Tot School--Flexibility!

Isaiah is 44 months old

Well, official Tot School sort of got put on hold for a couple months. This break wasn't intentional, but we're trying to make the most of it. Those of you with children with special needs are probably very familiar with times like this! These days have been so full with moving into a new house, doctor appointment after doctor appointment, surgery and therapy. Things are finally starting to slow down, but in the midst of all that business a lot of learning has been taking place!

Isaiah after his tendon release surgery. He almost had to learn how to sit again as his legs were in different positions.

While we're still working on "school" stuff, there has been a focus on more physical development. Isaiah had surgery the end of August for a tendon release in order to prepare his legs to be able to bear weight. We go to his wonderful physical therapist two times a week to work on gross motor skills such as strengthening his arms to lift his body with a walker and to push himself in a wheelchair. His occupational therapist has been working with him on fine motor skills such as drawing and putting in puzzle pieces and dressing himself.

Here he had a break between physical therapy and occupational therapy. Please forgive the poor quality, I had to copy this from Twitter.

His beloved OT, Miss K working on lines and circles.

During his therapy sessions we also work on colors and identifying objects and following directions and problem solving. He's become quite proficient in choosing the correct color when asked, but he won't say the colors without a lot of prompting. His self-feeding has improved a lot, and he's finally drinking with a straw! (thanks, JanJan!)

He's been working on perfecting his straw technique by sharing smoothies with Grandma!

So at home, I've been trying to follow the therapists' lead, and I'm in the process of developing my Tot School plans based on the activities that they do with him in therapy. They have loaned us a stander with a tray, and we have been working on different fine motor skills at home, while learning shapes and colors and drawing. We're working on sorting, too, but he hasn't quite caught on yet, but he's getting better!

Coloring with Mimi and JanJan while working those legs in the stander.

Isaiah actually drew TWO CIRCLES all by himself the other day and TWO STRAIGHT LINES! That might not sound like much, but both those events were tremendous victories!

So, as things slow down, Lord willing, for us, I hope to be faithful again with Tot School. We do have some traveling coming up to visit some friends in CA, and several appointments again this week, but I do hope to get at least 2 days of official Tot School in each week (between appointments!). I've missed reading everyone's posts, as I've been too busy to even stalk all my favorite blogs! Hope everyone is doing well!

Be sure to check out the other Tot School posts linked at 1+1+1=1.

Tot School--N Week

Isaiah is 40 months old

Bible Verse: Psalm 67:4 Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon the earth.

N is for...

Notes

So we made this, that I barely remembered to get a picture of, and yes, I realize some of the notes are backwards. We'll do better next time.

Not much else

Yeah, it was a busy week....

But there are other Tot Schools that you can check out at 1+1+1=1.

This week we're living it up outside. I think O is definitely going to be Isaiah's favorite letter.

Tot School--M Week

Isaiah is 40 months old

We had a monster of a week! But I mean that in a magnificent way. :)

Bible Verse: We continued with Mark 12:30

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

I decided to keep this verse because after all this is the greatest commandment. I think it's worthy of 2 weeks.

Bible Story: Moses

Family worship has been in Leviticus (we just read through the Bible, and that's where we are right now), so we've been reading tons and tons about Moses. I didn't do any specific activities with Isaiah about Moses, but we talked about him every day!

And here are some of the other things we did, in no particular order:

Monster

I made cookies with Isaiah's help, and he was the Cookie Monster!

Machines

I was able to get this little outfit made for Isaiah with the machines that he's growing to love more and more.

Moon and Muppets

For our letter craft, I found a printout of the moon and of Kermit the frog from the Muppets. This covered 2 of Isaiah's current favorites, Moonpowder and The Muppets. Just to tell you how much Isaiah loves his muppets...usually his first word in the morning when I come to get him out of bed is outside. Several times lately he has said uppets before saying outside. Now that should tell you something!

Meet

We finally got to meet Birdie! We've been waiting for quite some time now. The day before we were going to get to meet her, I told Isaiah at bedtime, Tomorrow we get to go see Birdie! I mentioned this several times. The next morning, first thing, Isaiah said Outside? Birdie? (which sounds like Buddy, it's so cute!)

Miss

Not like the adorable little miss pictured above with her mommy. This is for missing Daddy! Every day Daddy would call and talk to Isaiah, and this is how Isaiah looked while talking to him, except when he was covering the phone with kisses!

