Favorite Product: Crayons

Who doesn't love a box of crayons? I've seen people old and young alike sit down and instantly start coloring. They are one of the most basic items because they are great - you can nurture creativity and work on fine motor skills while having fun.

Here are some ways to use crayons to help encourage your preemie's development:

1) Start early - as soon as your preemie can hold an object, give him/her a crayon. Place a piece of paper in front of your preemie and help him/her make a mark on the page. Any effort should be praised. In the beginning your preemie will probably just make light, random marks or dots. And that' great!

2) Drawing lines - once your preemie can hold the crayon somewhat effectively, encourage him/her to draw a line across the page. And then down or up. It helps to draw dotted lines to follow or at least show a start and stop point.

3) Learning colors - since crayons come in pretty much every color, they are a great way to help your preemie learn colors. You can ask for crayons of a certain color or request that he/she colors with a certain color. Older preemies can practice putting colors in order from lightest to darkest.

4) Scribbles are important! Don't worry if your preemie has absolutely no concept of how to color an object. That will come with time. Praise all efforts at coloring across an area. Make it fun!

Happy coloring!

Developmental Milestones: 16-19 months

This week's developmental post is focused on the developmental milestones of preemies who are 16-19 months old. Previously I have done posts for 12-15 months, 9-11 months, 6-8 months old, 3-5 months old and 0-2 months old.

Gross Motor

• Walks up stairs with one hand held
• Creeps backward down stairs
• Climbs into an adult-sized chair

Small/Fine Motor

• Puts a round shape in a shape sorter
• Makes marks with a crayon or pencil
• Stacks 3 blocks

Social/Play Skills

• Plays with the same toy in different ways
• Plays with one other child; each doing separate activities
• Brings an object/toy to an adult to encourage adult to play

Communication

• Names objects or pictures on request
• Uses approx. 5-10 specific words by him/herself (not in imitation of someone else)
• Will get 2-3 familiar objects when asked (one at a time)
• Points to at least 3 body parts on him/herself or a doll

Ways to encourage development:

• Continue to practice conversations - let your preemie say something and then say something back. Make sure you pause in between comments so that your preemie has a chance to respond.
• Play ball - practice throwing and kicking. Use a large ball for kicking so your preemie can more easily make contact with the ball. For throwing, use a small ball that he/she can easily hold onto. You can practice throwing the ball back and forth or into a container.
• Blocks - offer blocks as a toy. Practice stacking (and then knocking them down - the fun part). Build things.
• Continue to read books with your preemie. Point out specific things on each page. "Look at the cow" "The cow is eating"
• Encourage self-care - let your preemie try to feed him/herself more, take on and take off clothes and wash him/herself in the bath.
  

Encouraging Imaginative Play

Teaching your preemie how to use his/her imagination can be one of the most frustrating and fun things to do. Imagination doesn't come easily at first. My daughter in particular is a very linear thinker - if something does a specific thing than she will do it. Getting her to interact with a toy without any rules or prompts is much more difficult. So we start slow and continue to work on it. Here is a look at one of her new favorite games along with specific examples how we use it to encourage imaginative play as well as speech and fine motor skills.

Here is a picture of our pretend zoo:

As you can see, we subscribe to an open floor plan. Our animals are free to roam about when they need exercise. We also like to give them plenty of changes to their living areas so we occasionally build tall towers are extra tall wall pieces when necessary.

1) Fine Motor - Using large building blocks is a great way to built a preemie's fine motor and planning skills. Encourage your preemie to put the pieces together however he/she wants. There is no perfect building or zoo cage for that matter.

2) Imagination - Talk about what you think the animals want to do. In the beginning you can help guide the activity. Are the animals thirsty? I give my daughter a mega blocks piece and encourage her to give the animals some water. Do they want to play? Maybe they want to jump. Then my daughter will help each animal jump. Sometimes they jump on the ground and other times they like to jump on the blocks.

3) Speech/Communication - Talk about each of the animals in the zoo. Name them and talk about what sound they make. Work on action words like sleeping, eating, or drinking by having your preemie help the animals do each thing. As he/she makes the animal jump say "look the animal is jumping. He is jumping very high." This will help your preemie make the connection between the word and the action.

