I love that boy like the earth loves the sun
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Tamers!
These are round and fruity frozen sweets that M ate in California. They come in different flavors from what I understand. Some are banana with ice on the front and banana on the back. Others are purple in the back and ice on the front. They are also blue in the drawings.
Friday, March 13, 2009
who knew--singing in after school
M is now in a multi-age after school care at a wonderful woman's home. She said, "Marcello has been enjoying the kids and visa versa. We are all enjoying his singing. He is definitely not shy and will join in."
I love to hear this!
I love to hear this!
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
knowing through drama, modes of thinking and knowing
I found an old note I had written about Marcello in July 2007 on a trip to the Dominican Republic when he was less than 3 years old. It reads:
What are we to do to get to the child's experience. Always an interpretation of children's acts unless we know the performer well or parents or both. I asked Marcello, "Do you want more apple juice?" "Ice cream!" Imaginative play feeds the soul of my son. He was talking about me making him another playdough ice cream cone.
Two interesting things about this are that he does things again and again, acting them out. Also, his mode of learning is related to getting into something completely. I saw the same thing today when we got home. He took off his shoe in the elevator and told me we were going into the ocean and needed our shoes off. The carpet in the building hallway was the ocean for the rest of the day. He would stay, "It's cold!" "Get on the boat!" and other instructions to me. I told him I had my boat shoes on. He commits to something and decides to master it. This passion and flow is perhaps what Mihály Csíkszentmihályi talks about. I am not sure as I have not read him yet. I just know that we get into things in periods and that thing takes off. Last year it was chicka chicka boom boom for a while, as you can see with earlier posts.
What are we to do to get to the child's experience. Always an interpretation of children's acts unless we know the performer well or parents or both. I asked Marcello, "Do you want more apple juice?" "Ice cream!" Imaginative play feeds the soul of my son. He was talking about me making him another playdough ice cream cone.
Two interesting things about this are that he does things again and again, acting them out. Also, his mode of learning is related to getting into something completely. I saw the same thing today when we got home. He took off his shoe in the elevator and told me we were going into the ocean and needed our shoes off. The carpet in the building hallway was the ocean for the rest of the day. He would stay, "It's cold!" "Get on the boat!" and other instructions to me. I told him I had my boat shoes on. He commits to something and decides to master it. This passion and flow is perhaps what Mihály Csíkszentmihályi talks about. I am not sure as I have not read him yet. I just know that we get into things in periods and that thing takes off. Last year it was chicka chicka boom boom for a while, as you can see with earlier posts.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Space Ship
We spent the morning playing with Buzz and making him a ship from an old Annie's mac and cheese box. We covered it with foil and decorated it with wings and drawings. To infinity and beyond. . .The best part is how he fits in it just perfectly with his helmet made out of an apple juice bottle.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
recent activity
Relations with adults and the balance of power and attachment seem to have shifted with the five nights I spent away in Philly and CA. M is now asking for his daddy's help with everything from the potty companionship to nighttime routines. Yesterday on the way to a playdate, he cried because his daddy was at work. He has spent intensive time with him, and I believe that made it more likely for him to want his attention and companionship. I was fascinated, but I was a little taken aback that he didn't seem to miss me that much, especially as compared with other times we've been separated.
Likes
M continues to have a preference for sweet foods, and he likes goldfish and juice for a snack. His favorite color is blue at the moment. He also often has a favorite number, but this usually changes quickly. This week his job is to pick out a song and he told me yesterday the name (I can't remember but it sounded intriguing). He loves to play with friends, and he enjoyed our playdate. Lately, as you can see in the last posting, he talks about dates and opposites, like hot and cold. Yesterday, he and his friend put together a bunch of connecting opposite words. I guess this affinity started with a song that is a pop song "Your hot and your cold" and we extended this with other examples. He also loves this dinosaur book that he and his dad made up a song for. He sings "I don't like you" as the triceratops and said that his eggs was poo poo. Another recent joke was to add "poo poo in his farty" to the title of the book I read and in addition to other lines as I read the story.
Dislikes
He still does not like medicine and doctors. He will recoil at me zipping his coat because I accidentally zipped his chin a little one day when he was recoiling his head down. He doesn't like waking up in the morning some days, and he often does not want to go to bed. He hates to have his nails cut. Again, he seems to remember not liking the process of getting them cut.