Material

I took scraps of material from old sewing projects and put them in 2 of Isaiah's bowels, thinking, of course, he'll love to move them back and forth. The 2nd picture shows you how interesting he found this activity.

Magazine

Isaiah loves his 'azines as he calls them. My mama graciously sends us some magazines on a fairly regular basis. They're all about North Carolina, where I'm originally from, so I really enjoy them, too!

We also ate at McDonald's (how could we skip that during M week?!). I also made us some meatballs, which were not enthusiastically received for some reason.

We sang My God is so Big, I May Never March..., Majesty, All Must be Well, My Hat Has 3 Corners, The Ants go Marching. Music is always a big part of every day for us! We listen to it, sing it, play it, the works.

We read Moonpowder (over and over and over again!), I Love You, Mommy and of course lots from the Bible.

And finally, M is for...

Mohawk

During bathtime I just couldn't resist giving Isaiah this cute 'do.

(Please ignore the mildew on the wall behind the tub. I have scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed, and it just will not come off. But hey, it's another M for us, right?)

Be sure to enjoy the other Tot Schools linked at 1+1+1=1. And we're getting a notable start for N Week!

Tot School--L Week

Isaiah is almost 41 months

L is for Life, and we had a lot of interesting experiences in our lives this week!

Bible Verse:

Mark 12:30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

Bible Story:

Lazarus

Unfortunately, I couldn't think of any great crafts for this Bible story to increase hand coordination for Isaiah, so we acted out the story with some of his little animals. Lazarus was the lion (since they both started with L). I hope that doesn't seem too sacrilegious! We didn't have an animal for Jesus. And Isaiah's little cloth briefcase sufficed for the tomb. So Isaiah enjoyed putting Lazarus into the tomb, but I had to convince him that Mary and Martha didn't need to go in the tomb, too. Then he enjoyed taking Lazarus back out when I finished the telling him the story.

Laundry basket

Which apparently has suddenly begun to fascinate Isaiah.

Lydia!

Lydia's mommy had their second daughter on Monday night! We got to spend all day with Lydia on Wednesday! They played so well together!

Lick

Thursday our friends Oksana and Slava came over. After lunch we were able to go for a walk in the wonderful park near our house. Isaiah and I enjoyed licking some ice cream!

Lighthouse

I made the letter L and we turned the tall side into a lighthouse. Anyone recognize which lighthouse this is supposed to be?

Legos

Isaiah actually asked to play with his legos! And guess what else! He built something with them! This is the first time that he's worked so hard to put the legos together all by himself. Before this he's only pulled them apart.

Lids

Isaiah is getting better and better at unscrewing or taking off lids these days. And he even has started to put them back on fairly well. This also has developed into a fascination with putting chap stick on his lips because he can get that lid off very easily! Hmmm....wonder where he got that idea? (anyone with the last name of Slawson willing to confess to this behavior?) :)

We did a few other things like mail letters, look through magazines, lock ourselves out of the apartment, and of course laugh lots and lots.

Some songs we sang:

O Be Careful Little Hands..., This Little Light of Mine, O Love That Will Not Let Me Go, and tons of songs with Love in them.

These last 2 pictures, don't have much to do with our Tot School, except that the applique is "Little Mechanic". I just really like them, so I had to add them! And it's like a preview for next week's M activities!

Be sure to check out the other Tot Schools around the world or helpful Tot School tips at1+1+1=1.

Tot School--K Week

Isaiah is 40 months

Hmm, this was 2 weeks ago, and I don't think that I even remember very much of what we did! But I'll do my best, just in case anyone is wondering what we were up to (i.e., Grandparents).

Bible Verse:

Ephesians 4:32 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

I must confess that I never really settled on a Bible story, though thankfully we read the Bible together as a family every day, so Isaiah didn't do without!

This first picture had nothing to do with K, but it was something that occupied Isaiah for a long time! He worked with his little pegs and pegboard all by himself! At first, I would put in the pegs and he would pull them out. Then he started trying to put them in, too. Then he realized that there was a plastic bag nearby, so that ended any attention to the pegboard, everything just went from the bowl to the plastic bag and back.

Kitchen

No pictures, but Isaiah is starting to imitate some of my actions in the kitchen. For instance, he has a bowl and a plastic bag that I keep in there with some toys for him to play with. He has started pretending to stir the toys around in the bowl and to open the plastic eggs. It's really cute.

