Pretend Cousins

We've had our fair share of imaginary friends in the house the last few years and even some that were actually real people, but who weren't actually at our house! Currently Hannah's imaginary people are 4 pretend cousins. The thing that cracks me up about these four girls is their names: Julie (nice and normal) Monica and Hanukkah (they are twins!), and English (where did that come from?). Hanukkah and Monica crack me up the most. I think the fact that they have rhyming names and are twins is hilarious and don't even get me started on the one being named Hanukkah! We aren't Jewish. I guess she's just a multicultural girl when it comes to naming her imaginary friends! Her pretend cousins do EVERYTHING with her. They are a constant presence at our house. Julie seems to be the most active, although Monica and Hanukkah are quite the little tricksters too. English comes over less often, but she's still around enough that we can't forget about her! I wonder how long this current group of friends will last?

Hannah starts soccer this week and she is super excited. The first practice was supposed to be tonight, but it's raining so practice has been cancelled. She's still at school so she doesn't know yet. She's going to be crushed, especially after the karate class ordeal. At least I know this is a reputable league and she WILL get to play games and go to practices. I found her some cleats at a consignment sale that look like they have hardly been worn. She already had the appropriate size soccer ball. So, all we had to get her were black soccer shorts for her uniform and shin guards. Oh does she look cute in those cleats and shin guards! She's actually getting quite good at kicking the ball too. This is a skill that's been a long time in coming. For some reason kicking an object (not a person though!) has been difficult for her for some time. Add in kicking a moving object or moving while you are kicking and it was basically impossible. She has yet to kick the ball while it is moving, but she is starting to be able to run up to the ball and kick it without stopping to set up for the kick. I'll be interested to see how quickly (or not) her skills improve as the season progresses. In two weeks karate starts again and we're going to give it one more try. She'll be quite busy on the athletic front which should be good for her. We are currently being reminded of how tough things can get when she's not physically active enough since it's been raining for 5 days straight and she's been unable to use her basement playroom (where all her sensory swings, mini tramp, etc are located) because of a flea problem. UGH! It has not been pretty. I'm hoping for sunny skies soon and praying that the flea treatment that was done on Monday permanently fixes the flea problem.

Lately Hannah has been working on addition and subtraction. She found a game I used to use with my kids back when I taught elementary school and she's been asking to play it about every single day. It's called peanut butter and jelly and basically the goal is to be the first person to build you sandwich by answering math problems to earn your bread, jelly, etc. She has both addition and subtraction with the counters down, but the game mixes the problems up and she has trouble switching from one type of problem to the other. She gets into the pattern of one type of problem and then can't quite switch gears quickly enough. Kyle's been trying to teach her to use her fingers instead of the counters (I think he's just too lazy to get out the counters!) and she's actually doing pretty well with that too, but she's a little less accurate with her fingers since sometimes she accidentally moves a finger when she isn't supposed to.

Hannah's spelling is coming right along too. She's to the point where she can phonetically spell about anything she wants to spell and I can usually figure out what she meant if it's not spelled correctly. She still smashes all her words together with no spaces in between (we're working on that!) so that can sometimes hinder her legibility, but over all she does an excellent job with her writing. She's fast at sounding out how to spell the words too so this is making it easier for her to compose sentences since she doesn't lose her train of thought as much while she's trying to figure out a word. When she dictates stories to me for me to copy down she goes at the speed of light, so fast I can hardly keep up. That just shows me how fast her brain works. A month or two ago I mentioned her writing and promised to transcribe a few of her stories here for you all to enjoy. Today seems like a good day for a Hannah story so here goes. The first story is entitled How Pat the Rat was Born

Pat the Rat was once born because he was born in his mother. Because his father was watching, the baby came out. And the baby finally came out in the hospital. When he was a baby he first started not talking. Then when he was grown up he started squealing like his mother and father. His mother started not feeding him because he started feeding himself and then he was 110 years old. His mother and father took him to the park, and the beach, and the airport to go to Indiana. And then he flew back to Rhode Island so he could get his home. So he could play with his ball in the back yard.

In this next writing we had been learning about what dialogue is and how to write a back and forth conversation. She told me about an imaginary conversation she had with her friend Colin. So, without further ado, Dialogue with Colin

I wish I had a carthorse.

What? You wish you had a carthorse!

I want to be a princess and it would pull me to the castle to dance.

It would pull you to different places.

No, it would pull me to the ball.

I guess you're right.

I wish, oh I wish that would come true because it would take me to the ball.

