and Building Thinking Skills

Playing "Traffic Jam" android application

Before we moved to California, Hunter, at four, loved "playing" my mom's Rush Hour game from ThinkFun.

In the actual game, you have to set up the variously-colored cars, trucks, and eighteen-wheelers on a sliding grid, according to the puzzle you're trying to solve. The vehicles get set up in a mix-match of horizontal and vertical arrangements, and the goal is to slide the other vehicles out of the way in order to get the red car out the exit.

Sounds simple, but it's not always so easy, and can take some careful planning, seeing the bigger picture, and lots of trial and error to get through the often multiple steps necessary to free your little red car.

We were both so excited when we found a generic version of the game ("Traffic Jam") as a free android app under "Brain & Puzzle" in the games section of the marketplace. It's also available for iPhone for $2.99.

According to the editorial description on Amazon, Rush Hour has received a national award from Mensa and has been used in elementary school math classes. And I can see why.

Hunter has so far made his way through dozens of puzzles and has fallen in love with the game. It's not exactly my cup of tea (I'm easily frustrated with puzzles and brain teasers) but Hunter really seems to enjoy it.

And the nice thing about having it on my phone? (for free, no less) Definitely being able to play it anytime, anywhere, and playing something productive and fun. Beats Super Mario or Pac Man any day, in my book.

This post is linked up here.

Cell phones sure have changed a lot in Hunter's
little lifetime, don't you think?

"Think upon me, my God, for good, according to all that I have done for this people." 

Nehemiah 5:19

Hunter is 5 years, 6 months old 

Cursive Beginnings

 

Hunter has recently decided that he wants to learn how to write in cursive.

The above picture is of a free-hand lowercase alphabet he decided to make for me the other day.

I was printing out a cursive handwriting guide, something I was possibly considering teaching this fall and wanted to get him excited about it now, and he managed to smear water all over the first copy whilst helping me with the printing. Gotta love little kids help sometimes.

Feeling remorseful about destroying it, he decided that he would just "make me a new one" and proceeded to spend the next hour-ish meticulously copying the lowercase cursive alphabet onto a blank piece of paper. First in pencil, then in ink.

It was a sweet gesture, really.

Since then we have gone back to it a couple of times and he has learned to write his first name, and has been practicing (a little) the first few letters of the lowercase alphabet. No rush of course and, he thinks it's really cool. A "secret code", if you will.

Sounds good to me.

Cursive Handwriting Printable

"All this, said David, the LORD made me understand in writing by his hand upon me, even all the works of this pattern."

1 Chronicles 28:19

Hunter is 5 years, 3 months old

How We Organize the School Year

I am currently working on lesson planning for the 2010/2011 "school year".

I made a new Scribd document of the form I'm using to make my outline for each subject. Here it is:

Blank Unit Lesson Planning Outline

Title - It's pretty simple: At the top there is a blank box where you fill in the subject (i.e., "History", "Math", "Art", etc.). The box also has a place to fill in your child's grade, if you use one. I always did Hunter's "grades" K4, K3, K2, etc. when he was younger. I think I first talked about this in this post. I am now planning for K5, aka, kindergarten.

Semesters - Next is the outline. The first thing you'll notice is that the year is divided into the four seasons, or "semesters". This is because we do year-round "schooling". I like it that way because we are learning all the time anyway, and I can't imagine not having some science topic to explore or talking about a time period in history or whatever. This also allows me a great deal more flexibility. I don't feel like I have to cram everything into the traditional one hundred and eighty or so days. I also don't have to "freak out" if we miss a week (or even a month) of regularly-scheduled activities, you know, like when life happens (moving, sickness, vacation, etc.)

Units - The next thing you notice is that in this outline there is one simple line for each two-week period, which comes out to six lines per semester. The dates of the two week period are written beneath it.

This is where the "outline" part comes in. On the line I'm going to write what topic / topics we'll be exploring during that two weeks (i.e. "Jacob and Esau" or "black holes" or "fractions"). This is just an outline and doesn't go into detail about the activities to accompany those topics. Below the line I'm going to write the encyclopedic knowledge / bits category we'll be doing (i.e. "books of the Old Testament" or "types of stars" or "types of triangles").

I call these two-week periods "units". They are the core upon which all other plans are built. Why two-week units? Well, I used to make lesson plans weekly. I would write out the bits we would be learning, the math topics we would be covering, the books I'd like to read, the activities I'd like to do. And then never come anywhere close to accomplishing it all.

Now I give myself two weeks to cover a particular topic. It takes a lot of stress off of me and allows more flexibility. Missing a day when you only have five days to cover something can be detrimental. Missing a day when you have fourteen is a little less dramatic.

Gaps - The last thing I wanted to point out is that you will notice that there is a date gap between semesters (for example, the summer semester ends on August 21 but the fall semester doesn't begin until August 29). This is because I put a one-week gap between each semester. This is to make up for the days we missed during the rest of the semester, or simply as a week off, making a total of four vacation weeks per year. Again, something to save my perfectionistic self a lot of pain: built in flexibility.

I've probably over-complicated my explanation [a lot]. Which is kind of ironic, because the whole reason I chose this type of organizational style was because of its simplicity: Planning around the already-established four seasons. Then simply dividing the weeks of each season (which happens to be thirteen) into more easily-manageable sections (units). Turning that odd-week on the end into a catch-up/vacation week. Not too difficult, eh?

