Summertime Learning and Fun

The Boy Who Doesn't Talk (much) as you may have gathered has a few speech delays. I didn't start to worry about them until he was 3 and even now I'm not overly concerned.  He talks when he has something to say.  He started working with a Speech Pathologist, who happens to be a very dear friend of mine, at the age of 3. After several months of progress she asked if I had considered putting him into the school system. At age 3. I had never heard of such a thing. There was testing to be done but we soon discovered that he did in fact qualify for school services at the age of 3. The Boy Who Doesn't Talk (much) enjoys school and it has helped tremendously. However, as we all know, summertime is when even the brightest children can have some regression.

To combat this Peanut has accepted the challenge of helping The Boy Who Doesn't Talk (much) during the summer months. I have come up with some "lesson plans". I use the quotes because nothing is really set in stone.  I have divided the summer up into units that have a specific theme.  For the first two weeks the theme centered around camping because the second week we spent at a cabin in the woods down by the lake.  Peanut and I read stories to him like "Curious George goes Camping" by Margaret Ray, "Just Me and My Dad" by Mercer Mayer, and "Fred and Ted Go Camping" by Peter Eastman.  There were crafts that could be related to camping like painting with marshmallows, making an owl out of feathers I found on clearance at Walmart.  Pinterest led me to some great activities such as colorful pages with rows of fish.  The fish were in a certain pattern and the fish at the end were in black and white and could either be colored but we used the colorful Goldfish Crackers and this lesson was fun, delicious, AND helped with math skills.

Check out this link to painting with marshmallows.

The second unit was about dinosaurs.  This is not The Boy Who Doesn't Talk (much)'s favorite subject.  He thinks dinosaurs are mean and scary and I had hopes that during this unit he would come away more brave.  Dinosaurs are still not his favorite, and that's ok.  He was able to work on his fine motor skills with a giant coloring book I found at the Dollar Tree. It only had 30 or so pages, but that was plenty for our two week lessons.  Each day I also prepared three lines for him to read and then rewrite in a writing tablet I purchased at Walmart. His Kindergarten teacher was kind enough to send home a copy of the sight words he worked on (and will continue to work on next year when we do another round of Kindergarten).  With these sight words and a few extra here and there I've come up with a few sentences.  During the Camping Unit his sentences looked something like, "I like to fish", "We like to camp",  or "I see a red fish". Fish and Camp were not a sight words but they fit the unit. I only add one or two non-sight words to his writing pages.  For the Dinosaur Unit I threw in the word "dinosaur". My goal here is that the more he writes these words the better chance he'll have at remember them.  I've noticed the words I used more frequently were the words he was able to read during a little quiz I gave him yesterday.

As a reward, Nickel and I took him to a local museum where they currently have a dinosaur display. Peanut was sound asleep when we left so we gave her the afternoon off from all of us.

Pictured here with daddy, The Boy Who Doesn't Talk (much) was a little nervous at the sheer size of the beasts that actually moved (albeit robotically) and roared.

This little gadget allowed you to put a "real" dinosaur egg in to be scanned and you could learn what sort of dinosaur is inside. There were four eggs and of course The Boy had to do them all.  We stayed in this area just long enough to see them but quickly moved on to see the rest of the museum and to play.  Outside, across the street there is a castle that with admission to the museum could play at as well. The Boy led Nickel and I to the top of one tower and around in circles.  I should have taken a picture of the castle as it is quite impressive.  At the back of the castle we found some xylophones and the The Boy wrestled with an alligator!

We concluded our Dinosaur Unit with a trip to Cherry Berry where we cooled down a bit.  Up next is the most anticipated Space Unit, which happens to be high on The Boy's interest list.  We're considering taking a trip to the Science Museum in OKC in a couple of weeks.


"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." Benjamin Franklin