Lyla's Birthday Party

This morning we went to Lyla's 4th birthday party.  Lyla is in Carter's class at preschool.  Holly was nice enough to invite Rylan to not only tag along, but fully participate in all the activities.

After all the kids arrived, they played some games and did some crafts.

First was pin-the-heart-nose-on-the-owl.  Here is the birthday girl taking her turn.

And Carter ...

And Rylan ...

Next was a craft.  The girls got to decorate princess wands and the boys got to do masks.  Holly had baggies ready with the letters in each kid's name.

Then the kids were challenged with building the tallest tower out of conversation hearts (notice the heart theme???).

Rylan concentrated really hard on this and did a really good job!

I didn't get a picture of Carter's tower but the parents were impressed (it had a large base and multiple towers).

The kids moved upstairs to the playroom for awhile and then came back downstairs for lunch and cupcakes.

After cupcakes the kids got to do a pull-string pinata.

Carter was a competitive mad man collecting all the goodies (Goldfish, Gummy Bears, and M&Ms).

Rylan got in on the action too.

We all laughed that Carter had twice as much stuff as everyone else (I made him share).

And sorry for the blurry pictures.  My phone wasn't doing so well with the action shots!

Happy Birthday, Lyla!  We all had a blast!

Email from Ms. Anne

Randomly, Carter's teacher sent me this email today while he was at school with her.

Carter really knows how to turn on the charm with his teachers.  Ms. Anne has told me that he's her favorite but not to tell anyone, just like his teachers told me last year (and one of his speech teachers has said this too).

Winstead Hill Park

For the last few weeks, I've been taking the boys to the Franklin Library after school on Thursdays to play on the computers and get new books.

Since it was still pretty warm today, we stopped by Winstead Hill Park on our way over there since it's only a couple of miles down the road.  We've never been to this park before but there are a couple of letterboxes there so I figured it'd be fun to check it out.

One section of the park highlights the role this area played in the Battle of Franklin during the Civil War.

We found our first letterbox in the bushes along the steps behind the boys in this picture.

This is the view from the location of the above sign.

We climbed up the trail to the shelter near the top of the hill.

Inside the shelter was a map explaining some details of the Civil War battle.

The boys had fun exploring and climbing on things, especially the canon.

Next we headed to the other end of the park which has a paved nature trail.

Carter had to drag along the GIANT stick I found for him after he was complaining that Rylan's stick was bigger than his.  He took this all the way to the next letterbox and then left it there saying it was part of the park and we had to leave it.

This is a really pretty area that changed a lot from open fields to wooded areas to pretty fields with just a handful of trees.

"Huggy", as Carter says.

The second letterbox was hidden inside this tree.  I took it out to make sure there weren't any scary bugs or animals in there with it but the boys had fun putting it and the rock holding it down back.

The boys helped me do the stamping and were patient as I finished everything up.  We picked up another hitchhiker in the first letterbox (I have two now that I'm trying to place out of town).

The boys did great walking through the park and no one made me pick them up (we probably walked a mile).  On our way to the car we heard a donkey.  It was really loud but I'm sure it was on some farmland close by.  It freaked both boys out though.  They started walking much faster and kept looking in the direction the sound had come from.  I tried to explain they were safe but Rylan told me he didn't want the donkey to eat him.  We started singing songs and the boys forgot soon enough about the donkey.

Gymnastics

Yesterday Rylan had his first gymnastics class.  We dropped Carter off at school at 9 am and then started driving over to Harpeth School of Gymnastics.  I had to drop something off at a friend's house but knew we'd still probably be pretty early.

This is how excited Rylan was about gymnastics (he fell asleep around 9:25).

So we chilled out in the car in the parking lot with Rylan sleeping until a few minutes before 10 am.

When I woke Rylan up, he was really excited.  He remembers being here for Carter's classes and having to just hang out in the lobby.

There is a preschool class in the gym at the same time as the mommy-and-me class.  With the other class, we did some running back and forth across the floor and then did some stretching.

To keep their interest, the coaches gave the kids some wooden sticks to play with as they stretched.  Will and Luke are in the background of this picture.

After stretching, we split from the preschool class.  Luke is in the mommy-and-me class with Rylan and Will is in the preschool class on his own.  Both classes to the same set of skills, but the preschool class is a little more formal and advanced.

So basically we had two sets of skill courses, some time in the foam pit, and some time to bounce on the trampolines.

Coach Leslie was our class's teacher.  She had Rylan help her demonstrate some of the skills.

Rylan would do the skills course once or twice but then he'd want to stick with his favorite thing.  I don't think any of the other kids even had that much attention span, but it was the first class for most of them (this class only started last week).

Jumping into this thing and climbing out was one of Rylan's favorite things to do.

Coach Leslie floated around helping kids with different skills.

Rylan did great on the balance beams (all on his own).

The foam pit is always a blast!