Drawing a line

As your preemie starts to develop his/her fine motor skills - encourage him/her to "color." At first just have your preemie hold the crayon and touch a piece of paper. Make sure you point out the color marks that appear on the paper. Take a crayon and color with your preemie.

Once your preemie gets the idea, he/she will start to dot the paper and then draw random lines across the page. There won't be any rhyme or reason to the drawing and that is fine. In fact - feel free to cheer your little one as if they have just completed a masterpiece on par with DiVinci or Van Gogh. Normally kids do horizontal lines first. As your preemie masters the art of a horizontal line, you can start to encourage him/her to draw a vertical line. This can be a difficult concept to understand so here are two ideas to try. The ideas come from my daughter's awesome developmental therapist.

1) Go/stop. Draw a circle at the top and bottom of the page (vertically). Connect the circles with a green dotted line. Color the top circle green and the bottom circle red. I would suggest starting out with about 5 of these lines. Put your crayon on the green circle and then draw a line to the red circle (you have now made a vertical line). As your draw the line say "go" and then say "stop" at the bottom. Do the first two lines yourself and then encourage your preemie to do the same. Continue saying go/stop as each line is drawn.

2) Vroom. This is basically the same concept as go/stop but instead of saying go/stop - you say vroom while the line is drawn. This is an especially good thing to use if you have a little boy who likes cars.

Having a sound associated with a specific movement or activity is very useful for getting kids to try and then remember it. I had tried to get Olivia to draw a vertical line with zero successes. Seriously. We talked about. I showed her how to do it. She was very excited - yes was heard several times when asked if she wanted to try it. And so the crayon was handed over. And then she promptly made horizontal lines over and over again. After our developmental therapist told me about the go/stop trick I tried it out and in one try Olivia was making vertical lines.

The funny part is that she continues to say go/stop when she draws the lines (even without the circles).

Happy coloring!

Fine Motor Skills in the Highchair

As kids get more mobile it becomes harder to work on fine motor skills. What preemie on the go wants to sit still? One of the best ways to help your preemie focus on fine motor skills is to do it while he/she is in the highchair. With some planning and enthusiasm you can really make some great progress. Here are some games and activities to try that I posted on a message board recently.

Cheerio Drop and Dump - Get about 10-15 cheerios and put them on the highchair tray (eating the cheerios is always okay and encouraged). Put a small bowl on the try next to the cheerios. Encourage your little one to drop the cheerios into the bowl one at a time. Try and get him/her to use a pincer grasp (thumb and first finger) to pick up the cheerios and drop them in. Once all of the cheerios are in the bowl - let him/her dump it out and do it again. Once he/she has dumped them out once he/she may only want to put a couple in before dumping but that's okay :)

Raisin Drop and Dump - same as above but with raisins - smaller and harder to do.

Stickers - Get a bunch of stickers - bigger ones to start. Start by taking a sticker and putting it on your little one's hand. Encourage him/her to take the sticker off and put it somewhere else. Use smaller stickers as he/she gets good at it. Once he/she gets the hang of it, let him/her peel off a sticker (will probably need you to start it) and then let him/her put it on a paper.

Coloring - tape a piece of paper to the highchair tray. Give your little one a crayon and encourage them to color on the paper. take a crayon yourself and draw some lines on the paper. At first they will probably just make dots and then tentative lines. Once they master a straight line, encourage them to draw a circle and make a cross. Some kids like to hold a crayon in their fist at first so you may want to break a crayon in half or buy the little beginnings crayons.

Popsicle Sticks - Get a travel coffee mug that has a slot at the top. Take some small popsicle sticks and have your little one drop them into the cup through the slot. Once they put them in, open the lid and let them dump them out. Repeat.

Playdough - this is a tough one because kids may try and eat the playdough. You have to be really careful. Take some playdough and just let your little one touch it, squish, roll it, etc. Encourage them to roll small pieces of the dough in between their thumb and first finger. Make snakes by rolling pieces with their whole hand.

Toy suggestion - Right now Target has a great little mini-barn and small plastic animals in the $1 section. They are great (slightly larger) items that can kids can play with and practice picking up, etc.

For drawing - you can get one of those portable drawing boards that erase (Doodle boards) or the Aqua Doodles - uses water to color and then dries so you can do it again.