Thursday, February 11, 2010

Sienna's immersed in language!



Ways in which Sienna is immersed in language:

1. I have set my home goals along side of our SLP’s goals. I review them monthly, update it and change if necessary.

2. We have weekly SLP sessions in Peace River.

3. We have alone play time for at least 1 hour a day some activities include playing with Little People (fantastic because we play house and use everyday vocabulary like bath, wash your hands, open the fridge, sit, sleep, work on the computer, etc…), we also dress our dolls (clothing vocabulary), feed her, put her bed, sing to her, we do flashcards, play with farm animals etc…

4. We read to her every day!

5. I sing songs… she is already recognizing certain songs… some songs are Head, shoulders, knees and Toes, Wash your hands, Clean-up, Brush your teeth. I kind of makeup songs to children’s songs that I know.

6. We try to repeat the same vocabulary all day long… example, when it’s time to eat, I have her grab a plate, a cup, a spoon, a fork, etc…. when it’s time to dress, I’ll name all the clothing.

7. We talk, talk, talk! ( I have to remind myself often to use my words to describe what we are doing.)


Because we are in a remote area and we don’t have many resources, my role is extremely important in Sienna’s speech therapy. I am very fortunate that I can balance work with staying home with her. I do substitute teach in the elementary school in Falher about 2-3 days a week which is enough to get me out of the house. A few weeks ago, we visited the Grade 3 class which has studied Sound and Hearing in Science. Sienna and I went into their classroom and I spoke to them about cochlear implants, how they work, what is deafness, why children are and become deaf, etc… I would like to visit the other grades someday as it is educating for everyone especially because she is the only child with cochlear implants in our area. I had their attention for the entire 30 minutes and well my little Sunshine Sienna modeled her beautiful CI’s and she had their full attention too.


**Tuesday, Feb 16th, we go for our 6 month post-activation audiology and language evaluation. I am very excited for this as we have not really had any formal language assessment done so far and it will be very interesting to see where she is. In my eyes, which is really what truly matters, she is doing exceptionally well. I am so proud of her, she is my little bionic miracle!

1 comment:

  1. Sounds like you are becoming a walking therapy session for your sweet girl! Way to go mom and way to go Sienna! By the way ... we LOVE Little People in our house too!

    ReplyDelete