Colouring Pages!

Now Bee is growing up I love to do crafty things with her and one of our easiest and most frequent is colouring. When Bee was tiny our first forays into wielding a crayon involved a pad I'd gone out and bought 'specially at Mothercare, I'd been so excited at getting Bee started. Sadly for me she really didn't seem interested, crayons were clearly for chewing on, not drawing.

As she grew it became easier to encourage her to scribble with the crayon rather than eat it, although her attention-span was very short. The paper just wasn't holding her interest and, thinking back, it's not surprising. To give her something to focus on I went out and bought some colouring books with large, simple pictures and it became useful for me to focus Bee's attention on individual parts of the picture: "let's colour the dolly's shoes" etc.

Bee has a very short attention span across the board, not just with colouring so I was pleased when the colouring books seemed to improve matters a little. Still, it wasn't enough. I could maybe get 2 or 3 minutes of really focused attention off Bee before she was emptying the crayon box and wandering away from the table, looking for something else to play with. It's important to me that Bee starts to master simple skills like holding a crayon correctly and control techniques. They are things that will become neccessary as she gets older and we don't want her attention problems to prevent her from achieving. 

One day last week inspiration struck. At home we have a digital photo frame that flashes up with a new picture every 5 seconds or so and Bee loves to sit and watch the pictures change, telling me who's on each picture. One morning, while sitting together and watchingt he frame it occured to me that the pictures Bee likes best are of people she knows. She could look at pictures of herself and the people close to her for ages and not get as easily distracted as with other things.

So I got myself on Photoshop and here is the result:

 

I made 5 different ones in total, all with Bee and various combinations of her loved ones. They were easy to photocopy from there to keep her with a constant supply. So far she loves them and we've had great fun colouring Mama's nose in blue and Daddy's nose in green, Grandma's ears in red and Bee's mouth in purple! So far these personal colouring sheets have held Bee's attention for the longest and so far I've got a good ten minutes of colouring out of her before she starts to lose focus, a record!

If anyone would like to know how these are made:

• Open your picture in Photoshop
• Choose 'filter' from the menus at the top
• From there go into 'sketch' and choose 'photocopy'
• This should open a new box where you can change a few levels about to get it looking how you want.
• Save as a JPG and print!

This doesn't work well with all pictures, some are too busy for them to colour out with large white spaces and can be very black so you might need to try a few different ones.

I've noticed since using these that Bee's accuracy seems to be getting better. To the untrained eye it may look like she's just randomly placing scribbles across the page but if you ask her to colour a specific part of the picture you'll find the scribbles are centered on that part. I'm really thrilled with that, it's one small step of progress along the road towards pen-control. These personalised colouring pages have really worked for us so far and I'm going to keep printing different ones so Bee has a constant stream of pictures to keep her interest.

Glorious Gloop!

 

This afternoon Bee and I have been further broadening her sensory horizons and playing in gloop! We haven't tried gloop before but I saw it on the shelf at Toys'r'Us and thought "why not?" It's designed to put in the bath but I thought that may be just a little too much sensory overload for Bee and bring on a meltdown so we started small, although still with a bath...

To start with I gave Bee some of her plastic drumsticks and we did mixing, slowly building her confidence by allowing her to interact with the gloop without touching it. She got braver as the activity progressed, handling things that had gloop on them. She enjoyed digging out gloop with her spade and filling a little bucket, then pouring it all back in and laughing as it went splat back in the baby bath!

After leaving Bee to lead the play for a while I took the tools away from her and tried hiding her little Makka Pakka and Iggle Piggle in the mixture, hoping she would be brave enough to put her hand in to retrieve them. She tried, touching the surafce with her finger but couldn't quite work up the courage to place her whole hand in. She asked me for the tools back, wanting to dig out the toys but I re-focused her back on the bath and showed her how to poke at them with her fingers. It took repeated encouragement but she eventually uncovered enough to feel confident picking them out, Makka Pakka first then Iggle Piggle.

As the session wore on Bee became more confident in touching the gloop although still had some small moments when it touched the palms of her hands, which brought on some frantic hand-washing motions until she felt it had gone. Afterwards I took her upstairs for a bath to wash off all the gloop and we had just as much fun doing splashing and washing her doll!