Hopefully this will be useful to some of you!

"All this, said David, the LORD made me understand in writing by his hand upon me, even all the works of this pattern."

1 Chronicles 28:19

Hunter is 5 years, 0 months old

March's Words of the Day

More fun words of the day for March! You know your kid is liking the routine when, after you forgot one day, he askes you, "So mom, what's the word today?"

So here is the list we're using is from dictionary.com's archive. I also recently became all technologically savvy with Scribd and am able to start sharing with you all the materials I spend hours pouring over. Yay! Go here to print your own copy of March's Word of the Day flashcards.

1. lampoon: composition that imitates or misrepresents someone's style

2. sanguine: optimistic, cheerful
3. acute: serious; pervasive
4. temerity: unreasonable or foolhardy contempt of danger.
5. parry: deflect a blow
6. martial: pertaining to war
7. bilk: defraud, cheat, or swindle.
8. equine: of horses and hoofed animals.
9. incisive: penetrating, sharp, cutting.
10. pedestrian: walker; also, unimaginative.
11. ululate: to howl; to wail.
12. tetchy: peevish; testy; irritable.
13. inanition: exhaustion from lack of nourishment; also, emptiness.
14. esoteric: intended or understood by chosen few.
15. scintilla: a tiny amount; a spark.
16. cormorant: a gluttonous or greedy person.
17. libation: the act of pouring a liquid as a sacrifice; also, a beverage.
18. elucidate: to make clear or manifest.
19. florid: flushed with red; also, excessively ornate.
20. diatribe: a bitter verbal attack.
21. veracity: truth, truthfulness.
22. pithy: concise and forceful in description.
23. spoonerism: the transposition of usually initial sounds in a pair of words.
24. thaumaturgy: the performing of miracles or magic.
25. tumult: the commotion or agitation of a crowd.
26. propinquity: nearness.
27. feckless: ineffective; weak; worthless.
28. velleity: a slight wish or inclination.
29. osculation: the act of kissing; a kiss.
30. ludic: playful.
31. contretemps: something inopportune or embarrassing.

"Naphtali is a hind let loose: he giveth goodly words."

Genesis 49:21

Hunter is 4 years, 11 months old

Thanksgiving Reading

I finally found some good Thanksgiving poetry. The poem below was written by William Bradford, the governor and historian of the plymouth colony.

I also found a few more on this website that we have been reading. Some of them were cheesy "turkey day" poems but there were a lot of good ones. We are also reading through Psalm 100, the "thanksgiving psalm".

And lastly, we are reading Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford again this year. We're reading it online, since I couldn't find a full, unedited copy at the library. These readings and poetry have been great for learning more about our Christian heritage, which I am very excited about.

Here is the poem:


From my years young in days of youth,
God did make known to me his truth,
And call'd me from my native place
For to enjoy the means of grace.
In wilderness he did me guide,
And in strange lands for me provide.
In fears and wants, though weal and woe,
A pilgrim, past I to and fro:
Oft left of them whom I did trust;
How vain it is to rest on dust!
A man of sorrows I have been,
And many changes I have seen.
Wars, wants, peace, plenty, have I known;
And some advanc'd, others thrown down.
The humble poor, cheeful and glad;
Rich, discontent, sower and sad:
When fears and sorrows have been mixt,
Consolations came betwixt.
Faint not, poor soul, in God still trust,
Fear not the things thou suffer must;
For, whom he loves he doth castise,
And then all tears wipes from their eyes.
Farewell, dear children, whom I love,
Your better Father is above:
When I am gone, he can supply;
To him I leave you when I die.
Fear him in truth, walk in his ways,
And he will bless you all your days.
My days are spent, old age is come,
My strength it fails, my glass near run:
Now I will wait, when work is done,
Until my happy change shall come,
When from my labours I shall rest,
With Christ above for to be blest.

"Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage."

 Psalm 119:54

Hunter is 4 years, 7 months old

Realistic Animal Coloring Pages

I found these neat coloring pages from National Geographic Kids. I liked them because they are realistic rather than the cheap cartoons that most other stuff for kids is like. They had quite a selection of animals as well as a few facts about each one. I printed out lowland gorillas, orangutans, and chimpanzees for next week as we'll be learning primate bits. Enjoy!

National Geographic Coloring Pages

"For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine."

Psalm 50:10-11

Sites for Kids - Map Puzzles

I found this site today and Hunter really liked playing the USA map game. It's good if they already know the states, then it will be easier. This great site has a ton of map puzzles with everything from continents to countries within each continent to world monuments. It's just a blank outline map and they give you one country / state at a time to drag and drop in it's respective location. Most of them can be played online with no download required. And best of all, it's all free. Enjoy!

http://www.yourchildlearns.com/map-puzzles.htm

"All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the LORD: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee. For the kingdom is the LORD's: and he is the governor among the nations."

Psalm 22:27-28

IAHP Free E-Newsletter

I just checked my yahoo teach-your-baby-to-read group messages and found a link to the IAHP's new free e-newsletter. I'm really excited about it, I can't wait to get the first one. Here's the link if you want to sign up:

http://www.iahp.org/Subscribe-to-our-free-E.448.0.html

"...I will publish the name of the LORD: ascribe ye greatness unto our God. He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he."

Deuteronomy 32:3-4