Mr. Music

This is what he was doing when I came
into the room

Felix makes me laugh so much. Yesterday morning, I left him to play in the lounge room while I went into the kitchen to make myself some breakfast. When I got back, I found him sitting in the Bumbo seat (which our Grandson, Noah, now uses). He had a book open on the tray table and was happily reading it. There was a picture of an ice cream on the page. I watched as he pretended to scoop it with his hand and then put his hand to his mouth with an "um" sound (like yum!) After he had done that a few times, he put the page near his mouth and licked the ice cream. So funny! When he finally looked up and saw me he cracked up laughing.

Guest blogger?

Recently I've been going a bit crazy, cleaning out cupboards and sorting things out (and no, I'm not pregnant!)  Anyway, I went through all of Felix's toys and sorted them into blocks, cars, musical instruments, puzzles etc  I figured that way I could rotate his toys so that he has something different to play with every now and again, and doesn't get bored by having the same toys out all the time. Today I brought out the musical instruments. Felix really likes his little wooden xylophone and got excited when he saw it. When I handed him the sticks, I deliberately gave them to him upside down and put them in his right hand to see what he would do. He went to hit the xylophone once, then looked at the sticks with a puzzled look on his face. Straight away, he turned them both up the right way and passed them to his left hand and started hitting the xylophone. Every now and again he would put a stick in each hand and alternate them, but most of the time he held both in his left hand and played it like that. He played it with his own unique style.

Pressing the button to make the
frog sound

I was sitting in front of our lounge room window today reading some books to Felix.  He really likes the sign language ones we bought for him. The pictures in it are simple, and the diagram showing how to do the sign for that picture helps us learn more sign language too. Felix sat for about twenty minutes as we read through each of the books. When we had read each of them, Felix grabbed the first one again and we started over. When he finally lost interest and wandered off to do other things, I stayed by the window and kept practising
my signing. After a while, I wondered what I must look like to anyone passing by our window. I was waving my hands all over the place, sometimes repeating the same sign again and again. I probably looked like a crazy person sitting there by myself!

Kindergym for the first time in weeks....
Yay!!!

Felix has learned a lot of new signs from an application on the ipad called 'I Hear Ewe'. I think it cost us 99c and is the one he has played with the most. There are three different pages. The first one has twelve cartoon pictures of domestic animals such as a dog, a horse, a duck etc. When one of the pictures is pressed, a voice says, "This is the sound a 'dog' makes", followed by a realistic sound. The second has pictures of twelve different wild animals and the third has twelve different modes of transport. Each can be pressed and the voice says what they are and the sound they make. The last page is his favourite at the moment. I have looked up the signs for the vehicles he likes the best and when he presses that picture, I show him the sign. So far he has learned how to sign car, motorbike, train, bike, and today he did helicopter for the first time which was pretty exciting. He thinks the sign for plane is hilarious, but hasn't attempted it yet. We're also working on boat and police car. He also likes the pictures of the monkey, duck, pig, dog and chicken because he knows the signs for all of them. I love watching him sign 'chicken'. It's adorable!