January 19th- Building blocks

I absolutely enjoy Dominic at this age! I have always enjoyed him but it's so interesting and fun to experience each new day of learning. Every single day Dominic learns something new whether good or bad haha. He has new sounds, words, abilities and intelligence. Just today I was playing with him on the floor and was showing how to place his stacking blocks inside each other. I showed him a few times with a blue circle block placing it inside the hole of his ring stackers. He loved this and picked up on the concept very quickly. He would try blocks that were too big and I would show him the correct ones and after only a few short tries he figured it out. I then showed him how his stacker cups would fit inside of each other. He did excellent as this!

When his Daddy got home we showed him while we were making dinner that Dominic could put the cup inside the rings. Dominic knows he got it right because he would look up at Mommy and smile knowing I would praise him for getting it right. That alone was amazing!! Mommy and Daddy got curious later while playing on the floor if Dominic could stack a set of three objects. We had a blue circle block and 2 sizes of cups. We placed them in front of him in ascending size order. I showed Dominic a few times how the they fit inside each other. After I would show him I would say" It's your turn can you do it?" I would then point to the blue block then the yellow cup as I would say" Put the blue block into the yellow cup" Dominic proceded to do just these. Then as I had done before pointing to the correct object" Put the yellow cup into the red cup" and he did it as well!!! Each time he would look up with a smile and we would praise him. We did this several times before I thought I need to take a video of this, but unfortunately by this time he was bored with the game and wanted to play with his other toys.

This learning experience was so exciting to all of us. I am so thankful the whole family got to be apart of teaching Dominic the basics of stacking. I can't wait to play again tomorrow and hopefully get a video or two!!

Your Baby Can Read: Start of DVD 2

Today we started the second DVD in Your Baby Can Read series. We were suppose to start it about a week ago but with the holidays and all the traveling we didn't get to watch it as much as I felt he needed and after some advice from some fellow YBCR forum reader I decided to push back the start of the second DVD.

This morning I got out the corresponding books for the Second DVD and went over them with Dominic. I then put in the DVD while Dominic was just playing on the floor. Normally I put him in his high chair with some snack because he is so active he gets sidetracked easily. I did it differently this morning mostly so I could watch it through and see all the words that will be reviewed and to see what songs will be played so we can do them while the video isn't on.

To my surprise as soon as Dominic heard the ignition what is known as the YBCR Music he looked up at the TV and just stared (Dominic doesn't pay much attention to the TV by the way) He then crawled in my lap and watched the video. Just as he had done before he would watch the word and as soon as he saw it he would look back at me expecting me to repeat the word and make a sound or do an action. I was so excited that he was really into watching the DVD. The 2 songs for this video are "Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes" and " If your Happy and you Know It" I am happy they are doing the Head and Shoulders song because I have shown that to Dominic before and he gets a kick out of me doing it. I can't wait til he starts doing the actions as well!!

While watching the video I decided I would get out the toys he has that match the words reviewed. For example one of the words is Giraffe and he has a toy giraffe. A couple more are bucket and blanket that I can physically show him. I think that will be just an added stimuli to learning if he can physically see and item and be told what it is then link that to his "Words" as we call it here in the stack house.

Later on this afternoon during snack time I will show him the video again and of course go over the books a few times with him. He still loves the books. I am curious if I should periodically put in the first DVD for a review of the past words? I plan to continue to show him the books to keep the words fresh, and a few of them are repeated in the second DVD such as the body parts and hi, and wave.

So far we are enjoying the program, or course I am not sure if he is learning because he doesn't talk but I have a feeling he will surprise us one day by repeated a word or two or properly naming his toys!