 

Overall we had lots and lots of fun and the gloop went much more sucessfully than I'd anticipated. We explored texture and smell (mmm cotton candy!) and, in Bee's case, taste too! I'm going to continue with the gloop in a bowl for a few more sessions and then *maybe* try a shallow bath. We'll see how it goes.

 

 

Growing Shoots!

We've had so much torrential rain recently that I've been very worried all the seeds Bee and I planted would be drowned and not grow at all. So I was thrilled just over a week ago to see little green shoots poking out of the compost! Bee got very excited about them and keeps telling me "pea hide mama, pea hide", meaning "there's peas outside!" Bee is very, very partial to peas!

The flourishing planter

Our other plants are also doing well, the tomato and carrots seeds are shooting up and soon I'm going to have to re-pot everything as the herd needs thinning! I could have avoided that if I'd been a little more experienced in growing veg but no matter, it gives Bee another sensory opportunity to get handling the compost and digging.

Carrots and tomatos

A few days ago I'd nipped to B&Q for a few bits I needed and had a quick gander at the outdoors section while I was there. To my amazement they were selling off veggies that had wilted a bit for between 5p to 50p! How could I pass that up??

So I left armed with what I'd originally gone for plus some onion and chilli plants for Bee to plant. Sadly since then it's done nothing but rain on our free days so they're still sitting in their little plastic tubs in the garden but I'm looking forward to getting out there again with Bee.

Feeding Progress

We had a meeting with Bee's speech therapist and dietician this week, which I was really looking forward to as I feel like we're stalled with the feeding progress, or lack thereof. Bee will eat almost anything, from chocolate to raw carrot, the only thing she shies from is the more 'messy' food like rice pudding and yoghurt. We know this stems from her tactile defensiveness so don't push her too much with it. While we're thrilled with Bee's varied taste, our main concern is that she just picks at food and doesn't eat any substantial amount of it. This has created a little bit of a impasse with eating, in that we can get her to eat almost anything but not enough to sustain her, so we're still very dependant on the mic-key button. Of course the obvious answer is that Bee isn't hungry. She's fed 200mls of milk down her tube every 3 hours, that's a lot for such a little tummy, it's no wonder she only picks at the solid food we offer her. To be honest I'm not entirely sure Bee even knows what hunger feels like.

I relayed our concerns to Bee's therapists and they agreed it sounded like Bee wasn't hungry. The speech therapist said that what we needed to do was create hunger in Bee which sounded like a good idea to me! So she suggested a plan which I'm hoping is going to be the turning point for Bee's eating habits:

Currently Bee has five 200ml feeds a day between the time she gets up and the time she goes to bed. During that time I also offer her breakfast, dinner and tea with snacks inbetween. The new plan will involve a change of milk from her regular Nutrini to a high-energy version. This change will help accomodate a cut from five 200ml feeds a day to just three. Two of those will take place once she is asleep in bed, with the third being mid-morning. On the solid side of things we will continue to offer Bee regular meal and snack times.

So the new routine will be as follows:

• On waking Bee will be offered breakfast. She'll be allowed 30 minutes at the table with the food and then it'll be taken away.
• Mid-morning Bee will have a 200ml milk feed and be offered a snack which she is free to move around with.
• Dinnertime Bee will be offered a meal at the table and again given 30 minutes with it.
• Mid-afternoon will be time for snack, which Bee will be free to move around with.
• Tea will be at the table again for 30 minutes.
• After Bee is asleep at bedtime she will be given two 200ml feeds of milk.

Aside from the lesser quantity of milk, the new routine is more structured. I think this will help Bee start to understand food as a sustenence than a toy or a game, which I think she does at the minute. I'm really happy with this new plan, Bee's speech therapist is always brilliant and has never steered us wrong yet. I really hope this is going to be the start of weaning Bee off the mic-key button.

Playtime at the Park

This week we had a lovely warm-but-not-hot, rain-free afternoon and so we took Bee off to the park! We've not been in a little while as the weather's been pants and we've had lots of activities to do at home.

Bee had lots of fun toddling from structure to structure, never stopping on one thing long. She's a real flitter is my girl, she reminds me of her nickname-sake: a bumblebee.

