September - "Babies and Bedtime"

New theme... new decor. They changed the entire "theme" room to make like a baby nursery. Lots of babies, bath stuff, changing area etc. Every day for school, we get sent home a daily sheet of her activities, snack she ate and her diaper information. (and when we are ready to potty train, they will work on that with her there.) I like the information I get sent home and know what she did each morning.

Each Monday, I meet with Natalie's speech therapist, Megan for 30-45 minutes before picking up Natalie from school. We talk about the previous week and their daily sessions and what they are working on. We then talk about stuff we can work on at home in conjunction with school stuff. They work on about 8-10 new words each week and review them from previous weeks. (I will be posting some videos of her language very soon.) They work on 4 areas: Auditory Training (picking out the 6 LING sounds "ah, ee, mm, ss, sh, oo" and identifying words with different syllables, Receptive Vocabulary (saying and understanding new words) , Language (practicing noun-verb sentences) and Language Experience (practicing with other kids or in small groups.)

Speech Therapy Highlights for September:

-This was a good first few weeks that Megan could see which words Natalie already knew and which ones she needed to work on.
-They worked really hard on noun-verb sentences and then moved on to (SVO) Subject-Verb-Object sentences. "Sophie eats the cereal."
-practice imitating sentences
-identifying 4 two syllable words with the same stress "airplane, hotdog, ice cream" and 8 one syllable words with differing sounds "bear, hat, shoe.."
- they worked a lot on the phrase "I want..."  (she has that one down now for sure!)

The Baby theme
they just get cute wrapping paper and cover some of the walls... such a good idea

Highlights of September:
-running in the gym for recess
-playing with Mac in the baby area
-playing in the tree area
- washing the baby with bubbles
- fingerpainting
-sorting shampoos and soaps
- rocking on the rocking horse

practicing sorting stuff

(taken from their classroom blog)

 Over the last few weeks, we spent a lot of time in the toddler bedroom.  Although we didn't actually go to sleep, we were very good at turning out the lights, tucking our friends into bed and singing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star"to them as they took a rest.  We practiced saying, "Time for bed," "Goodnight or Night Night" and of course, "Wake up!"  

After the toddlers realized that they didn't really have to go to sleep, they had a lot of fun with the Bedtime Routine.  :)  It was so fun to see the expressions on their faces as they pretended to sleep.  They especially enjoyed using flashlights to make their stars shine bright!

This month, the theme room was decorated like a nursery and filled with a lot of babies that demanded our attention!  The babies cried "Wah, Wah" because they were hungry, tired or even if they had a dirty diaper.  We bathed the babies in warm and cold water.  We dressed our babies and even changed their dirty diapers!  Lastly, we gave our babies a bottle as we rocked them to sleep and put them to bed in their cribs.

Our favorite activities of the month were taking our babies for a walk, driving our babies in the car and believe it or not, changing their diapers!  The toddlers also loved participating in our literacy circle by making the babies say, "Wah, wah, wah," "Goo, Goo," "Clap, clap, clap" "Night, night" and "Bye, Bye."

Our books of the month were "Goodnight Moon," and "The Napping House."   We sang "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" and "Rock a Bye Baby." Try reading these books or singing these songs at home.  I am very familiar with them.  

this was fun for Natalie

Megan (Nat's speech therapist) told me that Natalie wasn't too fond of this months theme. I wasn't totally surprised. She doesn't really play with baby dolls at home much (neither did Sophie) although we have all the dolls and accessories. She did have fun playing and washing the pretend babies though. This was a big hit every day.

They played "dress-up" by putting on pajamas and doing a bedtime routine. They each have their own tooth brush at school and they pretend to brush their teeth there too.

At the end of this month I got to go see their theme with the other parents. Sophie had fun tagging along. She wishes all the time she had cochlear implants so she could go to Natalie's school. :)

August - "All About Me"

Each month in Natalie's classroom at school, they have a different theme. August was "All About Me."

You can see in her pictures below all the fun things she got to do. In addition to her regular classroom activities, she gets pulled out 1:1 for speech therapy and they also incorporate what they are learning in the classroom in therapy.

All About Me was working on lots of words ranging from body parts to what we do. Natalie knew a lot of her body parts already. This month was short because school started on Aug 21st, so it was a nice month to ease into the routine of school and getting to know everyone better. We also through the state, have a Regional Hearing Loss Program and we have a teacher through them, Beth, who works with Natalie. (equivalent to what we had in NC) Since we are enrolled in OVV (Ohio Valley Voices), Beth comes out twice a month to the school and works with her there instead of coming to our house weekly. It would have been hard to squeeze in at home and since it is a service provided from the state, and Beth already works with other kids at OVV, we decided to have her work with Nat. This program ends when Natalie turns 3, so Beth will no longer work with her, but in the meantime, it is extra one-on-one she is getting at school twice a month for 1 hour.

