Saturday, March 6, 2004

Some new stuff on Nicholas

3/6/04: Nicholas has a wicked sense of humor and the facial expressions to go with it. A sweetheart who is free with hugs, sunshine in the morning and easy to put to bed, he's also bright, inquisitive and retains more than I imagined.

I think the whole speech thing has disctracted both him and me from how smart he is. It's hard to know if he's understanding when he couldn't repeat or acknowledge the question. But as his speech improves it's all coming out and there's a lot in his little brain. The sounds are there as well and we've reached a point where it's slowing him down to think about saying a word rather than seeing if he can even form the sound. We're very proud of how far he has come in the past year.

Nicholas has taken an interest in his workbooks so we bought a bunch of new ones to keep him interested. The toughest part is drawing the letters themselves and he gets extremely frustrated when what he draws doesn't look like what he intended. He can trace very well so we're going to stick with that for a few more weeks. In fact, one of the best things is something my mom introduced me to, dry-erase books.
They are great, allowing him to trace, erase, and trace again. We have a half dozen or so now, for words, letters, numbers and shapes and 3 different color markers. The other books he enjoys are sticker workbooks. My mom got him a maze book that he loves and he uses his finger to trace so the book can be done over and over again. I also picked up a Health and Science workbook for preschoolers. It's fun just to have a guide for things to talk about with the boys. The first few pages are about living vs. non-living things and it's been interesting putting it into terms they can apply. One of the guides for living is something that moves. Well, try telling a 2yo that a bicycle is not alive! There are other things of course... moving, growing and reproducing... but that's a lot to think of all at once. The boys aren't quite at the point of being able to consider multiple questions at once.
He knows just about the whole alphabet in Caps and is learning the lower case. Jonathon isn't too far behind and I thank the Leap Frog Fridge Phonics grandma and grandpa gave Nicholas for Christmas. What a great invention. Nicholas is the lucky kid in the family with 8 unique letters in his name, and he can find them all in the fridge magnets. Often he lines them up backwards, but it's a start.
I recently picked up a pack of Short Vowel books for him that he's really pleased with. Each book is a handful of pages and focusses on a single short vowel. At the moment I'm going with repetition and following the words with my finger.
He wants to take piano lessons (he can start Music Appreciation at the Yamaha School in the fall if he wants). He wants to go to school (I plan to enroll the boys at Amerikids this week, to start in April). He wants a kite and an Obi Wan costume and a real light saber (his birthday is in April, but I make no promises).
He wants to trade the cats in for a dog.

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