Family Scrabble

Our second Wednesday adventures began much the same as our first - a more relaxed start to our day with Leora watching her new favourite show, Stranger Things. She has binge-watched the entire series in just one week and when I asked if she thought it was scary, Leora replied, "no, just intense."

Leora's vocabulary has been surprising me lately. She uses words like intense, effectively, ensures, aesthetic, etc. correctly and quite often, but she can't figure out what you mean if you say "it's quarter to ten." It's fascinating to me how Leora's brain works!

It was Leora's first official Vision Therapy session and we received the instructions for the homework that we will be doing 3-5 times a week. Leora is not a fan and that is mostly due to the challenges the exercises create. Leora is not used to tracking an object around in circles and all different directions and it can be tiresome and frustrating. Leora is also doing an exercise with walking in which she must maintain an upright posture, keep her arms and hands at her sides, not fidget with her hands, keep her toes and heels aligned straight ahead and walk to the beat of a metronome. I tried it and it is not easy to pay attention to all these things and not revert to the way I have always walked. And, that's the point! We are trying to create those new neural pathways!

For our rock art session, we listened to a recording of the sounds of the forest in winter which also happened to have an occasional instrumental musical addition. While we listened, we drew on our rocks. Leora drew a lovely picture of a campfire and said that the crackling sounds of the wind and snow in the branches reminded her of the crackling of a campfire. I drew wind chimes hanging from a tree branch. Here is a picture of my rock. Leora's rock was lost during our hike, which was upsetting at first but, since the idea is to bring an offering to your sit spot and the rock did make it out into nature, we figure that it fulfilled its purpose.

Our hunt for the perfect sit spot continues and we hiked down a trail by the river but it proved to be too close to the truck route and so much too loud.

We decided to head back towards the beach and hiked onto a trail leading away from the lake. Here we found a place from which Leora could see her first sit spot and I found a beautiful little clearing. Leora decided that five minutes was enough quiet reflection time and then came to join me for a mini photo shoot!

Game Time was our game plan for the afternoon and Leora chose Scrabble. I was eager to see what Leora would come up with given her expanding vocabulary. However, there are many other skills needed to play board games and Leora is still developing these abilities. Leora found it challenging to remember that she couldn't bridge words unless it created a word too. She wanted to exchange her letters often because she would decide on the word she wanted to spell and try to collect those letters rather than finding a way to use the letters she already had. We will hopefully work on strategies in future sessions. Luckily, Leora's older siblings, Sebastian and Clara, jumped in to help Leora and then joined our game. When she won her second game - playing the Finish Line version where beginners must earn a different and lower score than more advanced players - Leora decided that she was finished but the teenagers were determined to beat Mom. Fortunately for me, I had luck and skill on my side and I was able to win! I loved that the game turned into a family affair. I think it helps Leora to see that she is not alone in this endeavour and makes for some great bonding time for all of us. ~K