Yes, it would come true if you would sleep every month then it would come true, but I don't think it will said Colin.

If you are wondering about her choice of the word "carthorse," we had just read a story about an old carthorse from the Dales in England so the word was fresh on her mind. I thought she used it quite well though!

Sensory Swings

WARNING: Guest blogger (Kyle) at the helm. Cut me some slack... I don't do this very often.

I saw a comment on the blog today that referenced a question on how we set up our sensory swings, and I thought this could be my shining moment in the blogosphere (whatever that is). So I took a few pictures and thought I'd run through how I set up Hannah's swings. Here's the the warning: this might be fairly boring if you're not interested in swings, and don't worry, I won't be offended if you don't read on, even if I do think you'd be missing some pretty awesome swing pictures.

Two quick caveats: (1) I am not a structural engineer, nor do I play one on tv. Everything I'm about to describe is simply how I fit out the playroom. If you have any doubts about doing something similar in your home, apartment, treehouse, outhouse, etc., talk to someone who understands this stuff better than me; (2) If I use the wrong term, don't get too upset -- see caveat (1).

In our basement we have the ability to expose the joists from the floor above, so I simply slid three of the 2'x2' tiles out of the way to expose a 6' section of a joist in the right area. We were fortunate that the joist I wanted to use ran roughly through the middle of one of the tile rows. Note that I made sure there was plenty of room for swings from the spot I picked (i.e. the primary swing location is located away from walls, lolly (a.k.a. lally) columns, steps, etc.). Our joists are 2"x8" so I chose to use 2"x6" supports, and as you can see from the picture, I secured approx. 5' sections to either side of the primary joist. The idea is that the joist will not be torqued (i.e. twisted) nearly as badly since it has support on both sides. Using the additional boards also allowed me to move the swing mounts more towards the center of the tile row. To fasten the boards I used two wood clamps to hold them in place and then secured them with (3x) 5/8" carriage bolts. To spread the force I used washers (the fattest I could buy) on both sides. I then put 5/8" eye-bolts at three strategically placed locations along one of the newly installed boards. This allows us to use multiple kinds of swings. The eye-bolts I used had the longest shanks that I could find, just to add additional support. And that's about it -- pretty simple, huh?

When I told Natty I wanted to do this post she suggested I also show off our different swings, so I'll give a little description of each. In each of these the most important thing is to be as safe as possible, so I've tried to keep that in mind as we've slowly added more. The disk swing is actually a carryover from our house in Indiana. I attached a carabiner to the rope and then used a separate carabiner to attach to the previously mentioned eye-bolts to allow for a little extra swing. I hope to eventually replace this second carabiner with a swivel mount to improve this even more. We mount the disk swing to the center mount. Two quick learning points: (1) buying the thickest rope available (ours is 1") makes it easier for little hands to hold on, and will hopefully allow Hannah to climb up the rope when she gets a little older; (2) working with thick rope is a pain in the rear.

The second swing is our platform swing, and was both pretty easy and fun to build -- Hannah even helped. Without going into too much detail, the main component is a 2'x4'x3/4" piece of plywood that I rounded and sanded down. After all expenses the final cost was under $50 (let me know if you'd like additional detail on what I did). We hang the swing from the outer two mounts.

Next is the trapeze bar/ring assembly we pulled off our outside playset. I know these are available at home stores, but I would recommend going with the highest quality you can find as this is the swing that has the lowest weight rating for use (80 lbs.). Hannah actually just started using a similar swing at OT, except that they have it on a swivel, so whenever I find one we'll probably start doing the same thing.

The final swing (for now) is a hammock. We use a canvas hammock that used to be in Hannah's playroom in Indiana -- I wouldn't install a woven one as the thought of her getting stuck (or worse) really worries me. The current setup isn't ideal for this swing, but the various mounts allow us to spread out the hammock or fold it in half, depending on what we want Hannah to do. When we fold it up we typically put her bean bag or a pillow in it to spread out the sides just a bit. Again, this swing would work better with a swivel. The one other thing of note is that the hammock is suspended using nylon rope that is knotted a different heights to allow us to do different things -- when the hammock is spread out we use the lower loops and when it is folded we use the higher loops. As a side note, I learned all my knot tying skills from the following website: http://animatedknots.com/

So that's it for now. I'd be happy to try to answer additional questions if anyone has them, but it's really pretty straightforward. I should mention that I don't let adults (Natalie) do any real swinging, just in case (again, refer to caveat (1) above). However, I have tested all of the swings myself (much to Hannah's delight) and I'm about 5x her weight.