At the beginning of this month we started "homeschooling" Viv.
Obviously she's still too young that we wouldn't even consider her going to nursery school or anything yet, but we wanted to start some fun learning activities at home to both help pass the time and also to learn some basic things.
One of the special things we've been doing is reading a story or two and then making crafts to go along with the stories.
It's simple, keeps Viv focused and busy, and a whole lot of fun for both of us!
I love watching her concentrate on her projects and listen to the stories.
She is slower on her speech and before we panic or get her a speech therapist, we're really just devoting a lot of time into books and projects and trying to help her with her words during these special times.
(I'll dig into her speech and our at-home learning in a separate post)
Anyway, back to our original topic...
sorry, I'm really great at getting off topic.
Today I decided to spend a little time learning and reading about the moon in honor of the incredibly gorgeous harvest moon that is happening now!
We spent some time outside looking into the sky at the moon last night and this morning Viv kept pointing out the window trying to find it...bless her little heart.
This afternoon during Penny's nap time I had Viv help me pick out a couple books about the moon and we sat on the couch and snuggled up while we read our stories.
We read Little Moon Dog by Helen Ward and the classic Papa, Please Get The Moon for Me by Eric Carle.
Reading together is one of my most treasured times.
After we read our stories and laughed at all the pictures (she thinks that every picture in every book is hysterical) we got out her craft bin!
I had her paint a sheet of tissue paper with watercolors and color a sheet of yellow construction paper.
She sat in my lap while I cut out the moon and stars and she helped me glue the yarn and stars together.
She is always so proud of her projects when they're finished and hung on the wall.
As soon as Josh gets home she takes him by the hand and shows him everything she did - it's adorable.
I love that something so simple can make her so happy and joyful.
We've done a bunch of these "Read and Create" projects so I'll have to catch up posting those.
How sweet! These are the moments we cherish as moms...
ReplyDeleteAs for the speech, just to share, when Sam was around age 2 (or a little over, I seem to remember), he had just a handful of words he used. He mostly grunted at things. Suddenly, when HE decided to, he was speaking in full sentences. Out of the blue. Earlier that year we had bumped into an old friend at the mall who was a child's speech therapist, and she had pulled Sam aside to talk to him a bit... she came back saying he was fine--he'd talk when he felt like it. She was right!
- Amy Pak