Becca – Butterbees and Bumbleflies

How Far She Has Come

For those who know Becca, and have known her for many years, you know the trials and tribulations. But for those who might just see this post and not know, I’m going to give a little background before I get to the excitement.

Becca was born seven years ago on Saturday, so we’re just two days away from all the birthday festivities. When she was born, she was immediately a handful and Cody and I found ourselves thrust into parenthood with a baby that was fussy. A lot. So we became avid followers of the “5 S’s” from “The Happiest Baby on the Block.” (It WORKS! Try it!!) As she got older, she became more and more headstrong, and was an extremely difficult toddler, who had frequent meltdowns. She was “that kid” in the store. Randomly. Without any apparent reason. And it wasn’t for lack of discipline. We tried everything. And then a friend’s son was diagnosed with Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD), and things started to fall into place. About that same time she started mentioning that her “nose doesn’t work.” After her talking about this a LOT, and even identifying herself with a child in a wheelchair whose legs didn’t work, we started taking her seriously and the doctor visits began. We ended up in a neurologist’s office with her taking a smell test. And then our world quit spinning. Her nose didn’t work. Anosmia. We were told that because she was unable to sense positive OR negative scents, she was missing the nerves that connected her nose to her brain, and would never smell. She was termed to have “Sensory Processing Disorder due to Anosmia.” In other words, her other senses were in hyper drive to compensate for the lack of the sense of smell. And her sudden meltdowns were similar to that of an autistic child who has some sudden input that their brain can’t handle. This was her norm. So we began to work (on our own because our insurance wouldn’t cover a therapist) on how to handle inputs. We got her a mini trampoline so she could jump til her heart was content. And lots of other modifications. And she started coping. She was calmer. Because we were able to realize her needs and pre-empt a lot of her episodes.

Becca and Mommy — This photo was taken the week she turned three – right at the same time she started reading.

And then, the week before she turned three, she picked up a book she had never seen before and read it out loud. Correctly. Our world stopped again. The early childhood educator in me SCREAMED out. This wasn’t possible. She didn’t even understand rhyming yet – how could she read? I mean, we read with her every day, but how was she able to pick up long books she’d never seen before and read them – at THREE – with no formal training? Her Mother’s Day Out teacher was SO helpful that year. She gave her little challenges to do for “homework” because she saw Becca’s NEED/CRAVING for academia. And Becca just kept growing mentally. Her mental leaps and bounds were incredible. But with those leaps and bounds, we saw and suddenly learned the meaning of “Asynchronous Development.” One part of her brain was growing, but the rest wasn’t. As she got older, Grayson, her brother who is 23 1/2 months younger, was also getting older. And he was reaching physical milestones before she did. He could put on his shoes and completely dress himself before she could. He was climbing our play structure and sliding down and she was still needing help to get up. When it came time for her to do PreK, I taught her at home while he spent the day at MDO. The first semester, I allowed her to lay on the floor or stand up to work, and let her guide the instruction to things she was interested in. The second semester, I had her sit in a hard chair at the table to work and made her do so for longer and longer periods – trying to prepare her for the rigors of public school. But when she started kindergarten, I honestly wasn’t sure how our Sensory Seeking / Tactile and Auditory Defensive girl was going to do. Kindergarten was full of behavior issues, but we pressed on and she grew by leaps and bounds socially and emotionally.

This year in first grade, she has blossomed. Suddenly, she started smelling things and her senses began to level out. Girl Scouts has given her an outlet for her caring heart and adventurous outdoorsy side to really flourish, and she has worked really hard academically. She has pressed hard to control her behavior, and has succeeded on many occasions. Many profoundly gifted students are so asynchronous that their social abilities are lacking, and many are also far behind because they are not high achieving (they lack the drive to care about grades or pleasing teachers). But Becca somehow has the social AND academic abilities AND is high achieving! She WANTS to be the best. And while she fights against homework like any other kid, she’s upset when she misses one on a homework paper or especially on a test. She’s long been a perfectionist, and she was always proud when she brought home progress reports with 100 in every class. This year, she learned to accept the fact that a 97 is ok, but would always fight back to try to bring them up. That’s just the way she is. She’s very hard on herself. High school will be a challenge. But we as parents strive to encourage her to be her. “Do you” is a great theme for her. Because who she is is amazing.

