Friday, September 23, 2016

Friday Mash Up: Feudal system, Owl puke, Speech Therapy, and a Leaky Roof

I sat down to write about our week and it felt a wee bit redundant as I shared this post Thursday about many of the things we've been learning. So go read that and come back, okay? I'll wait.... are you back now? Great!  Let's move on.

The younger kids (6th grade on down) and began learning about the feudal system of land ownership this week. We pulled If You Lived in the Days of the Knights off the shelf to go along with our King Arthur book. They helped me create this white board of the levels of people in the feudal system along the way.

We really did dissect owl pellets Thursday and the kids had so much fun taking them apart and discovering the bones inside. We used a chart to try identifying them and came to the conclusion that our particular barn owls had a mostly rodent diet with just one small bird skull in the mix. We added a skull or two to our insect collection hanging on the wall (I don't remember how many, daddy took care of that task).

Thursday also had Samuel and mommy's very first speech therapy appointment. He had an evaluation four months ago and they just this week got an opening for him. At the original evaluation he had zero consonant sounds. He simply used all vowels. Strange, but true. Over the last 4 months I have worked with him at home on speech therapy and he has progressed to putting together sentences but is still missing a lot of consonant sounds. Hooray for progress!

It was an underwhelming experience. The speech therapist and I didn't get along from the get go. She introduced herself to Samuel and I and told me I could walk to the door with them but then to go sit back in the waiting room. She assured me that parents were not allowed in the room for therapy because kids get distracted. I assured her that I was going to be in the room because I'm the one who can work with him on a daily basis while she'll only see him once a week. I sat quietly in a corner of the room until she asked for my help. Samuel was great, sat at his table and tried to do what he understood, but she didn't explain anything to him or speak in sentences to him at all, so he was confused. She held up cards and said one word repeatedly hoping he would mimic her. He named what was in a picture and even tried reading her the letters on the back of cards (naming them all correctly, I might add), but she didn't notice because she was aiming for a specific word for each card that was a concept (in, on, whoa) when the picture he would happily identify was more like cat (on a table), mouse (in a box), horse (with a rider who was saying whoa). I pointed out she needed to treat him like a person and talk to him in complete sentences to explain what she wanted him to do. And that he had been reading her the letters of the words, if she would take the time to listen to him. She seemed pretty young and inexperienced with kids. We committed to go back for a month or two and see how things go. If they don't make progress with her methods we will request a different therapist or just continue working at home.

Friday was one of our favorite days - Homeschool Book Club! We were supposed to have read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Honestly, our family only made it through half the book and none of the families finished the book. It was weird. We have done Jules Verne in book club twice before, Around the World in 80 Days and Journey to the Center of the Earth, and loved them. We just didn't fall in love with this book. We had a fun discussion anyway and the kids created a gallery wall that was a collection like Captain Nemo had on the Nautilus. We also introduced our next book club title - Rascal by Sterling North. Only Makayla has read it before of all the kids. We talked about baby raccoons and what it would be like raising one, tried to guess what could happen in the book, and then just had a great visit.

In other news we finally have a working dishwasher after 6 weeks, 4 visits from the repairmen, 3 parts, and some fairy dust. To balance that out we have a leak in our roof. In a place we can't get to. Of course. Waiting on insurance seems to be a past time around here lately for one thing or another.

Next week is the end of September. Tomorrow Makayla shadows a veterinarian. We have a couple medical appointments for Mason next week, speech therapy for Samuel, Boy scouts, Cub scouts, youth group, activity day girls, and it's time to get ready for General Conference! It is one of our favorite weekends of the year and my kids have been making plans already. They have food plans, snack plans, and activity plans. They're ready to decorate their notebooks for taking notes and drawing pictures. I'm trying to decide what our special display will be for making notes about each talk. In April's spring sessions we did paper flowers and wrote the theme of their message on one side of the flower and their name on the other. Then we use those for Family Home Evening topics or morning devotionals, and so on after conference.

A few more posts from the blog this week:

How has your week been? Are you ready for the last week of September? Do you have any family traditions for General Conference?

Linking to Weekly Wrap Up.

10 comments:

  1. I'm not sure I'd have your patience with the speech therapist ... I went through something similar when my youngest was smaller and I ended up quickly moving her to another therapy center as they just "didn't get her". Kudos to you! And it sounds like a wonderful week! Excited to hear how it went as she shadowed the vet

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    1. She had a great time with the vet. She got to interview her, watch during appointments, use the microscope to diagnose roundworms in a couple dogs from one home, learned to mix and fill a syringe with two vaccines at once, and see what a day is like in this small animal vet office.

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  2. Good luck with that speech therapist! Sounds sticky. I'm glad you can stick up for yourself - I tend to be a wet noodle.

    I'll look forward to hearing about Makayla's day with the vet! When I was her age, I volunteered at a veterinarian's office for several years. It was very instructive, and I learned a lot - primarily, that veterinary work wasn't my calling! (I thought it was, but it wasn't!) Saved a lot of time and money. I bet she'll have fun, either way!

    If you guys are reading Rascal, you might also enjoy "Frosty: A Raccoon to Remember." This was one of my favorites - I re-read it many, many times.

    Have a wonderful weekend!! Hope you all are over the illness that was going through the house!

    Diana

    P.S. Yes, kids love owl pellets! We did some a few years back when we had owls in the neighborhood. :)

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    1. Thanks, I'm trying to be optimistic about that speech therapist but we'll see.

      Makayla had a great time with the vet. She got to interview her, watch during appointments, use the microscope to diagnose roundworms in a couple dogs from one home, learned to mix and fill a syringe with two vaccines at once, and see what a day is like in this small animal vet office.

      I'll look for the other raccoon book!

      Illness is still hanging around, just this awful lingering cough, and now I'm sick too. But today I feel a bit better because I don't have a headache anymore.

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  3. It sounds like you all need a new speech therapist. Don't waste to much time with that one. We have been down that road before. I hope it all works out.
    Blessings, Dawn

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    1. Thanks for the advice Dawn - I'm hoping it was just an off day for everyone and this week will be much better. But if not... we will see how long we wait before making changes.

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  4. Owl pellets are so fun! Crummy speech therapists (or any kind of therapists) are not. And we've had similar experiences with authors--loving some books but not others. I wonder what it is about that.

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    1. Therapists - you love some and you don't love some, right? I know I should be grateful that there are therapists and that our insurance will even cover a decent number of visits. But I wish we could choose any therapist instead of needing to stay within a specific set. Ugh. We also have the option of traveling an hour each way to the therapists at Children's Hospital where Mason does so many appointments, but that is a long drive for weekly therapy if we can find something workable here

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  5. I read lots of your posts on the SCM forum and saw you have a blog, and feel compelled to share my experience. This is exactly what happened to me and my then 2 year old boy, talking down to him, not wanting me in the room, confusing instructions. It made my skin crawl the way she treated him. I tried for several sessions, but in the end pulled him out. I was able to contact friends who are speech pathologists (but unfortunately not living close to us) to get lots of good information for working with him at home. I got my hands on Kaufman program (he had apraxia, 1st percentile for motor coordination) and also did the GAPS diet, and he made so much progress! I had him retested 6 months later and he was completely in the range of normal! Praise God! All without professional therapy. So, if you don't get a good therapist, I say don't waste your time. :-)

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    1. Thanks for the ideas Alyssa. I'll keep them in mind as we go forward. It amazes me how sometimes even food plays a part in things like this!

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