The "One" Show

For quite a few months now, Iona has been able to recognise supermarket names when she sees them, even in a different colour to their usual, e.g. "ASDA" in black on a yoghurt pot. However, this is always in its usual font, and within some sort of expected context, so I regard it more as logo recognition than actual reading. Tonight, though, she found a wildlife book on my shelf which said "do one thing". The font and design looked similar to that of the logo of "The One Show", but the context was completely different. However, she immediately said "one two" (what she calls "The One Show"), and when I asked her where she immediately pointed to the word "one"! To me, that is much closer to the skill of reading by the look-say approach, so I think I can finally say, with pride, that Iona has now read her first word!!!

Let it snow part 3

I think I've finally finished the snow unit with Iona, as the past 2 days' rain has washed the last snow away. On Thursday I made the most of it before the cold ended and the rain began, and took Iona out to play in the snow.

We went into the front garden first, where it was still pristine, and I showed her how when we walked in the snow it left footprints. I photographed mine, Daddy's and hers, and showed her a nice trail of cat footprints.

I also let Lori out into the garden and tried to photograph her prints but she ran around like a mad thing and so didn't leave any good enough ones! Unfortunately, Iona most wanted to go for a walk down the road, preferably in the middle of the road, and preferably on her own, so it all ended it tears when this wasn't allowed!

Next I took her into the back garden (from where she wouldn't be tempted to escape!), so she could play a bit more. Once she'd got hold of Lori's frameball she was happy to run around there, chasing after Lori, but she didn't seem very interested in my attempts to make a snowman. I showed her how to make a snowball, though. After we'd done playing outside we went back in, where Iona found that there was still a piece of snow stuck to her mitten. I rescued it from her and kept showing it to her as it got smaller, explaining that the snow was melting and turning back to water.

I explained more to Iona about snow melting yesterday, when we walked to the car to go to the Children's Centre. It was fairly slushy by then, and she very much enjoyed splashing in the resulting puddles.

Then, today, as I said, I finished making Iona's lapbook on snow. I printed out the photos of the footprints, and made a flip book of them. In addition, I found a website from which I could print out a world map (http://www.mapsofworld.com/) and printed out an outline map of the world. I coloured in blue (and Iona helped) the "areas where there is a lot of snow", and marked on it the names of the people who lived in the American and European Arctics (I had read to Iona during the week from a book about Arctic peoples), as well as a pointer showing where we lived. During the evenings this week I have also read "The Snow Queen" to her.

Overall, this has been my most successful unit study, possibly because I had a deadline of trying to get it finished before the snow went. I've tried to do a bit of work on it every day with her, and feel that it's really focussed my mind and given me ideas to cover things (such as forgiveness) that I probably wouldn't have tried yet. It's also the first lapbook that I've finished making.

Let it snow some more.

Iona and I have been continuing our unit study on snow. I found some resources on the net yesterday, such as video of polar bears and photos of arctic animals. Some very helpful sites were: http://webtech.kennesaw.edu/jcheek3/snow.htm and http://123child.com/UBB/showthread.php?t=3092. The second of these reminded me of a technique I learned at Sunshine Club last year - mixing shaving foam and PVA glue (with paint, too, if wished) produces home-made puffy paint. I printed a photo of Daddy outside our house, then helped Iona paint on the white puffy paint to make a snowscene. To be honest, it didn't much resemble a snowscene when she'd finished with it, as she preferred rubbing the paint off the picture and around her hands, but she enjoyed it!

Next, I decided to do some combined craft and numeracy work. I gave Iona a roll of cotton wool, and put glue in 1-5 snowman shapes on 5 sheets of paper. I then encouraged her to stick bits of cotton wool on them, all the while reinforcing the words "snowman" and "1" to "5". I drew faces on all of them and labelled them, then at bedtime stuck them up on her wall. Later, this afternoon, we went to story time at the library. In the children's area the wall is painted with a mural of a snowscene with a snowman, and during the session Iona suddenly pointed at it and said "snowman"!

While Iona was asleep this afternoon I made a flip book on "Animals that live in the snow", with photos from the computer and names written by me, which I showed her when she woke up. I also gave her a printed snowflake with the words "If we say "I'm sorry" to God he will make us as clean as snow", for her to colour. Finally, I printed out a photo of a 4-inch snowflake and wrote on it "A snowflake has 6 points". I labelled the points 1-6, reading the numbers out loud as I did so. Iona stunned me by saying each number, right up to 6 before I did each time, proving that she now knows the order of numbers 1-6!

Talking of dogs

I think Iona has finally started stringing words together, albeit with pauses between them for Mummy to acknowledge each. Yesterday, she said "Lori" (our dog's name), then, after a pause, "gone", then, after another pause "kitchen". Another milestone passed!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

The snow this year has been as thick as I've ever known it (I think it was this deep down south in '81). Consequently, I decided to concentrate less for the moment on the "Where do I live?" unit and improvise one on "Snow" (although I've not really planned it).

To begin with, I helped Iona make snowflakes out of pipe cleaners and wool, as we did last year at Sunshine Club. I twisted 3 pipe cleaners into a 6-pointed star, tied some white wool at the centre, then got Iona to help me wind it round and round them, tying it off at the top. After that, I squeezed PVA glue over it, and Iona shook blue glitter over it (while it was inside a box to reduce mess). She loved the shaking, and got upset when it was time to stop! The end result now hangs up in her bedroom, helping to make up for having to take the Christmas decorations down.

We have walked in the snow, with me explaining how the snow sounds and feels crunchy, and Iona has played a little in it, although at its thickest she didn't like falling on her hands and knees in the cold!

