As school finishes up, I've started planning camp lessons for the boys. Colt's new hearing aids have really given me a lot of direction in regards to specific skills we need to work on. While we will start working on basic pre-school skills (letters, numbers, shapes, colors), my primary focus will be speech and working on making specific sounds commonly found in the English language. His speech pathologist and I came up with two specific goals we want to work on:
1. Identify familiar objects or people and follow simple 1-step directions involving familiar objects/people (i.e., Where's the ball? Give the ball to dad) without visual cues at least 3x daily by the beginning of August (8/3/16).
Colt's been aided since March 24, 2016. I feel like we've already made a lot of progress towards both those goals in a very short amount of time, and I really hope this summer I am able to create a fun learning environment that continues this growth.
That being said, Camp Campbell is no longer all about Colt. His little brother Cody will be in attendance, too! I am super excited about all the fun developmental activities we will get to work on. I have a feeling he will be the definition of a happy camper!
Although I am a teacher, I really don't have any experience or education when it comes to teaching little ones, so I did a lot of research on various pre-school curriculums. In the end, I decided to use Letter of the Week curriculum for Colt and Brightly Beaming Baby curriculum for Cody. Honestly, I considered purchasing curriculums, but these resources are free, easy to understand, and seem to address the goals I have for the boys. I feel like the lessons are short enough to keep Colt's attention, and they seem like something we can continue once school is back in session. For Cody, the lessons are practical (he will only be about 5 months old when CC starts), and they offer really good outside resources to help me interact and stimulate him in new and interesting ways.
I have about two weeks left of school before CC begins. I've printed off almost all of the lesson plans, made most of the copies, and will get everything laminated by the end of next week. I am really excited about the blog because this allows me to describe what we are doing along with posting pictures and a reflection on the day's activities. My hope is that I can keep my family up to date on all the cuteness I experience this summer, and I would like this to be a resource for other families who have children with hearing loss. If I can make things easier for them and help their children reach their language and development goals, then I will consider this blog a success!