Overall Rylan did really well and said he had fun.  He is one of the older kids in the class (it's for 18-36 month olds) and Coach Leslie said she's going to make sure to work on a little harder things with him so he'd be ready for the preschool class.

After Rylan and I picked Carter up from school, we played outside for awhile and went for a walk in our neighborhood.  This week had been mild and I think we got up to the mid-50s yesterday.

Rylan usually always wants me to carry him everywhere, but he did great and walked the whole 1/2 mile or so without any complaining.

Speech

Carter has been attending speech therapy through the Williamson County School System for almost one year now.  I had his annual review meeting yesterday before his scheduled Monday session.

Carter has made great progress.  He is by no means ready to "graduate" from speech but his intelligibility has improved immensely.

The middle of this page is Carter's current assessment:

"Carter is improving his use of medial and final sounds, s-blends at the word level and overall intelligibility.  Carter still presents problems in carrying over his sound production into conversational speech."

Here are Carter's current short-term goals:

• The student will improve auditory discrimination skills of target phonemes by identifying the target sound on 9/10 trials over 3 consecutive data days.
• The student will produce the following s-blends in phrases and sentences (sp, st, sm, sk) on 8/10 trials on 3 data days.
• The student will produce /s,z/ in syllables and single words on 8/10 trials on 3 data days.

Ms. Judy (Carter's speech teacher) has decided to start seeing him twice a week.  And the assistant (Ms. Vicky) that comes to his school once a week to help him with social language skills, will no longer see him.  Carter's friends have no trouble understanding him anymore and he has a normal confidence level now when talking to other people.

So now Carter goes to the elementary school on Mondays at noon and Tuesdays at 2:30 for 30 minutes each session.  I have to pick the boys up from school a few minutes early on Tuesday, but I'm so glad Carter is getting in another session.  His Monday session is just him, and on Tuesday, 15 minutes is alone and 15 minutes is with another student.

Carter is currently working on the "s" sound in the final position.  "S" is the most used sound in the English language so the most important sound for intelligibility.  Ms. Judy made Carter some really nice laminated homework sheets with velcro words to attach to them.

Carter started off with the red sheet on the left last week.  It says "Chris saw a ____".  The blank is a word with a final "s".  Carter has a lot of trouble with using a "f" sound to replace an "s" (or with just omitting it when it's in the final position).  He does a good job with single words but sentences are a lot harder.

So the red sheet has a final "s", followed by an initial "s", and then another final "s".  I was to ignore that he would say "faw" instead of "saw" and only worry about "Chris" and the interchangeable word.  Carter does not like doing anything wrong so when his homework is difficult for him, he doesn't want to practice.  Ms. Judy could tell he was struggling so we scaled back a little and are working on the two sheets on the right this week.  They say "I see ___" and "I saw ___".  And the interchangeable words are the same final "s" words.  Two final "s" position words in one sentence was just too much.  Hopefully Carter will have a little more enthusiasm with practicing this week!

Random funny thing though ... the interchangeable words that end with two s's (such as grass and boss), Carter word make two distinct "ssss" sounds for (we always exaggerate the sound when practicing).  I tried to explain that's not correct but he refuses to stop.  I get it though - he's not reading yet but is starting to understand how letters come together to make a word and having the letter twice is kind of confusing!

Carter has worked on several things this year so far.  I pulled out some of our homework to remember.  I'm not sure if Ms. Judy would say he's mastered these things, but we've certainly moved on and are tackling something much more difficult for Carter.

Carter has worked on "k" in the initial and medial positions ...

Carter did "k" and "t" sounds in the medial (and initial for t) positions in sentences ...

"G" in the initial, medial, and final positions ...

 Carter has worked on s blends.  He's done "st" and "sp" in the initial position (with "st" in sentences) ...

This was one of our more recent homework sheets.  It was to help Carter hear and realize how the initial "f" or "sp" sound sort of made these words since they have the same remaining sounds.

Overall I'm super happy with Carter's progress.  Ms. Judy says we do great with homework though I know we need to do better.  We often "cram" on the weekend.  She says that Carter is a great student.  He aims to please and works super hard.  Ms. Judy's goal is still to have Carter graduate from speech when he starts kindergarten in 1 1/2 years.

Pre-Gymnastics

Rylan starts gymnastics tomorrow.  I'm taking him to the same place Carter went last spring.  Rylan and I are going to do a mommy and me class, which is for 18 to 36 month olds.  Carter did the preschool class on his own because he was already 3 years old when enrolled (Rylan and I used to wait in the lobby and watch through the window).

It was super warm today (mid-60s by this afternoon) so I took the boys to the playground.  Rylan has never tried this before but he must realize he needs to get ready for gymnastics!

Super Skipper

Heather invited us and Missy and her kids over this morning for a playdate.  Her kids recently got this really neat new toy and the boys had a blast with it (even if they weren't jumping over it as they were supposed to!).