What activities did I do with my son today?

1. Chase the birds

- He loves to chase birds (& cats), so used this interest of his to sneak in some of my objectives. Brought him along to the local mamak while hubby & I had roti telur for breakfast. Maid supervised him while we ate & vice versa.

- Why? to run/exercise & maintain his level of stamina; to increase his speech volume (we told him he has to shout out loud "Shooo birds!" or else the birds wont fly away)

- Noted: his running has gone a bit funny again. Left arm in a more pronounced "bat wing" position. Perhaps it's because I've not taken him to the playground for 2 weeks (car's in workshop) when it used to be twice a day, on an almost daily basis.

- To work on more: Must think of ways to use other muscles....playing in baby pool perhaps

2. Help with household chores

- How? Got him to say "push" a few times whenI was pushing the old mattresses away for storage.

- Why? to use oral muscles to pucker up in order to improve articulation of the "o" and "u" sound
- To work on more: puckering

- Noted: misses out the first phenome "p" in "push", which also happens with other words especially words beginning with "m"

3. Learn to shower (self care skills)

- How? Squeezed out some shower gel unto his palm. Placed my hands over his & helped him soap his legs by moving his arms up & down his legs.

- Why? To practise this movement to help not just in learning to shower himself, but also in learning to pull down his shorts when he needs to go to toilet

- Improvement noted: No longer afraid of standing under the large fixed shower head. Also slightly easier for him to bend down & move up.

4. Pre writing skills

- How? Draw a few capital letters on the back of sand paper, cut it out & paste it on cardboard. I chose a few of the easier alphabets used in his name to start off with. Easier in the sense of straight lines, like "A" and "N" & not curved lines, like "G". Wrote the alphabet by holding his pointer & middle finger together and moving it on the sandpaper.

- Why? That's the way it's being taught in his kindergarten & it was also suggested by one of his therapists. I had also read about this method somewhere in the internet. I think it's to do with engaging his tactile sense (apart from just visual). Experts say learning happens faster when more than one sense is involved (or something like that).

- Improvement noted: A little better in keeping his two fingers together when tracing. Remembers sequence of strokes in writing "A"

- To work on more: sequence of strokes for "H"

5. Reading his "Move It! Builders" Book

- What's this book? Bought this board book when he was 2 years old to get him to use his fine motor. He loves anything to do with cars, dump trucks, diggers etc. Each page of this book features a machine with one part that is moveable e.g. wheels of the dump truck can be spun around, steering wheel can be turned left or right. Very well illustrated & designed, which helps in maintaining his interest. Bought it from Border's but also available at http://www.mytoysandbooks.com/

- Purpose & method (i): fine motor exercise by making parts of the machines move in his book e.g. pushing the bulldozer's bucket up & down; swinging the demolition ball forward & backward; sliding the crane's heavy load left & right.

- Purpose & method (ii): Introduce simple "sight" words, specifically the word "it" because it appears on every page. There are only 2 words on each page.

- Purpose & method (iii): introduce maths concept of addition/doubling. E.g. 2 wheels on this side of the dumpster, so must be another 2 wheels on other side, so 2+2 = 4

- To work on more: to use left hand more instead of just right hand

- Noted: he could not turn the very thick board page by himself, which is a bit strange because he used to be able to do it. Perhaps it's because he hasn't read this book in a long time.

6. Swing

- How? We installed a "circular" swing in his room - able to spin, not just pendular movement. Swing bought from Ikea.

- Why? To improve his vestibular & proprioception sense, balance & coordination

- Improvement noted: in the last few weeks, he's been more confident & able to climb up on the swing & played on it in different ways

7. Little Yoga book

– what is it? A book illustrating simple yoga postures (imitating animals) which toddlers can follow (on loan from Fe, thanks)

- Purpose:
i) Getting into those physical postures helps him to be more aware of his body; stretches muscles
ii) reinforce alphabet recognition- he likes to count the number of times certain alphabets appear on a page e.g. 3 letter "o" here
iii) reinforce simple sight words like “book”
iv) introducing simple maths concept & vocab - on one of the pages, there's a series of letter "z" which starts of small in size but gradually gets bigger. So he learns sequencing, & the words bigger & biggest

- To work on more: he cant do the cat posture

8. Thunderstorm

- a storm was approaching, so took it as a teaching opportunity to introduce the following:

i) the concept that when noise is far away, it's soft & gets louder as it gets nearer
ii) introduce vocab: wind starts off gentle, gets stronger, and is strongest

- Noted: He hasn't picked up the new vocab as he's using small, bigger, bigger, biggest to describe the wind speed. But was pleasantly surprised that he did the action to go along with small wind, medium wind & big wind (I had shown it to him many months ago)

9. Sticker activity

– apart from what's already mentioned in earlier post about this activity, today I also introduced maths concept of subtraction. For e.g. "ok, there were 8 more stickers to stick & you’ve just stuck another sticker, so how many more to go?" "7 more. Right!"

10. Mega Bloks & Pop Upz
- purpose:

i) use both hands to work together (e.g. when dismantling a structure)
ii) to get him to open up his palm more (e.g. when pushing down a piece of brick instead of just using pointer)
iii) to use left hand more e.g. to put a piece into place (instead of always using just right hand)
iv) to develop creativity (e.g. building a house for the kangaroo)

11. Speech

– done through out the day. Still misses out first syllable or first phenome. Certain words better like yellow. Communicates with you, e.g. kangaroo sleeping... dark outside (ie. night time)

12. Wearing shirt (self care skill)

– just started to teach this self care skill. One small step at a time...Just at the stage of using both hands to hold a shirt at the collar & pulling over the head. Can achieve it sometimes. Then shown how to put arms through sleeve & to pull down shirt

13. Toilet training

– still cant get him to sit on WC to poo poo. Too afraid? Fear of falling off WC? Painful stools?

14. Gastroc muscle/achilles

– He seems to be doing a bit more tip toe walking which is not good. Will need to get splint on more often & also passively stretch it for him...& weather permitting, climb steep hills again

15. Butterflies on a paper stand

– there's slight progress cos I could increase the distance a bit more, maybe 3 inches now