Here recently (about 3 weeks ago) I collected a fun nugget from a fellow blogger and started doing alphabet crafts with Bear. So since then he has been able to specify what letter is which when it is presented to him.
(mind the ugly border thingy and the ugly wall... this room has yet to get a coat or 20 of paint!)Also when we would say the alphabet we would also sign it just for fun and b.c what will it hurt for him to know sign language right. I am by no means a proficient at sign language but we did start him out on baby sign and now that he is learning alphabet in sign language, I feel we are creating a window of opportunity for his future that may not have otherwise been there.
When we are driving I will say the alphabet to him while signing. (YES the other hand is on the steering wheel!). He gets a kick out of this and when I am done he will put his hands up in the air and start moving his little fingers all about while saying the alphabet.
He can identify most of the hand signs when we make them and ask him what they are. We do this out of order mostly also so that he is just not memorizing placement. We also do this with his letters. We will pick out a word and have him spell it from the paper for us.
Conveniently enough J and I usually have on tee shirts with writing on them so when he is sitting on the potty and I am placed on the tiny stool in front of the toilet (for a quick break while he does his business) he will read off the letters on my shirt. I will get him to trace the letters with his fingers. He is cruising right along in this learning season.
I recently bought 3 curriculum books from Mardel geared toward toddler/preschool age children. I found one that is PERFECT for Bear. It has the alphabet in it but ALSO it has pictures with the alphabet that you can match AND it has a picture of the HAND SIGN right along with it! I say Thank YOU JESUS for such a fun little gift.
He has also been playing Memory and loving it. J and I have a collection of children's games b.c we LOVE to play games and children games are always more fun AND we love having our nieces over and getting involved in their world through games.
So Bear has a new game that he plays now. We only take about 5 picture pairs out of the box and use only those so as to not overwhelm him. Then we lay them face up and ask him to find the matches. Or we will pull out one of the matches and ask him to find the other one. He LOVES this and will do it over and over again.
We switch up the 5 pairs and for a bit of a challenge we split the pairs and keep one set in a pile and the other set we lay out in rows on the table before him. I will flip my card over and ask him to look for the match. He will flip cards over and if it is not a match he will say "nope" and flip it back over and continue searching until he finds the match. When he finds one that fits the criteria he will examine both cards and look at me and CHEER so enthusiastically. As do I.
I am loving this new phase of life.
It is funny to see Moe baby right along side him learning also. He will mimick his bubby in everything he does. So we are sure to spread some of the learning on to him as well. I have just been working with him in word recognition. So far he has it down but there are still some words that he is having difficulties saying. His vocabulary has bloomed in the past 2 months, we are so proud of him!
He has been so used to whining for everything he wanted. We have NEVER condoned this behavior but for some reason it was easier for him to whine than to speak (yes I know... duh!). We did teach him baby sign also but he would rarely use it. We would ask him to use his words and he would then sign. But now that Bear has been talking all the time he is picking up on WORDS galore and doing great with them.
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1 comment:
yay for learning! Sounds like ya'll are doing awesome. Way to go Bear!!!
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