Roro, Shiloh and Jamie in quarantine

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Ice cream time!!!! Today is Monday, the kids and I wanted to do something different after their therapy. Shiloh said, “I want to eat an ice cream”. But, I remembered the last time I took them to an ice cream shop to eat ice cream cones, Roro didn’t even try it and Shiloh said it was too cold and asked me if I could warm it up. Of course, it was impossible so the only way to help Shiloh eat a little bit of it was with some pretzels I had in my backpack. He would dip them in the ice cream and then he ate them. 

However, this time it was different. They each ate a whole chocolate ice cream cone by themselves. It was so exciting!!!! I promised them that I would take them to eat ice cream cones on Mondays from now until I leave to go back to Colombia. 

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Project land!!! We did more projects this week. This time the kids and I made rocket ships and flamingos. To make the rocket ships the kids painted some paper rolls, then they decorated them with stickers and letters to spell their names. Shiloh helped me cut up the base for the rocket. Finally, I put all the pieces together with glue and tape. They loved them. It was so much fun. 

To make the flamingos, we ripped paper up and glued it on some plastic plates. Then, we made the legs with fuzzy sticks and a beak with paper. They were so careful and loved this craft. 

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This was a wonderful surprise!! Shiloh is now adding bigger numbers and only using his fingers. He’s been working on this for a few months. First of all, he started counting a small amount of objects, then bigger amounts. He would make mistakes counting because either he counted the same thing twice or he would skip things. He learned to line up objects or to organize them to help himself count easily. After that, he started learning how to represent numbers with his fingers. At the same time, I made some “adding machines”, I’ve shown some pictures of how he would add pompoms, pearls or beads. 

At this point, he’s able to add bigger numbers and he makes sure his answer is right by counting twice. I’m so proud of him, he’s also writing down the answer.  He’s still working on it by tracing numbers and letters. I love that he tries.  

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Friday!!! Shiloh drank his bottle of milk “milky bottle” standing up and without holding a blanket. He loves touching a blanket’s tag while he’s drinking his milk. However, this time he decided to do it a different way. Shiloh is growing up!!! YAYYY

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More crafts and studying for this week. Shiloh is painting a paper using a bubble wrap on his hands. The idea is to use the bags to create little circles to paint a beehive for some bees we made later of out popsicle sticks. 

Lately Shiloh has been practicing his spelling with the words: island, hive, flag, elf, turtle and lobster.  He uses magnetic letters or beads with letters on them to spell the words. He spells the word with help from the picture above. He likes spelling words and he always counts the number of letters to make sure he’s right. Spelling helps him to recognize the words and it’s a good help to start reading and writing. 

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Roro is working on his fine motor skills putting beads in bamboo skewers. he gets concentrated doing those sort of works a lot. He would only stop whenever he finishes all the beads. At the same time I’m teaching him to count the beads he puts in. It’s a good work!!

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This is one of those days when working out makes you feel better. Shiloh has been a little moody lately, he’s getting upset easily which is not normal for him. It’s probably because he’s been missing his mom, since she’s working a little bit more and she doesn’t have as much time, as she used to, to spend with the kids. I know that when Shiloh behaves like this, a good idea is to do something that involves movement. Sometimes we work out at home, with a small session of some exercises such as jumping jacks, sit ups, squats, and short sprints. They always try to do it, even though it’s still a little hard on their bodies. We also love dancing, so I play some songs that we love to dance to and that makes them feel better.  

Today, I decided to take the kids to the park for a walk around the lake, and then I saw all the stairs as shown in the picture above. I decided to get us going up and down the stairs as much as we could. I was so impressed with all the effort that the kids put into doing that. They climbed the stairs about 15 times, which is a big workout. We were exhausted, so we took a rest, lying down on the grass for a little while. 

Finally, when we got home we were so tired. The kids just wanted to drink water and they laid down on the couch for a few minutes. I think we released a lot of energy and stress. 

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Masks, guitar, and Rock!!! Before going into the clinic for the speech and physical therapy, Shiloh asked me to take a picture of him with his new guitar. He was so excited to show it to his therapists. I loved his rocker attitude! Then, I realized Roro and I had matching shirts. In fact, I noticed we all were wearing blue pants and black shirts. When Roro see in the morning with that shirt on, he wants to wear the same shirt. That was so cute. 

The kids are always so careful using their masks, washing their hands and using hand sanitizer before and after the therapy. Of course, at home too!

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New words for this week!! We’re still working on letters that have straight lines (I, F, L, T, H, E). So, we can practice tracing with a thick pencil for Shiloh and thick markers for Roro. We also practice tracing on salt with our fingers and with cotton swabs. I think that helps them to hold the pencil properly.

Shiloh has been practicing his spelling by looking at witten words and then spells the word with magnetic letters. He’s getting much better at that and also with his tracing. Just take a look of how he wrote down his name below on the turtle craft. That’s a lot of improvement!!!

Roro, as always, loves doing puzzles. This time he was doing a tangram, which he loved. At the same time, we were practicing shapes. It was so fun. He really concentrated, and finished the whole tangram.