crafty Thursday!

Lucas continues to not mind when we separate from him for school in the morning. It's almost a little offensive... just kidding. Today's schedule was a little bit switched up! We started the day with support group and a great idea sharing time. Then we had a session on children's books and experience books. It was very hands-on. Although we didn't completely create any experience books (due to lack of time), we saw many examples of them and made the skeleton to create one! Now we just have to add content.

Both books are pretty unique set-ups. The large, colorful one could be used to teach pre-reading skills. Each 1-inch flap that you see can have a sentence written on it that describes the picture. The example we saw was with dinosaurs. I'm still trying to think of a good idea for this one. The second book is made out of paper "lunch" bags, which are alternated and folded in half. The unique aspect of this book is that it provides pockets. Each page of the book could have a category, and then inside the pocket could be items (from clip art or something) that fall into that category. Some categories I thought of are: clothing, farm animals, beach, grocery store, tools, etc. This particular book only has 3 pockets, but you can just use more bags to create more pockets. I'm looking forward to playing with these books when we return home!

There was a Scholastic Book Fair all day today, and although it was tempting, I refrained from buying any books. It's not that I don't love books (or to shop for that matter), but I just didn't get any. I got some great ideas though! John Tracy Clinic was selling items with their logo on it, and I bought Lucas 2 hats. Too bad his head is too big for them. I will give them away... or maybe Oma can make them bigger? (That's a hint...)

The afternoon lecture was on speech and assessments. It was fun for Nate and me to get a refresher on linguistics and the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) that we had to utilize in grad school. We were given a chart with all of the speech sounds and at what age they are typically acquired by children. Some sounds are not expected to be solidified until a child is almost 10. I think some parents were breathing a sigh of relief, including us! It helped put into perspective speech why some kids struggle with some sound production.

We finished the day with part of a lecture on literacy and had an appointment with Ms. M., Lucas's speech and language teacher. He was a little better for her, and she started to assess his speech production so that we have a good idea about which sounds Lucas can produce and which are still emerging. I look forward to seeing the results!

This afternoon we decided to spend the afternoon at Hermosa Beach. Lucas enjoyed himself, as usual, even if he was very cold after swimming. It's a good thing his daddy likes to take him into the ocean! We saw a blimp, and Daddy buried him to his chin in sand. He thought that was pretty cool.

On the way home we found some more great Mexican food at a small restaurant called El Gringo. Best of all, Lucas ate his entire dinner and sat by himself the whole time. That hasn't been the norm lately, so we were delighted.