Beth's notes from her first session said, "She had great language. She is still learning the morning routine. Said the word "head" spontaneously while making a play doh head. She also requested the "pink ball" and "green ball" with play doh. She used some jargoning today, jargon... yellow shoes... when playing with Mr. Potato head. Also nice use of conduction "Natalie (has the) read hat."

Note: The jargon portion of this is important, because now in December we are seeing less and less of "jargon" and more words and real sentences.

with teacher Julie and Fillip, Asees and Natalie

Julie #2 - the toddler room program coordinator. 

Nat and Mac. Two peas in a pod. They love each other so much and has made school so
much fun for her. Mac has one CI and the other ear has a HA (hearing aid.)

(taken from class blog)

We have had so much fun getting to know your children over the past 2 weeks!  They are a delight to have in school each day.  We truly enjoy all of the energy that they bring to the Toddler Room! 

Our first toddler theme was called, "All About Me."  Over the last few weeks, we focused on talking about the parts of the face, our family members, and even about caring for our classroom pets, "Goldfish" and "Dog."

We practiced brushing our teeth and washing our hands in the bathroom.
We especially liked looking at ourselves in the mirror as we brushed our teeth.  Don't they look clean and shiny?!?  After lots of practice, we are very good at feeding the dog and taking him on a walk outside.

Our favorite activities were playing, "Where's the dog?"(a Hide and Seek game), "Ring Around the Rosie" and singing "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes!"  Try singing one of these songs at home...your child may start to sing along! 

working on learning about all about me and body parts

mommy and Nat

Nat and Mac working with Cheryl (the 2nd speech therapist) .. Natalie's is Megan.

Mac

Natalie's artwork for August

Natalie's new school

(Back to blogging...)

Natalie started school at Ohio Valley Voices, August 21st. They are a moog centered program and children with hearing aids and cochlear implants learn spoken language here. The serve kids from birth through 2nd grade.

I can't believe she has been in 2 months already! We love it so far and so does she. She attends M-F 8:30-12:00. She is in the "Family Center" program which is ages 18 months - 3 years old. They divide the 11 kids in that class in half, so the older 6 kids are the ones Natalie mainly is around each day, besides the morning and goodbye circle time. In her classroom, they have 2 teachers, 2 teacher aides, 2 speech therapists and the family center coordinator. Everyones jobs are very specific and the day flows very well. She is assigned 1 of the speech therapists (Megan) throughout the year.

In addition to her daily school schedule, I meet with her Speech therapist Megan weekly for parent ed sessions. These last about 30-45 minutes and we meet every monday. We talk about what they work on in therapy throughout the week. We also have monthly parent group meetings with the parents and once a month we go into the classroom for an hour to observe and see what they went over for the theme that month. It is very involved but we like it that way.

The day flows very well. With all the teachers and therapists, it is generally a 2:1 or 3:1 student:teacher ratio. We love the direct learning she is receiving because of this. Every day, each child is pulled out by their speech therapist from anywhere between 25-50 minutes (depending on the child) for one-on-one therapy. This is equivalent to what Natalie received in NC at our home, but it was just 1 hour weekly sessions then.

Each morning when the kids are dropped off, the staff is trained to check the each kids equipment (hearing aids or cochlear implants.) We have Natalie's backup processors in her backpack every day. They take off each processor in the morning one she arrives and checks them to make sure they are sounding ok. They also have an on staff audiologist there full time; Stephanie. We are using her more for the maintenance stuff, if things come up. (one day, Natalie's remote control for her CI's froze up, so Stephanie was able to get a new one replaced through our manufacturer.) It is nice to not have to worry about doing any of that on my own. She also pulls Natalie in the sounds booth every so often to do an audiogram. We are seeing an audiologist for Natalie's mappings (6 month checkups on her hearing and changing the programs on her processors) at Cincinnati Childrens Hospital. I just felt more comfortable doing the mappings with an audiologist that sees a larger volume of children. OVV only has 30+ kids attending right now.

The first day I got to come with her and we only came for 90 minutes. This was more getting acquainted with the classroom and her teachers. The next day she was off, the next day she went by herself (and did great!) and then was off again. The following week she was on a regular schedule.

There are 2 areas of her classroom. They have a main area that is set up like a pretend house and then the other room is a theme room that changes monthly. A lot of their vocabulary is based around this theme and all of their projects they do incorporate this as well.

Here is a picture of the main area: They have a separate space for the living room, kitchen, laundry bedroom, bathroom and outdoors.

this picture was taken prior to school starting, so all of their props weren't quite up yet.
Note: See the real goldfish in the fishbowl?

