Building Blocks #3 is underway...

The week of April 14, 2015 we have began Building Blocks/Session #3. Monday began with a visit to a new family with a 4 year old boy. Our focus is to create stategies for the family to assist this child and his brother in Grade 2 to have better literacy and numeracy skills. The session went very well with the highlight being a shape game, that involved sorting, oral language, gross and fine motor skills, shape recognition and repetition and total 4 year old engagement. I left the Shape/ Bean Bag game at his home. His mother texted me to let me know he was sharing his game with his cousin. This little guy will have circle, square and triangle mastered in no time. My goal is to immerse this child in language he will be hearing in the Kindergarten classroom next year. He has lots of energy and my lessons with this family will need to be tailored to meet that need. Tuesday brought our Group at the Lougheed Library. Another unbelievable day! We had three of our original families come, (with 4 children), and four brand new families (with 5 children.) We have a lovely family from El Salvador joining us. This mother would love us to assist with her Kindergarten aged child, but he attends school on our Group day and I do not have any spots left in my timetable. Thus the need for this program is more than we can supply. Wednesday we gathered at the Community Hall for the Ladies Day. Building Blocks ran a program from 1:00-2:00. We have two families that had been there before, our El Salvador family joined us with the 2 and 5 yr old. And a new family with a beautiful little 3 year old named Maria. The highlight of day was Lena reading Brown Bear Brown Bear with me. And David doing the Dickie Birds poem out loud.

What a turn out!

Last Tuesday began with a visit to a family's home with two super smart little boys. Their Dad was actually home, and this was the first time I have had the opportunity to interact with a Dad in the home. I invited him to stay and play and learn with us, he stayed for 10 minutes or so and I was fine with that. Certainly, this would have been outside his comfort zone. The afternoon Group at the Library was great. Our new book is Brown Bear Brown Bear which the Mom's loved. We ended up with 15 children ages 2-7. They were well behaved and ready for any learning I could give them. A highlight was fine motor practice and cutting fun foam strips of various colors into bowls. We focused on making sure our thumbs were up while cutting. The attention span of these children continues to amaze me.

Taking Group on the road....

We have had two great weeks. Last week we visited the Killam Indoor Program. We were hoping for at least one family, we had four! They very much enjoyed the afternoon and asked about the price of coming back and inquired about programing. This is great connecting these families to other community resources. Today we did a large group project at the Lougheed Community Hall. We had 7 families attend and 23 children aged 1 1/2 to 12. We divided the kids into four groups and they visited four different stations. We started with a 20 minute session where I read a story and sang some songs. The groups then visited either Signe for PT, Karen for Speech, Shara-Lynn for skipping, and Doreen for "arm" painting. We were happy to have Katherine from AHS Health Promotions set up a table and spoke to the ladies about the importance of car seats and bike helmets. She referred many of our families to recieve free carseats! She also checked the carseats and found that all of them had errors, which she corrected. We ended our day with a very healthy snack and sang our goodbye song. It was a very successful day!

Going beyond the boundries.....

Yesterday, I visited a new family. A mother and her two boys had been attending our group library sessions, but I have not been able to get to their home yet. What a privalege to be welcomed into the home of people who are not always welcoming to people who are not of their beliefs. Our session went wonderfully, we focused on ESL skills involving farm and farm animals. We had great fun, sang songs, counted, practiced colors, read stories, played with puppets and played a dice game called Ten-zie. There was something new about this day, the Mother approached me with a Gr 2 Study Guide for her older son. She could not understand it. It was written very simply, but the problem was the the context. She had no idea what the words meant (igloo, tents with animal skins, kayaks, dog sled, all terrain vehicles.) These families have no reference to vocabulary like this. They have just moved here from Mexico, they do not watch tv. She had no clue what these words meant. I was thrilled that she approached me with this, as this is what our program is all about. I first showed her pictures of these things on my iphone, so she could at least put a picture to the word. Later that day, I put together a simple study sheet for her to use with her son, which included pictures and large, simple writing. This will make her process of trying to help her son so much easier. Her son's teacher simply does not realize that these families cannot understand the things they are sending home. They don't know, what they don't know. I am pleased that our program could provide this support for this family and I can see more of this type of assistance being needed in the future.

Venturing into other communities...

We have primarily been working with two communities in our County due to the new population of Mexican Mennonites. This has worked out great, but our program is a County wide program and we are please to be heading to another town in our community starting in the next session, which will begin in April.

Making strides with the adults...

I went to a home today where two sisters and their children were present. The children are aged 3 and 1 1/2 twins. We did multiple activities, but the one that stands out is the scavenger hunt. The 3 year old especially enjoys it as I pre-hid things and pictures around the home. He had a list with both words and pictures to show him what he needed to find (picture of a snowman, a puzzle, picture of a tractor, a book etc.) But he most exciting part of the visit was the Auntie. She has not been in this country for very long and has limited English. She was right into the hunt and using the limited literacy skills she has to complete the scavenger hunt. This is proof that this program is benefiting both children and adults.

Journal-ling the Journey

This blog will be used to record the progress of the Building Blocks Family Literacy Program in Flagstaff County. Our program began in October 2014. So, I am a bit behind the 8-ball. Our program started with 3 families and an hour long weekly program at the library. Now in February of 2015, our program has grown to 6 families and a two hour weekly program at the library. We have partnered with the Alberta Health Services Therapists who are attending our library program and providing Occupational Therapy, Physical Therapy and Speech support. We are partnering with the community skipping group and Choosewell program as well as the Family Resource Centre in a neighboring town.