Which one is Deaf ?

Can you tell which one has hearing loss? She's the one that does most of the talking! This is Kendall, Brook's three year old cousin. She's a smarty pants too. She's been able to say her ABCs since BEFORE age 2!

Decorating CIs Part 3

Can you believe that I can not walk thru a craft store w/out wondering if the items would look good attached to my kid's head? Spent an hour today in Hobby Lobby, loved it! This is what I found. In the floral section, cute butterflies (they had birds, and more) and I simply clipped the wire off of them and attached a small piece of velcro instead. This enabled it to stick to the other velcro already attached onto the magnet of her coil when we did flowers. Another idea was to buy these cute little hats in the "make your own doll" section (yes, the witches hats would've been cute for Halloween). I simply attached these little wire stemmed flowers all the way around on one, then covering the bottom w/cardboard to hide the wire and again, velcro. I also made one w/ribbon and a single flower. Only took minutes!

How about that speech therapy!

What a beautiful day to have a little speech therapy at a park. Brook blew on some dandelions (working on the "f" sound, which is unvoiced and just air pushed out over the bottom lip). We discovered there are two Brooks in the middle photo, one is four years old and the other will make our new shoes wet when step into it. Love days like this when we take our therapy outdoors. In the other photo she was filling eggs w/different types of candy upon command of the therapist. And last but not least, in the first photo, Gage takes his "Crusher" truck he created thru the stream for a test drive.

Building better 4x4s

this is what Gage does w/his toys. He takes his trucks/cars apart only to change around their body styles and frames so that they are jacked-up instead of standard. Think he'll customize his vehicle when he gets 16?

"This is the way we sweep the floor"

I sooo remember when the kids were babies/toddlers singing "this is the way we mop the floor, or brush our teeth" we would sing this song w/everything!
Here it's "this is the way we sweep the floor, sweep the floor, sweep the floor...this is the way we sweep the floor so early in the morning" Sure it'll take longer w/a broom that size but she wants to help...songs are always good when working on speech and language

Missing Mamma

I found this in Gage's bag today when he got home from school. Must have been a rough day!

sequencing

here is a quick lesson in sequencing and foretelling: everything is a lesson;
here Brook demonstrates how she helps w/dinner and foretells in the end where the food is going!

Chores

I am not above giving the kids chores. I ask them to help out all the time, Brook especially loves to help and here are a couple of her favorites. Helping to water my pitiful plant and doing laundry. Gage helps too but is less willing and I"ll likely never get a picture to prove he actually helps. Helping out gives them self importance, helps me out, and is always a learning experience...listening following directions, sequencing, sorting, you name it, we've learned it doing chores.

Miss Independent !!!!

She REFUSED any help offered to her on this one so the coils went over the hat(which it's almost 70 outside anyway). She just purchased these items so she was determined to wear them!

Is she supposed to do this?

She don't let the fact that she just turned four, or the fact that she's profoundly deaf wearing cochlear implants stop her any! I've recently discovered she is really good at verbal math problems, no visuals were given. We both in fact are very sick, but we always make time for a few "lessons". I don't know how she does it...yet, she rarely uses fingers and it can't be coincidence, she's very consistent! Here she is.

Gotta Love the Deep South

Three days ago it was 77 degrees and thunderstorms changed that overnight. It was then in the fifties, and this morning look what happened. It's supposed to warm back up tomorrow to be followed w/temps in the sixties. Our bodies don't know how to handle this confusion so everyone I know is either sick, knows someone w/the flu or recovering themselves. ugh, where is Springtime???

Before the "ears" go on

This is when she first wakes up, she starts right in playing and continues even when she discovers her processors are not on yet.