Cranberry Harvest Day 2

Nick moved into a new job this year, booming beds.  In the past he's been on trash detail, so he's one happy guy this year.  The yellow rope like thing is called a boom.  Each end is hooked to a 4-wheeler and pulled slowly across a bed after the fruit has been raked and it's floating.  The boom is made up of two parts:  the rounded portion on top and a flap with a chain which hangs below.  The drivers drive extremely slow pulling the heavy fruit to one end of the bed.  Bed is the word used to describe a section of cranberries surrounded by a ditch and dike.  Cranberry beds on our marsh range in size from  1.68 - 3.52 acres.  Many of the new highland marshes built on sand have beds around 5 acres in size.

Here's a shot of the booming process from afar.

 

Here's #1 bed fully boomed and waiting to bed picked up.

 

I'd love to address your questions so please ask in the comments or on facebook.

Cranberry Harvest Has Begun

It's official!  Cranberry Harvest 2010 has begun and I have a few pictures to share.  Too tired for words tonight.  I don't know why, I didn't work harvest.  All I did today was make 10 quarts of chicken noodle soup, fold 8 loads of laundry, take kids to violin lessons, run all over town looking for size 14 hip waders, stop for 3 gallons of milk, entertain guests with a cranberry marsh tour, take oodles of pictures, help Nick with the supper dishes and orchestrate Saturday night showers.  So on with the pics.

School Time

Sam is working on making sentences. There's a card with a simple picture like a man in a van. Then he has to pick the correct words from a pile of word cards to create the sentence. He reads it and then picks a new card. That card might be a cat on a van. Then he just changes the appropriate words to create the new sentence. He really enjoys this game which could be homemade. Mine is not, it's Happy Phonics from Love to Learn.  I first bought this back when Nick was learning to read.  I used it consistently with him and played many of the more advanced games with Emily at the time, too.  I played a few games with Amber, but now am back to using the complete program with Samuel.  It's a very easy program to use and I'd recommend it to anyone with pre-readers.

Amber is working hard on Language Arts.  She's learning about synonyms, words that mean the same in her Language of God book from Catholic Heritage Curricula.

Emily and Nick are working on science.  Currently they are using the Usborne Science Encyclopedia to study botany, the study of plants.  Today they were learning about seed dispersal and germination.  They are using a free study unit from Homeschool Share.

And Little J is reading in daddy's Lazy Boy.  He loves turning pages.  The problem with that is if I give him traditional books with paper pages he has a tendency to tear them when he's turning them.  And if I give him traditional board books the pages are so thick that he has a hard time getting his fingers in between each page to turn it.  The perfect solution is to find board books with nontraditional pages.  For example, many Eric Carle books have staggered pages.  The first page is short, then the next is longer and the next longer and so on making them easy to turn.  Today he's reading The Grouchy Ladybug.  Also the Touch and Feel Animal books are great because the added textures make the pages stand apart a bit so he can turn them easily.  Today he's reading Touch and Feel Farm.

There you have it another look at our school day.

Educational Games

One child needed a little extra practice with identifying adjectives today.  I found this site with an array of educational games.  I liked the fact that it didn't require running any add-ons, but it is full of advertisements.  From what we saw, nothing offensive - satellite TV, makeup, airline tickets.  The adjective game is found in the English category.  I like doing online games because it gives the kids a chance to practice computer skills and discerning pertinent info from the unimportant info.  Sometimes kids get distracted by the advertising and don't know what they're really supposed to be reading at a particular site.  Anyway if you don't mind viewing an add before playing each game you might want to check out EZSchool.com

His First 4 Steps

Little J took 4 steps twice today. 

It happened 15 minutes ago and my heart is still all a flutter.  I never doubted that he would walk, it's just when you wait so long for something so natural the level of excitement is almost incomprehensible.  I've never posted a video, but I just might have to learn how today.

Down syndrome can bring with it a host of (he just took another 2 and now another 5 steps) physical and mental delays.  The physical delays are often caused by hypotonia, low muscle tone.  Low muscle tone brings many challenges to overcome when learning to sit, crawl, walk or anything involving muscles, which happens to be everything.  Hypotonia is not exclusive to those with Down syndrome.  It can show up in any infant, but those with Ds often take longer to overcome it.  Physical Therapy is the main "treatment".  Kathy comes to our house and works with Little J and teaches us all kinds of activities to do with him until her next visit.  Kathy and us work very hard to help Little J, but really it's all him.  He has to want it.  And we've learned to be patient yet encouraging.  Little J's physical milestones have all been met later than a typical developing child.  They do come and with great applause, squealing and sometimes a few tears we watch him develop into the little guy God created him to become.

My favorite book for Gross Motor Development.

And here is Kathy's PT suggestions until his next session:
1.  2 hands held - stand in front of him - walking
2.  take breaks and resume walking from one room to another

The second suggestion to take breaks while walking has proven very helpful.  I will say something like, "Let's go see what the boys are doing in their room."  I'll grab his hands and then we'll walk to the boys room.  If he tries to sit down, I will let go of his hands and sign "take a break".  Then after a moment I'll grab his hands again and say, "ok, let's keep going,"  Sometimes we will try to bear crawl away during his break time, but I work very hard to distract him (or I just grab his legs and pull him back towards me) into continued walking so he gets the idea of purposeful walking.  Seems like it's working well.