Things I'm Loving

There is one thing that I can tell you for certain this week, that is School Holidays start at 3pm this afternoon and I will be jumping up and down with excitement!

School holidays means no rushing in the morning even though I am up at 5:30am, it means no wrestling a glue stick out of a toddlers hand for the 100th time because he has decided that he wants to smear glue all over the school desks and it also means not have to referee the eldest twos arguments over who gets to get in the car first...

So yes, this week I am certainly loving school holidays!

I am also loving this cute little cushion cover that arrived in the mail.

I bought it from the Curly Pops shop last week.

I am also loving the gorgeous new fabric line from Aneela Hoey, A Walk in the Woods

Mahli asked me to take photos of her the other day, so I am loving this new instalment of the many faces of Mahli.

Ethans' speech is coming along in leaps and bounds. If he can't find someone is the house, he walks around calling out 'Where are you', followed by our names. He says hello and goodbye unprompted. And he is always calling out Muuuuuuuuum, come here!

He has been sitting outside talking to Patch our guinea pig every afternoon too, it is so cute to watch him do it.

So what are you loving this week? Are you looking forward to school holidays or are you dreading them?

I am linking up with Paisley Jade for Things I'm Loving.

Kids, Speech and Learning

Over the Christmas break Caden developed a bit of a stutter and was straining to start his sentences. Umming was also a prevalent feature in his vocabulary.

He has also had some trouble with pronunciations of some words but never to the extent that we were faced with during December and January. Since starting school we have seen some improvement in both the stuttering and the pronunciations of his words and he has been doing really well.

After speaking with several people in the know, his stuttering has now been put down to nerves about starting school. But that hasn't stopped us from working with him on a daily basis to aide his speech.

Here are a few things we have been doing:

Singing Nursery Rhymes- Many nursery rhymes feature heavily on repetition. This helps by getting children familiar with the sounds of the letters and also how the sounds feel when they are saying them. 
For example the Peter Piper nursery rhyme is a favourite around here and it focuses heavily on the p and the k sounds which both use different parts of the mouth and tongue to say them. You will find the same thing happening in many nursery rhymes.
Reading- Simply reading to children helps aide in speech and development. This was a key thing both his teacher and our doctor wanted us to focus on.  
Sing-a-longs- Do you remember the song Skip to My Lou? Well it is a great one for kids to use to learn the letters of the alphabet and also the sounds they make. I know Caden has fun singing this one.


Something we have tried to steer clear of was anything to structured and just tried to incorporate it into our daily life. So no flash cards etc.


Please remember that I am in no way a expert. I am just a parent who has found these things helpful when working with my son.

If you are looking for some tips from someone who knows what they are doing then I can recommend here. I only recently found this blog and I only wish I found it sooner.

Do any of your children have trouble with their speech? What have you found has helped them?