Fun With Nursery Rhymes!

We are working on new nursery rhymes with Ava. Since mastering the finger plays "itsy-bitsy spider" and "round and round the garden" a while back, we wanted to introduce new ones to her. Ava's therapist showed me some really cool little booklets she had made with the nursery rhymes so I came home and made my own version. I found the pictures on the internet; some were already with colour and some I had to colour myself. I bought some foam sheets :

and yarn, armed myelf with scissors and a glue stick and made 5 little booklets (Humpty Dumpty, Little Miss Muffet, Jack and Jill, Hickory Dickory Dock and Hey Diddle Diddle). Here is an example of Humpty, Dumpty:

I used yarn to hold the pages together like a booklet. Then it will be easier to take the booklet apart for another game once Ava masters the rhyme - which will be to put the pictures in the correct sequential order.

I also printed off the complete nursery rhyme on one page:

Another idea is to put the pictures on popsicle sticks - as we have for "One Two Buckle My Shoe":

I will try to capture Ava's progress with these nursery rhymes on video.

Have fun!

Counting Fish

Ava is mastering her counting!

End of summer road trip

Every summer we visit my parents in beautiful Miller Lake, Ontario, which is just over three hours northwest of Toronto in the Bruce Peninsula. Ok, I know some of you other CI moms are probably killing yourselves laughing at my declaration that 3 hours constitutes a "road trip" when a real road trip should be 5-6 hours minimum. But trust me when I say that anything more than one hour in the car with Ava is a road trip. Ava hates road trips. I think I am partly to blame, because our van has a DVD player and Ava demands to have Elmo playing whenever the car starts. But sometimes I just want Ava to look out the window at um other cars, trees, windmills, signs, cemetaries, empty fields, cows grazing, cows grazing, more cows grazing (ok the drive to my parents is really boring), anything but Elmo. But one can only hear a constant repetition of:

"I want ElmoIwantElmoIwantElmoIwantElmowantElmowantElmowantElmo?wantElmoWANT ELMO ELMO ELMO ELMO PLEASE MORE ELMO MORE ELMO PLEASE!!!!! in increasing crescendo" for so long. So, I end up giving in.

While the drive may be boring, once you get there, it is truly breathtaking. My dad took us all for a hike on the Bruce Trail......

Ava loved being in the backcarrier because she had views like this......

and this......

looking in the caves for bears......

of course the hike wore her out......

We also visited the beach which is fantastic because it is shallow for such a long way out ......

and jump over the waves......

Ava was fascinated with Grandma's mailbox ...."its emtee"

no summer is complete without skipping stones.....

and chipmunks to feed......(I couldn't get a picture of Ava feeding them - she either ate the peanuts or scared the critters away)

Looking forward to our next visit at Thanksgiving!!!!