Saturday, September 29, 2007

RCR

I sort of had a light bulb go off the other day when I was giving Henry his daily 'before bed bowl of cereal'. Just as we use an intermediate bowl to allow Henry to make many small dumps when adding ingredients to the mixing bowl, I've begun to do the same thing with his cereal and milk. The first time I did it, he caught on right away. Unlike baking, which we're only able to do once or twice a week, the kid eats several bowl of cereal a day so this should introduce many more occasions for RCR.

Since we have millions of acorns on our property at the moment, I'm going to try to incorporate them in an RCR activity tomorrow. I'll probably just hand him acorns and have him throw them somewhere... we'll see.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Video Review #5

Mom - Non-Verbal
Mom and Henry continue to target Objective 5 use of non-verbals in a few different activities.



Mom - Give/Put
Various RCR activities with Mom and Henry in giver-puter roles.



Dad - Non-Verbal
Like I mentioned in the video, I'm not sure this was a good activity to target objective 5 after all because he's done this so many times and he knows his role pretty well. I just gotta get him to stop tasting the batter!



Dad - Give/Put
In these videos, I'm thought I was doing RCR until I started editing the video and remembered that I'm not supposed to talk for that - but still think this was a productive activity regardless. Another thing I observed was that even though I did all these videos last night in a span of about an hour and a half, I don't think it seemed forced to him. To me, it was a little rushed but the point I'm trying to make is that he seemed to go along with everything without a fight so I guess he was enjoying himself somewhat.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

The weekend and finding fun games

Well, this weekend without the books went really well - despite the added craziness of having houseguests, we were able to do lot of things with Henry. Saturday, we did a lot of time in the yard, playing with balls and on the swing and on the bike. no pressure - we just had fun with it b/c aaron's family was visiting and it was relaxed (no videos to do :). Sunday, Aaron headed up to the dover race with the fam, so i had the kids to myself all day. It went very well. I filmed a few things, which you will see on tues, but mostly it was just Hen, Rose and i hangin out. I got some alone time w/Henry when i took him to gymnastics class - lots of good opportunity for RDI throughout the class....especially use of non-verbals for transitions - like holding my hand out, or using eye gaze on where he should go and what to do next. and he paid attention pretty well.

We also went to the store after the class and he picked out a b-day cake for Poppy (his great grandpa). we went back to my mom's and had an early dinner and the cake for Pop - Hen helped put in the candles and then blow them out - he was a role-player in the whole process, which was great and really made him feel good about himself - he was just extra smiley today and in tune. I think he liked having that alone time with mom - i need to try to schedule that in on a weekly basis if i can - aaron has mentioned he could come home early one night a week - that might work well.

Proximity, patience, and limiting words was my mantra for this weekend and i think it worked well - hen seemed on a much more even keel. i watched the video you sent - actually i had already seen it from the site, but i think it was a great example of setting a welcoming environment - i'm going to have aaron watch it tomorrow.

Oh, so my three activities that i think Henry would enjoy are playing on the musical instruments, anything to do with the swingset and yard (maybe even a Dora the Explorer type scavenger hunt, we were having fun with things like that this weekend.) and building with this magnetic ball erector set. i think as time goes on i'll have more - eliminating the books (or at least limiting the time with them to about 15 min a day, as well as 15 min of computer) has opened up a lot of new options.