One thing this afternoon outing highlighted was Bee's increasing tolerance of grass. When we arrived she hadn't wanted to walk across the field to reach the park as the grass was slightly long and she could feel it touching her ankles and lower legs. She was insistent that I or her Grandma held her hand for reassurance. But despite her concern and obvious discomfort she made it across with no tears or tantrums.

The park is mainly rubberised surface and grass, with paths leading from structure to structure. We tried to encourage Bee to take the shortcuts across the grass to the next play thing rather than the longer path routes but she was only comfortable doing that whilst holding someone's hand. However, as the afternoon wore on she seemed to become more accoustumed with the feeling of the grass and braver with it. By the end of the afternoon Bee was tackling the grass herself without any need of encouragement or reassurance.

That's my girl!

Poorly Bee

I've got a very poorly Bee today, she's had a lot of sickness and pretty much just wants to cry. Towards the afternoon I was able to settle her with some CBeebies and her beloved Mr Tumble. Hopefully she'll pick up after a good night's sleep.

Garden Music

Recently I've been trying to encourage Bee to be more confident outside the house with different activities, hoping that they'll build her tolerance of different surfaces and textures. We've dug in the compost, planted flowers and seeds and played with the garden hose. Next on the agenda was an activity to incorporate Bee's love of music with encouraging her outside: a tin can musical instrument! 

I'd been saving tin cans with the aim of string them together to create a sort-of wind chime/xylophone instrument that Bee could hit using her drum sticks or just bash with her hands so they clinked together. 

Of course before stringing it up in the garden our first job was to paint them!

I let Bee loose with various bright paints and some paintbrushes and she really enjoyed making marks on the tins and 'mixing' the paint in the bowls. I had to encourage her to paint the sides, she only wanted to do the tops. I found she was more willing to paint the sides when I placed the tin on a bottle of paint.

The following day, once the tins had dried I used a nail and a hammer to punch a hole in the top of each one before spraying them with a clear acrylic to make them weather-proof. Once they were again dry I threaded twine through the holes, strung them all together and hung them across one of our fence panels.

Bee has had great fun making 'music' with her new tin can instrument and I'm hoping to make a few more garden musical items to add as summer wears on. If this rain ever goes away!

The Last Seeds

This morning Bee and I went out to water her planter. We've had lots of rain over the past two days but it's important to keep building Bee's confidence with the outdoors and the new textures she's been exposed to. I wrapped her in her raincoat, filled her little pink watering can and we headed outside. Bee loves water so it was very easy for her to get enthusiastic about it.

 

She quickly emptied the first lot, mostly over one plant, and asked for more. I was happy to let her carry on as long as she wanted to. It was raining a little and Bee is usually a little worried about rain so while she was concentrating on watering her little garden she wasn't thinking about the raindrops falling on her head.

 After numerous refills I had to end the fun, I was worried the poor plants were going to drown! I'm not convinced any of them are going to grow but I've got my fingers crossed, I would really enjoy helping Bee pick her first vegtables.

This afternoon we finally got round to planting the last of the seeds for indoor sowing. We had some tomato and sunflower seeds ready to go in pots with some pre-packaged compost. This came in dried pellets which needed soaking in water before we could use it. Bee had lots of fun dropping them in the jug of water I'd prepared and made a fine mess!

 

I gave her a pot at a time to fill with compost, she focuses much better doing just one at a time. I began filling the first one by using my hands to put small amounts of compost in, showing Bee how to do it. She started to tenatively used her thumb and forefinger to pick at small bits of compost and drop it into the pot. I've noticed that Bee is becoming more comfortable touching new textures as long as it's with her fingers, she's much more sensitive about the palm of her hand.

 

After filling a couple of pots using our hands I could feel Bee starting to overload a little on the texture front. She was becoming more reluctant to touch the compost and less willing to join in. I helped her wash her hands and we moved on to using a teaspoon instead, her little trowel was too big for this exercise! After picking up the spoon Bee was much happier to continue and we filled the rest of the pots with compost before moving on to the seeds. For this I placed the seeds for each pot in Bee's hand and let her tip them in, an activity she very much enjoyed. After each pot she'd ask "mo mama".

