Week in review October 17, 2010 – October 23, 2010

Sunday

Sweet Coco and I play alone for about 30 minutes singing nursery rhymes. He enjoys Pat-a-Cake because cake is one of his favorite subjects but he absolutely loves Row Your Boat. We sit facing eachother and I pull his arms forward and back while we sing. At the third verse, “If you see an alligator don’t forget to scream… AHHHHHH!” he totally cracks up. I start pausing after “scream” to see if he will initiate the screaming part and he catches on quickly. We spend at least 15 minutes on that song alone.

We also spend some time making faces in a mirror.

We go on a four mile hike today. It is interesting to see how Tremendo’s energy level changes depending on the terrain. When we are in the more woodsy part of the trail he is very attached to Vic and wants to hold his hand or ride on his shoulders. He keeps telling us he is tired. When we reach the rocky part that is elevated and has a lot less trees he gets this surge of energy and runs the whole way yelling back at us to “Come on!”


Monday

Sweet Coco is phenomenal in school today. Tremendo is extremely floppy when I try getting him started. He may have been upset about the fact that I worked with Sweet Coco first since he usually beats him to the table. After about 15 minutes I give up and move on to working with Kamikaze. Math with Kamikaze takes about 90 minutes. I’m still unsure why it’s taking us this long. The material is not difficult for him in the least. Perhaps that’s the issue- it’s so easy that it’s easy to get distracted and go off on tangents.

We have lunch then Kamikaze and I do writing and grammar. Unfortunately I don’t get to work with Tremendo because I have to go to the dentist. Tremendo and Sweet Coco are going to need extensive work and I have an appointment to discuss their treatment plans.


Tuesday

Tremendo and Sweet Coco go to Speech Therapy. Tremendo plays with a peer and his therapist can tell he wants to communicate more with him so she encourages him to give him high fives after they take turns. His therapist gives me a list of social groups to checkout and a list of grants that I could apply for to try and get funding for the groups.

Sweet Coco plays with plastic cookies and pretends to eat them along with his therapist. He also feeds cookies to animal toys for the first time. In the past when I tried extending the pretend eating with other toys he didn’t seem to “get it”. Now he does, great news!

Kamikaze and I read Cheetah Math: Learning About Division from Baby Cheetahs by Ann Whitehead Nagda. He is distressed about the plight of the Cheetah.


Wednesday

Occupational Therapy for both Tremendo and Sweet Coco happens mid-morning. Their appointments are staggered and Tremendo has a hard time waiting while Sweet Coco is still in his session. This time his patience level was good and he didn’t start trying to leave and swtich the light swtiches on and off until Sweet Coco came out. He also didn’t race too far ahead of me on the way to the car- awesome!

I get a lead from the Tremendo’s OT about where to get information about obtaining therapies through the public school system for the kids even though I’m a homeschooler- Massachusetts Advocates for Children. I don’t really want to go this route as I’ve read that having special needs services from the public schools opens the homeschooler up to more scrutiny. At this point I’ve decided to check them out after I pursue the grant information given to me by the speech therapist.

Kamikaze does reading and science. He got all the answers right on his cheetah quiz. We got the quiz from Enchanted Learning. They have a lot of activities and handouts to supplement a variety of subjects. One thing I’ve noticed though is that some handouts have typos or grammar mistakes that I’ve taken to correcting as we read them.


Thursday

Relative success! Tremendo again doesn’t want to do school so I handle Sweet Coco’s and Kamikaze’s lessons first. Math with Kamikaze takes 90 minutes. I guess I need to resign myself to it. We just talk too much! lol

This time I am able to get Tremendo to do Math and Reading in the late afternoon. We stop working at 5:00 pm.


Friday

Kamikaze and I continue with our study of the cheetah. We write a long narration about the book Swift As the Wind: The Cheetah by Barbara Juster Ebensen that fills up two and half pages. Our ultimate plan with the narrations we’re doing is to use the information to make a cheetah lapbook.

While Kamikaze and I are doing science in the office, Tremendo discovers a small hole in the sheet rock on the stairs and picks at it until there is a big, gaping hole. I think I should’ve made his name for this blog Tornado. 😉 I should ask his OT next week for some ideas of how to meet this sensory need so that I don’t have to spend all winter plastering stuff.


Saturday

We go hiking. We see a lot of dogs on the trail. Tremendo appears to be really afraid of dogs. We can’t point to any incidents in his life that may have triggered this. Every time we pass a dog he freezes and tries to get Vic to carry him. We also see three horses. Tremendo seems less afraid of those but is extremely still as they pass by nonetheless.

Sweet Coco loves seeing the dogs and the horses. He’s our little nature boy. He’s fascinated by animals and insects. He also hikes the whole two miles without having to be carried on Vic’s shoulders. He’s getting strong and hefty.



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