More active exploring

Sophie and I had another session at CNIB this week and she had a great time again.

Sophie has been named the social committee for the program.  Yup, just her.  She is so cute, she has to see EVERY person there before she will concentrate on anything.  So we wheel around the room and say hi to all the other little ones and their moms until Sophie is satisfied that she isn't missing out on anything. :)  She is my social butterfly.

In the photo above Sophie is working very hard to use a switch to activate the rope lights.  She did it very well a couple times!

Sophie was more interested in the little guy at the next station than all of the playthings at this station.  But that's ok!

It has been nice to get some new ideas for Sophie to use while playing at home, I hope next week we will find even more.

The Long weekend

For the Victoria Day long weekend Lucas and I packed up the van and headed to the cottage with one of my friends and her son who is one of Lucas' best buddies.  Jason stayed home with Sophie to let me have the weekend to relax, well as much as you can relax opening the cottage. :)

Shaking hands under the sand!

My friend MJ helped me get the cottage opened up and was the lucky winner of finding 2 big mouse nests in drawers, including the bodies of one mouse family. Ick. But we got it cleaned up and enjoyed the rest of the weekend. 

We bbq'd and had an awesome lunch out and had some amazing mennonite tarts for dessert. mmmm.

The weather couldn't have been better, it was gorgeous the entire 3 days and the water was like it is in July! The boys went straight in and swam for a couple hours the first day. It was absolutely crazy how warm the water was.

We had a fantastic campfire and went for ice cream and did some shopping. It was bliss. The boys played monopoly for hours and never even asked to watch a movie once. At the end of each day we were graced with spectacular sunsets.

We had planned to go for a long hike at a conservation area and a waterfall but we found so much to do on our own beach we didn't need to go any further.

The boys found crawfish shells and a water snake and rocks with fossils.  They dug tunnels in the sand and just enjoyed every ounce of the beach.

Jason and Sophie had a fantastic weekend too.  They went to Cirque De Soleil!  Jason thought that she enjoyed it, he said there was so much to look at and take in.

It is hard to believe it is already the end of May.  Many road trips await.

Active Explorer

Sophie is part of another Active Learning program at CNIB.  Once a week we go and Sophie has a fabulous time checking out all the activities that they have set up.

I will let the pictures do the talking...

Sophie turned herself in a full 360 checking out all the stuff around her.

Blogger is being a royal pain so that is it for tonight!

A Party at sunset

The other day we had a fun birthday party for my dad.  I got some great photos of him with all his grandchildren, that doesn't happen too much.  Usually one of them runs off just as I am about to take the photo or something like that.

After cake Lucas and Zoe went out to play hide and seek with me and I managed to sneak some photos of my mom and dad's gorgeous garden as the sun was setting.

This is no longer attached to the ground.  Typical Zoe ;)

I am so happy that tomorrow is the first day of May.  Hopefully many beautiful sunsets await.

Happy birthday dad!

Learning to see by feel

Sophie has suddenly been receiving books in our mailbox from the CNIB library.  I don't know why they started arriving but I think it has to do with her birthday a few weeks ago.  I signed her up with the CNIB library when she was a baby and I was told that she would receive some touch and feel board books for us to borrow, but they never came and it kind of went off my radar after a while.  Then they started arriving recently and we now have about 6 books to use.  I wonder if one of their programs start at age six and we were on a list already.  Regardless, it has been fun discovering what is in the mailbox every few days.

The books are all a bit different.  Some are baby board books that have textural elements and some are books for older kids and they have braille as well as textured pictures and simple coloured pictures.

This page has one picture of an item on it.  Sophie does really well with something like this to look at, there is no visual clutter and the colour is nice and stark in comparison to the background.  She also prefers primary colours.  Sophie is diagnosed as being severely vision impaired so any new things to try to improve her vision is great.

The next page has a textural equivalent to the picture.  It is something that Sophie can feel with her hands to get a feel for the shape of the object she just saw.  This book focused on basic household items.  It is wonderful for learning the names of objects that she sees everyday.

Lucas helped Sophie feel the toothbrush on this page.  Love that open hand.  :)

Then there is a braille page for each item as well.  We don't need that page but for many children and adults this is how they learn to read braille. 

Some of the books are more like stories but have the textural aspect on each page as well so that the child can follow along by feel.

This book had some different raised images that went along with a story.  But it is nice because each page is kept simple with only one object on each page.  It helped model what your day might be like.

I am really excited that we are able to borrow these books for Sophie so that she has some new choices in the journey of helping her to learn to see.  I am excited to see what new items are in the mailbox this week.