When it was all finished I placed the pots on a tray and filled Bee's watering can for her to water them. Overall we managed to get compost and water everywhere but had lots and lots of fun! I'm hoping our seeds sprout so we can have another outdoor planting session in the garden!

Delamere Delight

We took Bee to Delamere Forest this week, our region's largest area of woodland. We wanted to take advantage of a lovely sunny afternoon and continue Bee's sensory adventure in the outdoors.

Bee still enjoys the very simple play of filling and emptying containers so I brought along her bucket, hoping this would push her to touch and pick up items that she wouldn't without a solid motive to do so. We'd been preparing her all morning, talking about going to the forest in the car, how we could collect lots of things to put in her bucket, count the trees etc etc. Our experience with Bee is that sheadapts much better to things if she's had a lot of preperation.

When we arrived we stuck to the 'all-abilities' path, designed for people with mobility issues or using prams. It's flat and smoother than the natural forest floor, packed down with gravel and stones. Yet even this easier path was too much for Bee at first, when I asked if she wanted to get out of the pram and walk she replied "no, pram".

So I changed tactics. Instead of asking if she wanted to walk, when she was clearly very concerned about the surface of the path, I focused on the bucket. "Bethany look at all the lovely things for your bucket! Would you like to get out and collect things for your bucket?" This time the answer was yes. Win! 

 

I placed her on the floor and walked a little ahead, encouraging her to follow me, pointing things out as I went for her to come and look at. But nothing. She stood rooted to the spot I'd placed her, not brave enough to move her feet. The slightly uneven and loose surface was really bothering her. I kept trying with the encouragement until she started saying "mama, hand" and reaching out to me. At which point I relented.

A flower Mama!

We walked holding hands and as we went I tried to encourage Bee to notice the things on the floor as we passed; pinecones, flowers, sticks... Bee has a habit of not looking down as she walks and will quite happily walk straight off a curb and fall flat on her face.

Our first gather was a pinecone. I crouched down next to Bee and picked it up, holding it out for her to see and touch if she wanted. To my surprise she took it from me and put it straight in her bucket. Clever girl!

 

 So we moved on, still holding hands. We gathered flowers, stones, bits of grass, sticks and more pinecones.

Bee began to let go of my hand a little bit when she saw something she wanted to toddle off to. She always came quickly back reaching for me but these little independent jaunts got longer and more frequent. As the afternoon wore on we could see Bee growing visibly more confident with walking on the uneven surface and willing to take more risks, like attempting a small slope by herself and crouching down to pick something up.

 

We found a lovely bench where we stopped for a sandwich, it was hot and we were all ready for a sit down. Bee had some of an egg mayonnaise sandwish and even now I'm still amazed by how well she's doing with eating solid food. We always expected to deal with tantrums and fussiness when it came to eating. All the literature we'd read on tube-fed children said we should be prepared for a child that didn't want to eat. But Bee couldn't be more opposite. She may only eat tiny amounts at the moment but my girl will put away almost anything you put in front of her! With the exception of banana and 'sloppy' food (yoghurt etc) as she doesn't like the texture, she'll eat almost anything. Certainly anything we eat.

 

After "num nums" we moved on, still collecting, until we found the dedicated den-building section! This is a great part of Delamere that filling with piles and piles of logs, poles, sticks... anything you can use to make natural dens. There were a still a handful built up, left behind by others and Bee very much enjoyed sitting in one and filling her bucket with the contents of the forest floor. Of course the den was a little like a playhouse, and Bee loves her playhouse! 

The overall aim of our afternoon had been to enjoy the sunshine and try to increase Bee's exposure to outdoor textures, which we managed with great success. She was much more compliant that I'd expected (again me underestimating her!) and she'd experienced all kinds of textures. The only thing that really bothered her was the dandelions. I tried blowing a couple for her and trying to encourage her to do the same but she just wasn't keen.

I've been visiting Delamere with my own parents since I was a child and it felt like a lovely continuation to take Bee. She's a bit little yet to tackle the forest paths, the slope down to the lake or den-building but after the success of our first visit I'm looking forward to those days already!