Sorting!

It’s so fun now that LO can walk. There is so much more she can do. (Read: So much more she can get herself into… Thank goodness for childproofing!)

Last night, she went into my room and took DH and my shoes off of the floor. She came into the living room with the different shoes in her hand and started giving us the shoes. The interesting thing was, she gave my shoes to me and DH’s shoes to him. She was so proud of herself and we were pretty impressed too. She kept doing it. Then, she brought out her shoes and made herself a little pile of her shoes (she only has her sneakers and a pair of party shoes).

Swim classes, a mother’s own personal torture

We signed LO up for swim classes a few months ago.

I had envisioned the two of us in the pool, calmly blowing bubbles and singing cute nursery rhymes as we splashed and smiled in the water. What I didn’t envision was a screaming toddler, thrashing about and trying to claw her way out of the pool while I am practically screaming the words to “Twinkle, twinkle little star”. Unfortunately, the former only happens in dream sequences.

I find myself completely dreading swim classes. But, I do see them working. LO
Is getting better at knowing where the wall is and she knows to try to turn over if she’s in the water to lay on her back. And at least she still likes to go in the pool; she just doesn’t like the classes.

Apparently, we aren’t the only parents that this happens to. In fact, I always hear the story about my own days at baby swim lessons. It was a five day course: Monday, I cried; Tuesday, I cried; Wednesday, I cried; Thursday, my mom cried; Friday, I swam.

So I guess LO is more like me when it comes to swim classes.

Building prior knowledge…

Building prior knowledge. Yet another teacher buzz word (buzz phrase?)
Prior knowledge is so important in children’s development and learning. Children should have plenty of opportunities to build prior knowledge so they can make connections (another buzz word) to their reading.

Babies are constantly building their prior knowledge. So much is new to them that they have to do it all of the time. Sometimes it’s just the chance to learn that sparks their interest.

For example, last week for her birthday someone gave LO a drum set. It’s quite cool. We tried to show her what to do with the drum sticks but she didn’t get it. Fast forward two days. I gave her the drum sticks while she was sitting in her high chair. There have been other times when she has banged toys on the high chair tray. So when I gave her the sticks in the high chair, she realized that this was similar to another time we had something like these on the high chair tray. So SHE USED HER PRIOR KNOWLEDGE! So now that she has had this prior knowledge, she understands how to use the drum sticks with the drum toy now.

Spend some time with your kids today. Try giving them the chance to build their own prior knowledge. Every time you play with your children, talk to them in the grocery store, discuss what you are doing and why, etc. you are helping them learn and develop their own prior knowledge.

Yuck-o

LO likes to put things in her mouth. Lots of things. Things that usually don’t belong there, like crayons, day-old Cheerios, the dog’s chew bone (apparently rawhide feels good for a teething baby – ewww)…

We have a word for these items in our house – yuck-o. Yuck-o means the item you are currently holding needs to be given to mommy. We only say it for things she shouldn’t eat.

LO understands the word pretty well now. To teach her what the word meant, every time I said “yuck-o”, I would hold out my hand and take the item away, always following up with something extra, praise or a distraction. Now whenever I say it, she’ll hand whatever it is over. It’s pretty great to see her learning, and even a silly word like that can be useful.