Kick

With a little help, Isaiah was able to kick this soccer ball!

Karate

We karate-chopped (is that a verb?) his foam letters. He did fairly well identifying the letters that we've worked on so far.

Kangaroo

I made a letter K and Isaiah glued it and a picture of some kangaroos down. We also watched some youtube videos about these amazing creatures!

Koala

We watched some youtube videos about koala bears, too.

And now, I can only remember one song that we sang, Jesus Everlasting King, but I know there were more. This is what happens when I wait too long to post something. Oh well!

There are plenty of other Tot Schools to read about at 1+1+1=1.

Tot School--J Week

Isaiah is 40 months old

Our Bible verse this week:

Proverbs 3:15 She [wisdom] is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her.

Of course, the most precious thing to Isaiah is outside, so we changed this verse a little bit to fit what he would better understand.

Our Bible Story:

Joshua and the Battle of Jericho

And other things J is for...

Jelly

Isaiah enjoyed his first jelly and butter sandwich. He's not really into peanut butter lately (more for mama!), but he had to have jelly this week, so I improvised. He seemed to really enjoy the sweet lunch, since he ate the whole thing, and he's not a big sandwich fan.

Juxtaposed

This week Isaiah figured out that he can sit up even better by leaning up against something like the leg of our little table or the wall. He was pretty proud of himself for this accomplishment! And Mama was, too!

Jocularity

Friday night we had 3 other families join us for dinner, and Isaiah, as usual, had a blast! He was doing his normal laugh until you can't breath thing, which was really quite cute. He's getting better and better about actually playing with other children.

Just

As in just a few more M&M's, or just a few more minutes in the bath, or just one more song, or just like Daddy...

Joshua and Jericho

We read the story of Joshua and the battle of Jericho in English and Russian as always. Then we built our own wall, which ended up more like the wall of China, probably, but we had fun. We knocked it down, too, which was even more fun. Then Isaiah wanted to clean it up. He amazes me!

Some other random j activities:

We listened to some fun jazz thanks to the radio via iTunes. We jostled through the park on a nice jaunt one afternoon. It rained most of the week, so this was a treat, actually to finally get outside. We learned about jungle animals by watching some videos on YouTube. And Daddy made us jambalaya although Isaiah didn't really eat very much of that because it was pretty spicy--Yum! We jumped around the house, which brought lots of giggles. We jogged down the stairs to get the stroller, which also brought lots of giggles.

We sang: Jesus Cast a Look on Me, Jesus Loves Me, and whatever other songs we could think of that had Jesus in them. Why do I always forget these songs when I come to write my post?

We read: The Tale of Jeremy Fisher again, since that's our only J book.

And now we're Kickin' it with the letter K!

Check out the other Tot Schools at 1+1+1=1.

Tot School--G Week

Isaiah is almost 40 months old

For "G Week" we enjoyed games, gangs, gargantuous amounts of rain, and lots more, but here are some pictures from the week:

Well, actually first, our Bible verse and Bible story:

G is for God (of course!)--Deuteronomy 6:4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.

G is for Gideon

We read about Gideon in our giant family Bible (ok, not really that big, but to Isaiah it is!) and in his Russian Children's Bible (again good practice for mama). And since mama also had 3 grueling language lessons this week, Julia came to take great care of Isaiah, and she was able to read to him about Gideon without the language limitations, so he heard it correctly in both languages. And incidentally, when I returned home from my lesson one day, Isaiah was only speaking in Russian! He did a great job, too!

I had hoped to do some crafts with the Bible story this week, but 3 lessons rather did me in!

Gang

But the peaceful kind! Tuesday Isaiah and I enjoyed hanging out with Oksana and Slava (Оксана и Слава, for those of you interested in the Russian spelling). This was fun for the mamas and the boys. We were able to take a walk in the glaring sunlight (the only day we had sun this week).

Green grass growing in the ground

On the way home from Oksana and Slava's we stopped off at our park. I had forgotten how gorgeous the color green can be! We gazed at the green trees and grass with gratitude to God for bringing spring at last!

And what could be holding Isaiah's attention so well? A big machine digging in the ground, of course! He watched this for about 20 minutes with occasional smiles flashed at me.

Grandparents glued under glass

Living so far away we take every advantage to make sure that Isaiah knows his family; praise God for Skype! But I thought it would be fun to add to our collection of family pictures, so I printed out larger copies of pictures of his grandparents. First we glued them onto brightly colored pieces of paper. For the first time I let him use the glue all by himself, and he did great! He didn't want to stop!