A recent kind of drawing has been Buzz and Buzz and Woody. The Buzz always has appropriate headgear, his helmet down. Interesting because on his doll he also had to put tape to show the helmet. He really wants a doll that has wings, and we had previously constructed wings and taped them to the doll. When he draws him, he has a very exact image of how he wants the wings to be. I was helping him, and he did not want a certain type/shape of wing so we had to start over.
Sometimes he is very descriptive with his words. An orange squirting was like it spit it out or something like that (I can't remember now, but the words he picked were poetic--I should have written it down).
Recently, on a playdate with a slightly older friend the two were drawing together (a favorite activity for both) and M created a style of drawing that resembled his friend's. It had a strong outline of the shape of an "s" with the inside colored every color of marker he had. This he labeled "the Aogot" and put an arrow pointing to the part he was going to click (like the cursor on a computer)--neither one of those aspects were like his friend's drawing. Since then, he has created a similar drawing. He likes to invent words sometimes and then define them as in "that means" such and such telling me.
When I think about words that describe M humorous and deliberate come to mind. He is a good person to keep a long standing joke. Like when a friend kidded him that they were going to have stinky cheese for dinner, he continued to bring that back. He likes to laugh and make others laugh too. He also tends to have an image in his mind of how he wants things to be. Before he could write letters he directed me to make certain ones. Now he sometimes asks for me to draw for him before he takes on a new subject. At first, given my process oriented style, I recoiled at this. Then I realized after doing it collaboratively a few times, he sort of apprentices himself into learning how to draw it as he envisions it.
Likes
M continues to have a preference for sweet foods, and he likes goldfish and juice for a snack. His favorite color is blue at the moment. He also often has a favorite number, but this usually changes quickly. This week his job is to pick out a song and he told me yesterday the name (I can't remember but it sounded intriguing). He loves to play with friends, and he enjoyed our playdate. Lately, as you can see in the last posting, he talks about dates and opposites, like hot and cold. Yesterday, he and his friend put together a bunch of connecting opposite words. I guess this affinity started with a song that is a pop song "Your hot and your cold" and we extended this with other examples. He also loves this dinosaur book that he and his dad made up a song for. He sings "I don't like you" as the triceratops and said that his eggs was poo poo. Another recent joke was to add "poo poo in his farty" to the title of the book I read and in addition to other lines as I read the story.
Dislikes
He still does not like medicine and doctors. He will recoil at me zipping his coat because I accidentally zipped his chin a little one day when he was recoiling his head down. He doesn't like waking up in the morning some days, and he often does not want to go to bed. He hates to have his nails cut. Again, he seems to remember not liking the process of getting them cut.
A recent kind of drawing has been Buzz and Buzz and Woody. The Buzz always has appropriate headgear, his helmet down. Interesting because on his doll he also had to put tape to show the helmet. He really wants a doll that has wings, and we had previously constructed wings and taped them to the doll. When he draws him, he has a very exact image of how he wants the wings to be. I was helping him, and he did not want a certain type/shape of wing so we had to start over.
Sometimes he is very descriptive with his words. An orange squirting was like it spit it out or something like that (I can't remember now, but the words he picked were poetic--I should have written it down).
Recently, on a playdate with a slightly older friend the two were drawing together (a favorite activity for both) and M created a style of drawing that resembled his friend's. It had a strong outline of the shape of an "s" with the inside colored every color of marker he had. This he labeled "the Aogot" and put an arrow pointing to the part he was going to click (like the cursor on a computer)--neither one of those aspects were like his friend's drawing. Since then, he has created a similar drawing. He likes to invent words sometimes and then define them as in "that means" such and such telling me.
When I think about words that describe M humorous and deliberate come to mind. He is a good person to keep a long standing joke. Like when a friend kidded him that they were going to have stinky cheese for dinner, he continued to bring that back. He likes to laugh and make others laugh too. He also tends to have an image in his mind of how he wants things to be. Before he could write letters he directed me to make certain ones. Now he sometimes asks for me to draw for him before he takes on a new subject. At first, given my process oriented style, I recoiled at this. Then I realized after doing it collaboratively a few times, he sort of apprentices himself into learning how to draw it as he envisions it.
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