First activities post-RDA3

Tried to keep in mind our main objectives during these activities:

1. What is the pattern?
2. What is Henry's role?
3. Keep Henry close, don't let go!
4. Fewer words
5. Slow it down!
   

Sunday, April 22nd (½ hour) - it was a busy Sunday so not much RDI done!
- Worked on activities with Henry for about ½ hour, in 10 minute increments. Henry loves the "building the mountain" game, so it is not hard to motivate him for that. He was very responsive and the connection was good.
- created a new activity moving laundry from washer to dryer. Henry’s defined role is to receive the wet piece of clothing I hand him and then throw it in the dryer. He immediately understood his role and started to reference me for a yes or no nod to throw into the dryer…however, after several items he would get restless and start to lose focus. More than a few times, he would get anxious and throw the piece of clothing in before I gave an affirmative head nod. When I acted surprised and upset, he did NOT retrieve the piece and I had to hand-over-hand retrieve it with him. Once we seemed to get in the flow, I tried to throw a few curve balls and drop a piece on the floor. He became very disturbed by this, so we went back to the familiar pattern. I will try again next time. I also tried in all the activities to use the "we did it!" language, so he understood these were a team effort.

Monday, April 23rd (1/2 hour) - timing wise, i did most of these activities around dinner or in the 1/2 hour after Rosie went to bed. This seems to be a good time for us in the evenings.
- Carrot game: we did the carrot peeling game. Henry understood his role immediately and wasn't thrown off at all when i threw in a few curve balls by throwing the carrot scraping on the ground or holding on to it for awhile. Maybe something about sitting on chairs in a distraction-less room seems to work better.
- However, we did play the mountain game again and he was too excited! Every thrown pillow would cause him to want to run and jump on the pile, so i ended up having to do a lot of holding his hand in this exercise that i hadn't done before. We ending it after one mountain was built.
- hide the chopsticks: Henry ate Chinese noodles last night (aka ramen) so it was the perfect opportunity to hide the chopsticks and ask him "what's missing". When he realized they were not in their usual place though, instead of immediately referencing me, he just seem perplexed and went back to his chair. I had to prompt him with a "Henry, do you want the chopsticks...they're right there" - and then use eye gaze to direct him to the right place. He seems to "get" the eye gaze thing immediately (harking back to our days with the speech therapist and all her scavenger hunt games) but i was hoping that he would reference me right away and that didn't happen. I hope that once he is more confident with me as his guide this will get better.
- laundry game: did this one again, but Henry was somewhat distracted in the laundry room and seemed to look out the window behind me more than at me. I think i will try to keep most of the activities these days in our distraction-free room, until he seems ready to handle it in the rest of the house.