Then I cut the paper so that a small frame was still around the picture. For glass we used something akin to contact paper, but it was a little thinner and a little more difficult to work with than what I had been used to in the States. But it worked. To work on fine motor skills, I cut a small piece for Isaiah to try to peel apart the sticky side from the backing; here's his reaction: I don't think he's a fan. :)

He did however enjoy rubbing down the "glass" to try to make it smooth over his grandparents faces.

Then he loved on them with hugs and kisses. And now he kisses them goodnight every night.

Garage

We don't own a car here, so we don't have a garage, but Isaiah does! He got this little set for Christmas, but most of the smaller cars that came with it have broken. It's supposed to shoot cars out really fast, but Isaiah enjoyed playing with it like this:

The rest of the activities/songs/foods don't have pictures, because I was usually really involved in them and couldn't take pictures.

Gravity

We dropped his animals into different containers, and they always fell. Gravity is pretty predictable that way.

Grapes

Isaiah LOVES grapes and can even say the word fairly well.

Guitar

Isaiah also LOVES the guitar. Every day when we have family worship, Daddy lets Isaiah strum the guitar after each song we sing. He even tries to use the pick now! I do hope to get a picture of this, but usually he's in my lap for family worship, and then I forget later.

We sang lots and lots this week, but here are the songs that are G-ish: God is so Good; My God is so Big; No More My God; (sensing a theme?); The Green Grass Grew All Around; Great is Thy Faithfulness; The Graham Cracker Song; and I think there were some more, but that's all I can remember for now.

We sadly did not get to read very much this week beyond the Bible story. And we don't have very many G related books anyway.

We are jumping to J next week, since we recently did H and I. See you then!

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Tot School--F Activities

This week F is for FINALLY! I finally got this post done, and in all honesty, we finally did some Tot School!

So here's some stuff that we did...

Bible Verse:

Proverbs 18:24b There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.

Bible Story:

Flood--we played a lot with his ark and his animals, but you've seen pictures of that already, and I actually didn't take any new ones, so you'll just have to trust me on that one. And during baths we talked about all the water that there must have been during the flood, and Isaiah tried to get me wet.

F is also for...

Fun with Friends

Isaiah's friend Lydia celebrated her 3rd birthday. I don't think Isaiah could have had any more fun than he did on this day, playing with the other little people. And Lydia's daddy was so nice to help him really participate in the games as well! We love our friends!

Face

I don't have a picture, but Isaiah and I got to make a face at the birthday party, too. It was a really fun craft. One of the moms had cut out different facial features for the kids to choose from and make different faces.

And sadly, F is also for fever, which is what Isaiah had several days this week, another reason for the delayed post, and really not that many activities. Thankfully F does NOT stand for fever seizures! We are praising God that it seems like Isaiah might be outgrowing those really terrible things!

Family

I told you to expect this one, didn't I? Only it didn't quite play out the way that I had in mind, but that's ok. Since Isaiah was sick we had some special family time. His grandparents don't often get to spoil him with fun, fanciful, frolicking toys (just had to get some more F's in here somehow, because we really did use them a lot!), but thanks to financial freedom, this week he got a special treat from his faithfully fond grandparents in forever hot Louisiana, his very own computer!

Flower

And since my favorite flower is a daisy, I found a print out of a stencil to make one, and we did.

Fine Motor Skills

We work on fine motor skills all the time, but this week Isaiah showed some fabulous progress! He taught himself how to unscrew a bottle cap. We figured out that he could do this when we found Zicam powder all over him and a good bit of the kitchen. Now we know not to give him a bottle unless it's ok for him to open it or it's childproof!

He's almost got the knack of fitting the cap back onto the bottle, too. But don't you just love this face!

We also sang: Five Fat Freckled Frogs, This is my Father's World, and some other songs that I can't remember, as usual.

We don't have that many F books, but we did enjoy Beatrix Potter's book about Mr. Jeremy Fisher. I've also started reading The Adventures of Frog and Toad every time Isaiah takes a bath.

He is also doing a fantastic job learning his letter sounds. We've been watching the LeapFrog Letter Factory, and he gets really into it now. It's so much fun to hear him repeat the sounds!

Don't forget to check the other Tot Schools at 1+1+1=1.