School {sort of}

As I've mentioned here before, my 1st son {who will be 4 years old in about 3 months} has a somewhat severe speech delay {as in he's just speaking enough to understand him when he says something in the other room!} It's a major milestone for us, and hearing him say "I love you" is one of the most amazing & precious things in the world to this momma.  It feels like the speech therapy (almost 2 years worth now) is paying off. 

Although his speech has improved significantly, we are noticing not all the sounds are perfect yet, and require practice. If you've not been around a toddler/young child lately, I'm going to state the obvious to everyone who has: you cannot MAKE them do anything they don't want to do...but I knew we needed to get in some practice...

The more he was talking, the more he was inquiring about when things were happening, or what the weather was doing outside. It seemed like a perfect opportunity to integrate some of my previous teaching experience into our daily lives...enter a blog post from Katie at The Red Kitchen as inspiration and we began our daily practice: 

Using a child sized easel I picked up at Target for $10 (with one side blackboard, one side dry erase) I created signs indicating our routine. {Everything is laminated, but only because I have a laminater at home! And I had some fun-tack (the blue stuff teachers use) to affix everything...you can buy some for about $1.50}

We start our daily routine with the calendar (a free printable I pinned and later downloaded from Mr. Printables) then talk about the weather. We "read" the "Today is..."and "The weather is" and move onto reading, writing, and math. I'd like to start integrating an activity and one-on-one play time as well, but haven't yet. I anticipated this being a complete drag, but it goes surprisingly quick...if it lasts 20 minutes, I'd say that's a long "session!"

The activities vary, but lately I've been disguising language/sound practice in with "reading"...I love pulling one over on my kids! Using a pocket chart I purchased at Target (very recently) for $1...I wrote the sounds he needs to practice most. It's amazing how much his speech has improved since starting this routine...forced hidden practice! I realized he had a hard time sitting still, so I started "dipping" him. I hold both of his hands in my hands (usually I sit on the floor and he stands in front of me) and I say the word/sound, let him fall back, he repeats the word/sound, I pull him back and say a new sound...etc. He absolutely loves this, giggles a lot, and practices everything that we need to work on!

I also purchased a mini-dry erase board from the Target $1 Section, and we practice writing sentences together...he loves writing "dots" on it...Some days we talk about shapes or numbers, use flash cards or workbooks...one day I even let him paint (which is one level below glitter in my book!) And I even have asked him if he wants to use PlayDoh, but thankfully he hasn't yet...hehe. I'm sure one of these days he will take me up on it!

This routine has really been going {surprisingly} smoothly. I try to take his lead, and go with the flow, some days he does not want to do anything, some days he does...and that's fine.

Special Thanks to Katie for the inspiration...If you have any questions, please feel free to ask in the comments section!

**I forgot to add that one of the best parts of the routine is the Little Callum (the little picture of the Little Callum doll I made next to "reading"sign) He serves as the marker to tell us what we are doing now, and what we do next...it's adorable and something that Callum likes to move himself. Again, that was based off of Katie's idea.

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