BUILDING LISTENING AND LANGUAGE SKILLS SEMINAR

Jennifer, Clarissa and Me

Dave Sindrey

Today I was able to attend a free seminar put on by Advanced Bionics through the University of Iowa Hospitals Otolarangology Dept. It was Awesome!! Dave Sindrey was the speaker! He is the guy that does the Listening Room on AB's website! Wow! He was so knowledgable and kind and super helpful.


We got to hear lots about Building Listening & Language Skills for pre-school and school-age children with hearing losses. And we learned many new activities that can help our children learn new words, sounds, and so much more! Most of these activities and projects can be found and printed for free from his site the Listening Room or a link from there. Wish I understood how to link it in this post for you, but I don't, so you'll just have to check out my link list.


Here are just a couple of photos from our day. I went with my friend Clarissa, Evan's mom and we met up with our new friend Jennifer, Landri's mom. At our location, we were the only parents present. The rest of the group was filled with professionals. We were bummed by this! We were hoping to really connect with some moms and build supportive relationships from the event. Never the less, it was a great seminar.


Clarissa and I have created a parent-networking group for our surrounding area, which will span out as far as need be. :) We've called it "COMMON GROUND". It is a group of parents and families that are going through struggles with their children for one reason or another that are looking for friends to talk to in their area. And not only that, but someone who understands what trials they are experiencing. Maybe someday we'll have a website for this new adventure of ours!


We decided to form this group due to the fact that so many of our specialists and therapists were the same, yet due to privacy laws were unable to tell us of each other and our many similarities. God had other plans that included bypassing them, and getting straight to us!!!


We want to help connect families in a similar way, through those people that couldn't put us together before. We are empowering them with our personal contact info so that they can pass it on to those who need someone to talk to! We are excited to see its outcome!

Getting Organized!

Since creating this site, I've been buzzing around other mom's blogs like crazy. I was insprired by the creativity that some of them were using to stay organized and get the whole family involved in their child's development. So I got to work for a couple of days and came up with these...

Here is our new weekly calendar for Evie's appointments. I took pictures of all of her therapists and specialists, and used contact paper to "laminate" them. There are still a few I haven't cut out and prepared. Then I put some adhesive magnet tape on them and stuck them on the board. Walmart has magnets with the days of the week on them so you can use any dry erase magnetic board for this project. Now we'll be able to go to the board before her appointments and talk about who we're going to see today. I also put those Cochlear magnets they sent us to use to describe her appointments.

This is hard to see but it's an activity chart that is "laminated" and has about 25 velcro squares on it. There are five spots for our current PT/OT 'homework' and four next to them for the four family members helping her. When you work on something with her, then you grab one of your photos and velcro it up. At the end of the week we'll be able to see what we've done and who helped, and what we didn't do! As she accomplishes goals, then we'll replace the activity with a new one!

This one includes speech games, such as, Reading books to her, working on Face parts, Up/Down and amimal sounds. I have a feeling these will change more often than the PT ones. These are fun to do with her and to watch her succeed!
Evie and I worked on... (ie, standing, playing, animal sounds) ...this week!

Today we went to Iowa City for her 2 week follow up appointment for her left CI. She did so great! Look how relaxed she was. Just chillin' with a little smirk on her face. Tucked into my shirt is her pink processor and a cord trailing down her side. She was listening to the computer beeps and lovin' life. Maura, our CI audiologist, took the photo for us since we were on our own today. Jesse is back in school now and won't be able to attend very many of the appointments. Its nice that this year Kira is in pre-school three days a week. It is hectic when she's being dragged around to all of Evie's appointments.

While in the waiting room today, Evie and I were working on her listening and mimicking skills. We've been working on various animal sounds, her favorite two are cow and bear. Today I said and signed, "The Bear Says..." and Evie said, "grrrr"! She has repeated this many times today! She is so smart!

Also, while playing UP/DOWN today with Kira, Evie said over and over, "uuh uuh uuhm." This is so great! She's even starting to close her mouth at the end now! She really does well with repitition!

Having the second Cochlear Implant has already helped with location of sound! She is learning quickly. She is getting better about letting me put the left one on her head too. Things are moving along! Yeah for technology!!!