 They staggered us on the first day, so only 6 kids came out of the 11 in her age group. We just played and got to know everyone a bit better. And they loved snack time.

friends of Natalie: Mac, Asees, Filip and Alexander (Juliana not pictured)

When we first got there, after about 10 minutes I think Natalie thought I was going to leave her. So she ran over to Jessica (teacher aide) and ran right up into her arms and wanted her to hold her. It was so cute. (Natalie tends to find one person she always does this with, whether it was at church or child watch at the YMCA, she always made sure she had 1 person that she would feel safe with.)

Jessica and Natalie

Megan (speech therapist, Asees and Jessica)

This is the sensory table and it changes up with the theme in this room about monthly. Always a favorite for the kids!

They have this large tree house tent in the corner of the theme room. It is darling and all the kids love it. Natalie decided she would bring all her toys and projects into it the first day since it was that cool.

Official 1st day of school pictures for her.. (hasn't she changed a ton Jenni?)

Every day, we get a daily report in her backpack of how she was (cheerful, happy, tired) what they had for snack time (the school provides) and what activities they worked on and her favorite thing that day. It is nice to get a daily report. Also twice a month, our regional infant hearing loss teacher (provided by the state birth - 3 years) goes to Natalie's school and plays and interacts with her for 1 hour. I get a detailed report of that too.

More blogging to come... on her monthly themes!

The Itsy Bitsy Spider

So, we are officially moved to Ohio. I have so much to catch up on with this little one. I feel like her vocabulary has just exploded this summer. (note.. I haven't even kept up on tabs of words she knows on the side.. she knows way too many to keep track of now which is amazing!) I think a good part of that influence was having Dylan home from school, because I really noticed her talking a lot more about 2 weeks after he was out of school.

Now I can't get her to be quiet! Seriously, in church today, I was constantly whispering to her to be quiet. Part of me feels like I shouldn't do that, because how awesome is it that she is speaking so much and so well and I don't want to discourage that, but on the other hand, there is times and places for us to be quiet and I can't quite figure out how to get her to "get it".

So a little story about spiders. Our new house has a big basement and all the toys are downstairs. One day Natalie was downstairs playing and I heard her kind of whispering/crying. I went downstairs to see what was the matter, and by that time she met me by the stairs. She was saying "spider on my arm", "spider on arm" "spider bite arm", "spider bite hand".

I saw a a little red spot on her hand, and it honestly just looked like a mosquito bite. I asked her if the spider was black. She replied "brown". And she went on and on about spiders the whole day. I went down in the basement playroom and looked around for any spiders and couldn't find any. I just figured it was a mosquito bite and she thought that was what it was.

Well, the next day, all the kids were down there and Dylan ran upstairs telling me he found a huge spider. So, I run down there and lo and behold.. A big, BROWN, spider downstairs. I killed it. So, Natalie was communicating to me about it the whole time and was right.

And today, she saw a big daddy long leg in the kitchen and told us, "spider on chair".. it was crawling on the floor by her chair and we killed it too. Spiders have been a huge part of her vocabulary lately. Lets hope this trend does not continue...

Goodbye Miss Jenni

We had to say one of our hardest goodbyes a few weeks ago. Jenni has been Natalie's early intervention and parent educator since Natalie was about 2 months old. She has been through everything with us. She came out to our house right after Natalie was diagnosed and has helped us tremendously. We will surely miss her. Tuesdays have been our day for therapy and it has reminded me of the book, Tuesdays with Morrie... so we are giving a farewell to our "Tuesdays with Jenni."


Our baby appointments - pre cochlear implants

And with CI's:

Our last Tuesday:

hearing the airplane outside

finding her nose

goodbye Jenni!

 Hopefully Natalie can look back at this time someday and realize how important these last 2 years were.

Just for Fun

Natalie's vocabulary is expanding every day. Here is a short video clip of a new word she learned.

Farewell to Doctors

A few weeks ago I took Natalie up to Chapel Hill for one last time, since we are moving. It was really bittersweet. I am so glad we won't have a long commute for appointments this next year but will really really miss these incredible doctors. We are forever grateful for these special people who have made some an impact on us. We are so glad that we decided to follow through with going up there since we are about 2 1/ 2 hours away.

We started off this journey of going up there when Nat was 2 1/2 months old... crazy!

this was her getting fitted for hearing aids

Dr. Buchman has been such an amazing doctor. I know we are just one of many patients, but we just think so highly of him.

Here is a picture of Nat and Dr. B the day before her CI surgery and then our last goodbye.

And dear Holly, our wonderful audiologist. She has made this whole process easy and each appointment was so thorough with so many things to check, double check, etc. We have been so blessed by her experience and the other wonderful audiologists there that have worked with Natalie too.

Jan 2012

June 2012

What an amazing 2 + years we have had there! I posted this months ago, but if you want to check out Natalie's 1 year hearing video I made, you can watch it here.