We took the advice of her teachers this year, and have had her test to be in third grade at her new school next year. We won’t know the results until the end of July, and we know that God will place her wherever she needs to be. If it’s His plan for her to be in third grade, she will be. If she’s meant to stay with her age group peers, she’ll be in second grade. And we are working hard to encourage her that either result is perfect because it’s God’s plan. Her perfectionist side says she didn’t do well on the math test, but she OFTEN came home this year saying that about math tests, and then she’d get them back and would have gotten 100 or just missed one. So we really don’t know what to expect. She has to receive at least an 80% on each of the four subject area tests she took. So we anxiously await those results. This opportunity was truly made for kids like her.

And then we got more confirmation of that today. We had received an email that she’d be receiving a character award at the end of the year awards ceremony this morning, and we were ready with the phone to video when her teacher started talking. But she didn’t receive a classroom award. Instead, the principal started talking at the end, and we knew that was it. She received the “Hugo Award” – which is essentially the Student of the Year award. For all of first grade. Based on character and academic achievement. I’m still in shock at how far she has come. I can still see myself, sitting in the floor, pregnant with Gray, bear-hugging my toddler who had just had another meltdown and was screaming and kicking, and I was begging God to take away whatever was making her crazy and just calm her down. And I started singing. Softly. Under the screams, into her ear. I started singing “Amazing Grace.” Tears were streaming down my face and I gave up. I gave her to God and said, “I can’t do this anymore.” And she went limp in my arms. If I had known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have given up so quickly. But that’s exactly what I needed to do. I needed to let go and trust Him with all of her disabilities and all of her abilities. I needed to realize that He wasn’t expecting Cody and me to do this on our own. He was expecting us to trust Him with her. She isn’t ours, she is His. Once I realized that, she was free to start becoming who He has made her to be today – and beyond. I am so proud of who she is becoming. She truly has a heart of gold, and is the most loving and thoughtful person I know. We are beyond blessed to be her parents and get to watch her grow up.

Becca Hugo Collage — Becca with her teacher, Ms. Hudson, by her school sign, in the school garden, and with her principal, Ms. Palmer.

I recently asked her to finish some famous proverbs with whatever words she thought fit best. Some of them ended up super silly. But some of them ended up with my mouth hanging open. I’ll share those here. Because it speaks to the depth of her thoughts, the depth of her faith, and to possibly why the entire first grade team of teachers chose HER out of all of the kids they could select from.

It’s always darkest before … sunrise.

Never underestimate the power of … Jesus.

Don’t bite the hand that … does good.

If you lie down with dogs, you’ll … get licked all over your face.

Love all, trust … God.

An idle mind is … irresponsible and lazy.

Happy the bride who … married a good man.

Laugh and the whole world laughs with you, cry and … the world helps you.

There are none so blind as … the one who does evil.

Children should be seen and not … be ignored.

When the blind lead the blind … to Jesus, He heals them.

Happy 7th Birthday, Baby Girl! I love you, my Becca Boo!

St. Patrick’s Day Rainbow Activities

Well, so if you’re homeschooling, you may not officially have a Spring Break… or if you are public/private schooling, you may have kids who are constantly wanting SOMETHING to keep them busy! Either way, I’ve got two fun activities for you that kids of all ages could enjoy this week as we prepare for St. Patrick’s Day.

First, if you’ve got kids under age 7, who are working on spelling, reading, or even just recognizing their color words, this super fun and easy craft stick rainbow activity is for you! I wrote for my kids, but for older kids you could easily practice spelling and handwriting in a small space by having them write the color words on the sticks. (Or older siblings can write for the younger ones!)

I simply had my kids squeeze glue (working on those fine motor skills!) onto the back of a thick paper plate (to provide a nice solid backing). Then, lay the labeled craft sticks in order of the rainbow. (I purchased colored craft sticks at Walmart, but you could also have them color or paint plain sticks.) Then stretch your cotton balls and glue on top. Once it is totally dry, you can cut off the excess plate and display your beautiful rainbow!

I wish I could take total credit for this next idea, but I can’t. I saw on Pinterest somewhere a cute rainbow handprint painted sign… and then I downloaded this FREE set from Teachers Pay Teachers that was created by Lindsey from The Teacher Wife. The two activities melded together well.

The thing I love about her free printable activity is that it’s very flexible for kids of all ages and stages. To make my pots, I simply cut black construction paper out around Lindsey’s pot template and then cut out the coins from her template from yellow construction paper. Becca decided she would draw her picture first, and then tell me what to write about it. She is the one who picked that it would be a friend theme – the actual writing template says “Who is worth more to you than gold?” She decided that Gray’s should have his friends, too, so I used the blank pieces from the set and just printed out pictures of him with his friends since he wasn’t interested in drawing them on the paper. I just asked him who he wanted me to include and he told me.