One of our most successful activities was making meringue snowflakes. I got the idea from the Disney FamilyFun website (http://familyfun.go.com/recipes/meringue-snowflakes-684262/), and while the mix was a bit too liquid to do more than simple 6-pointed star shapes, they were fairly easy to make, and very nice for us all to eat. Iona helped me to beat the egg whites (we don't possess a mixer, so it all had to be done by hand), and loved saying she was "mix"ing and also learning the word "whisk".

While doing this unit, I've taken the opportunity to expand Iona's counting from "one, two" to up to 6. She can't go beyond 3 yet, but it's been a good numeracy opportunity.

The unit has also gone well with the book I've started reading Iona at bedtime, which is a much simplified version of one of my all-time favourite books: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The start of it features a lot of snow, so I'm able to refer her back to what we've seen and played in during the day.

When did my baby grow up?!

I know I've probably been saying this for months, but when did my little baby become a fully-fledged, walking, talking, on-the-cusp-of-reading toddler?!! I can't believe how she's suddenly copying nearly every word we say, and remembering them later. On top of that, she's understanding far more than I thought any 20-month-old could. Since Christmas I've started a project with her on houses, and am working in an exercise book with her entitled "Where do I live?". I've put in photos of her house, her uncle's house that we visited in December, and her grandparents' house that we visited just after Christmas, and she loves looking through it, talking about it. I also put a small map of the country in, with an arrow pointing to the area where we live, saying "I live in [town]". Today she handed me the book to read to her again, so I started by reading the title "Where do I live?". She immediately answered with a word that sounded very like the name of our town! I thought I must be imagining the similarity, so I checked by reading her the page that said "I live in [town]", and she again repeated the name of the town, exactly like before. So suddenly, she doesn't just understand the question "Where do you live?", but even knows the right answer - amazing!

Ins and outs of HE

Today Iona seemed to suddenly grasp the concept and the word "in". She'd been playing with her Noah's ark and small animals, and I thought I'd heard her say "in" when putting an animal in it. Later, she got her teddy and tried to cram it into a (smaller) tin, while saying "in". We then spent some time together testing out which toy animals would fit into which containers, with Mummy saying "in" when we put them in, and "out" when we took them out. It's amazing how quickly she's growing!

I''ve also been astounded over the last week or so that when Iona points to her tummy (while saying "tu") she often then signs "food" and says "f". Likewise, just after breakfast today she said and signed food, then pointed to her tummy and said "tu". The really strange part of it is, I don't remember either David or myself ever telling her that food goes into her tummy! I guess we must have done at some point, and that for some reason it's stuck in her brain.

Happy Talking, Talking

Iona seems to be making huge leaps in her verbal ability at the moment. She's mad about colouring at the moment, and is forever asking for "colour" when she sees a pen. However, this afternoon I had to ask my husband if he'd been using the word "pen" to her, as she suddenly started pointing to his writing pen and saying, clear as a bell, "pen". I think we've both probably been using the word to her, actually, but she suddenly realised what it meant.

Then, just before she went to bed, she started saying "see" very pointedly. I couldn't relate that to any of the words she's been trying to say, so I asked her several times to repeat it and eventually said I didn't understand. She then pointed upwards towards the ceiling, and it dawned on me that several times lately she'd been asking, amongst a score of other things, what the ceiling was called. She obviously had finally remembered our answer. It's amazing to think how even the smallest words, that almost seem throwaway to us, are becoming really important to Iona's quest to understand every aspect of her world!

Potty talk

Yesterday I decided that Iona was old enough to begin seriously teaching her what a potty was for. I had previously bought her a potty training book second hand from the library, and we've looked at it several times. I'd also bought her a potty many months ago, but she'd screamed whenever I put her on it, so I'd given up at that time. Anyway, I brought the potty back downstairs, got the book out to read with Iona, and began teaching her "poo" and "wee". Teddy was also sat on his potty a couple of times. Iona wasn't too bothered to begin with, although by the end of the day she wasn't keen to sit on the potty.

I tried the same procedure again today, and then in the early evening Iona suddenly said "poo". To begin with I wondered what she was referring to, then, thankfully, I realised and whipped her nappy off. She barely sat on the potty, struggling and crying, but when she got away from it I found a "small deposit" left on the side. OK, she did the rest in her nappy shortly afterwards, but I praised her to high heaven anyway for telling me before she did it. It'll probably take a good few months yet, but at least the journey has begun!

Postscript - later in the evening Iona sat sideways on her potty, still wearing both her nappy and a great big cheeky smile directed at me, as much as to say "See, I can do it when I want to!".

The Older Man!

Well, it's been over a month since I last had time to write anything, and in that time Iona seems to have magically transformed from a baby into a full toddler! I can't believe how much she's changed and learned. She's picking up new words (or her version of them) all the time, and some of the Makaton signs for them, too. I've been trying to do a series of activities with her based on the theme of apples, and she used the sign for apple for the first time yesterday, which was exciting. She's also finally beginning to get the hang of walking, and loves to try to toddle all the way across the living room - at the moment it's 50:50 whether she makes it all the way across in one go!

Anyway, we went to the home education group at the soft play centre for the first time in several months today. It was nice to see everyone again, and Iona really enjoyed it, even though it was so busy with loads of other kids (apparently there was a party on, too). She was more confident than ever on the slide, and still loves the ball pool, although as it was the afternoon she was starting to get tired. During one of her stints in the ball pool there was a boy of about 8 playing in it with a younger girl (probably about 3), and Iona seemed to really take to him. She kept smiling at him, which he reciprocated, then when she slid down the slide and landed near him she leaned herself against him, smiling up at him with a winsome look on her face. Luckily he seemed amused, as Iona seemed to think it would be nice to rest against him, and she seemed quite happy to settle herself there, until Daddy and I decided it was time to be off. She definitely seems to have a thing for "the older man" - I think we'll have to keep an eye on her as she gets older!!