Back to School!

Pamela's greater interest in people has spilled over into launching our homeschool program this year. About three weeks ago, she picked out a pink lunch bag with the Disney princesses and told me it was for school. Two weeks ago, she put in special requests for our homeschooling program like using Eric Carle books for studied dictation and Nature's Children books for science. Then, she told me we should not start up on August 4 (my plan) because school starts on August 18 for the public schooled children in the area.

I decided to combine her fascination with being like other kids going back to school with working on my RDI objective of Pamela learning to recognize listening body language. I bought typical school supplies like a pink zippered notebook, Disney princess spiral notebooks, all kinds of school goodies, etc. Then, without Pamela noticing, I set up a book bag (Barbie collection book club one that she got ten years ago) with her books, put papers and goodies in the notebook, etc. I filmed us going through all of the school stuff--she just loved it!



To frame this activity around my objective, I told Pamela that I would sometimes pretend I was not listening. At first, I was really obvious with my unlistening body language but I got more subtle as we went along. She found her finger quite effective in letting me know to straighten up and pay attention to her. Once I caught her in the act of not listening!