There are multiple other template options in the set that would work for a variety of different ages. In fact, the two blank pot pieces I used for Gray’s pictures could also easily be used in comic strip fashion and made into a pot of gold comic book by your older artists who are really dying for an engaging project this week. I would love to see how you modify this to make it your own!

The rainbow painting was simple – I just pulled out paint, painted each child’s hand for each color, and used legal length paper to fit the most handprints together on one page.

**Note – baby wipes work great to get paint off between each color, and then you can do in-depth soap and water cleaning when you’re all done. I prefer to use acrylic paints because they dry quickly, but they are prone to staining clothing, so if you prefer, use a washable finger paint or add dish soap to tempera paint before using.

Rainbow Science with Celery!

Looking for a fun, easy, and inexpensive science project to keep your kiddos excited this Spring Break in prep for St. Patrick’s Day? Here’s a project that you can take as in depth as you want, or just set it up and leave it and look back every day!

What you’ll need are some tall cups (we used some old plastic ones), red, yellow, and blue food coloring, water, and some celery. You’ll also need some kitchen shears or a knife to trim and split the stalks.

For our experiment, we set a control group of three stalks – one in each color – and then we also had our experimental group to see if the colors would mix and blend together over time. We talked about why scientists often have a control group, and in this case we wanted to be able to simply watch the capillary action without the color mixing aspect. For our control group, we also chose to use stalks with no leaves. (Becca’s idea – remember, to follow your child’s lead and have them share their reasoning behind their ideas. Learning comes through experiencing!) In the control group, we created several small slits in the base of the celery stalks to speed the absorption of the colors.

Then for our color blending experiment, we split the celery stalks down the center, about halfway up the stalk, and then created smaller slits in the base of the stalks just like in the control group. By putting the three glasses of red, yellow, and blue water into a triangle, we could easily stick a stalk into red and yellow, one in yellow and blue, and one in blue and red. We talked about which colors we were trying to create, and Becca told Gray all about how mixing colors works, which was a great learning experience for both of them.

Then, Becca made her predictions. She predicted that the blue would climb the stalk the fastest, and that purple would be the first color combination we would see show up.

By just a few hours in, the blue color in the control group was already showing, and hints of blue were showing in the experimental group as well. She was so excited that her first prediction was correct! We’ll leave the celery stalks out for one week and discover if the colors will blend in the stalks, or if they will stay as separate colors.

For older kids, you can easily use this lesson to discuss how roots distribute water to the rest of the plant, and even to illustrate how our blood vessels carry blood to the rest of our bodies.

ALTERNATE IDEA: If you have easy access to white carnations, they are easy to do this with, as well, and the results are quite lovely (and will be pretty to look at for quite a while.) Just be careful when you split the stems in half to put into the colored water because they are easily breakable. Also, you won’t need to create slits in the base of the stem, simply make sure to cut the stem at an angle for optimum water absorption.

Looking for easy and fun rainbow activities for your toddlers? Check out these ides from my friend, Melissa over at Rolling Prairie Readers!

Keeping Christ in CHRISTmas

It’s hard in the midst of the busyness of the Christmas season to keep the focus where it should be… So might I make a suggestion? You’re already going to be doing craft projects and activities… what if you just tweaked them a bit to make sure that your focus is on Christ? Don’t worry – I’m not suggesting you invent the wheel here! Nope, Alicia Michelle of Your Vibrant Family has already done it for you! (And no, it’s not too late to get it TODAY!)

When I found out about her Christmas system, I was excited to be a reviewer! (Full discloser – I received the set in exchange for my review – these opinions shared here are my own, and links to purchase the set are affiliate links that financially benefit our family – THANK YOU!) But once we started using the system, I started to love it even more! I read through her ideas, and something she said really hit me. I mean, I had head knowledge, but there was something about reading it… this is what she said:

And suddenly, reading this, I realized that it was ok to not cram pack every single day with activity. It was even ok to not do our annual Christmas cookie exchange this year… and instead use the funds to purchase some special craft activities that we could do together as a family, and sponsor an angel from our church’s angel tree.

img_5873-2 — Becca and I painted these wooden letters and as we did, we talked about why we chose “Joy” as her middle name, and also talked about that JOY can stand for putting Jesus first, then Others, then Yourself. It was a really fun time painting together, and a great, deep conversation!

Having this mindset and focusing on the true meaning of Christmas has helped my attitude toward the season so much! It’s amazing. I mean, it seems so simple. Because it is.

Check out the Christ-Centered Christmas Banner we have put together from Alicia’s set… (You can purchase your copy of the set here!)

