Wednesday, August 13, 2008

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!

4 comments:

Mama Skates said...

i love all ur encouragement & facial expressions....and i love that finger poke too - i get that from my son a LOT - pay attention to me!

Anonymous said...

I really enjoyed watching your videos! They are so helpful to me, and encouraging too!

I think that I'm going to do the same thing with my son. Tomorrow's "Back to School" shopping. I'm going to make a big deal about our plans for next year too...

Anonymous said...

When I was a kid, getting back to school STUFF was the most exciting part of the year, I love your use of body language in the video, scaffolding by exaggerating it a bit more if needed. The finger poke seems effective. *LOL*

walking said...

I thought I would share a tidbit that my consultant observed.

I actually talked less . . . the motor mouth is slowing being tamed!

The key for me is to balance my communications with hers. When I am explaining that needs explaining, then it is okay to be longer, but concise. When we are making declarative comments back and forth, I can strive to match what Pamela says and add something to it. For example, when she said, "Pencil," I added "Pencil lead." If I pause and wait expectantly, I give her the chance to follow-up with another comment.