How we used the banner pieces:
Gray is 2 1/2 and LOVES to stick stickers! It’s a fabulous way for him to work on hand-eye coordination and build his fine motor skills, so I’m always looking for more sticker opportunities for him. He decorated the “Light of the World” banner piece with sparkly star stickers, and we talked about the star that shone over the stable where baby Jesus was born. We also talked about that Jesus can be called the “Light of the World.” Did he get it? I wasn’t sure. But the other night he made the connection when he made a star ornament at our church carnival and he said “It’s Jesus’ star over the manger! Is the ‘Light of the world!'” He also used stickers to decorate the “Merry Christmas” banner piece. He really enjoyed decorating – and when I got the banner hung up, he loved seeing his work on the wall!

Becca is working hard on her handwriting skills, but isn’t super fond of copywork. So – I thought it might be more fun if she could do her copywork onto banner pieces to be hung on the wall. She jumped on it and was so excited! She wrote Psalm 34:18 on the “Hope” banner piece, and on the “Joy” banner piece, she wrote “J is for Jesus” from the poem we read (also in the set!) about the meaning of the candy cane. Then she chose to draw a picture of Jesus on that banner piece as well.

I added a couple of family pictures to the other banner pieces to tie the focus to our specific family. Then, since we typically have a sign in the middle of our art display wall (I originally posted about this wall here), I used Alicia’s beautiful background paper that I printed on my color printer, and then ran it through my laser printer once it was totally dry… and developed a beautiful advent count-down calendar to fit in the frame that regularly hangs there… that we can mark with a dry erase marker! (If you purchase this set, please let me know, and as a thank you for your purchase, I will email you your FREE PDF copy of the “O Come, O Come Immanual” advent countdown calendar – that can easily be printed on top of her decorative paper! It’s not too late to start it!)

I am so pleased with how the whole wall turned out. I love that it’s visible from downstairs in our living room, and that it’s in a place where the kids will see it regularly (upstairs near their rooms) to remember where our focus should be this holiday season.

Another activity we did from this set was actually one I used with our AWANA K-2 group this week. We talked about the meaning of the candy cane, and the kids strung beads on pipe cleaners to make candy canes. They got to keep one, and take one to a friend at school – along with the candy cane poem printable from the set – as a Christmas gift to share Jesus with their friends! The kids had so much fun and were really excited to have a gift to take to friends. They colored the sheets in their classes once they had said their verses, or could take them home to color before giving to their friend. I’ll be doing the same thing with Becca this weekend – she’ll get to make candy canes to give to her friends, and can color the sheet as a Christmas card.

away-candy-canes

It’s so easy to use this set to stay on track, to keep your focus, and yet still accomplish all the goals you normally have during the holiday season! I so appreciate Alicia’s creation of this set, and look forward to using these parts (and more!) next year. I love that there’s so many different options, and I can use what works for our family now, and then still have new things we can add on or swap out next year, or the next!

Might I add… Don’t think if it’s after December 1st that you can’t start this!!!! It is never too late to get your focus right, and there’s always room to do stuff next year, but if you wait to get it, you’ll forget! So click here to get it today and use what you can, and just allow it to build in the future. You won’t regret it. That I can promise.

Writing About Thankfulness

thankfulness-header

In my original post in this series, I mentioned setting up a Thankful Journal for Becca, and I showed how I put it together. I wanted to show you how my original plan evolved, and what we’re doing. Becca has decided also that she wants to do her journal every day until the book is full! So, at least for now, we’re thinking we’ll keep doing this beyond November.

thankful-journal

I had her practice her handwriting to write the title on the cover, and then she has been having great fun looking through magazines to find illustrations for things she is thankful for. Right now, I’m writing “I am thankful for” and then she finishes the sentence and writes the date. We practice sounding out the words to figure out how to spell them, and I help her with silent letters or tricky spellings.

Another super fun writing activity that we did, I actually wrote the words, but she came up with them. We did this Thankful Alphabet activity, which is a free printable found here.

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Then we hung it on the refrigerator with Grayson’s list of friends he is thankful for (See my Toddler Thanksgiving post here). The kids love having their thankful lists on the fridge!

fridge

boo-thankful — Yup. That says “Lepidopterists” on L, and “Unicorns” on U. Because that’s the world we live in – one that is very scientific and based in fact, but dusted with glitter, fairy dust, and lots of make believe. 🙂

Looking for more fun FREE Thanksgiving writing and handwriting printables? Just click on the pictures below to see what else we’re working on this month!