Nicholas has surprised me with his choices and abilities this week.
The buttons tray was a flop. A few months ago, Nikki would spend all day spooning if I gave him the chance, now he is not interested. Apparently it is a skill he considers mastered.
I did persuade him to play a couple of times - he liked to struggle with the box, but only wanted to use the spoon for stirring the buttons, which he poured from pot to bowl. I managed to get him to follow my instructions for a total of about two minutes!
Tonging pompoms was a big favourite. He wasn't so much interested in matching the colours, but his control of the tongs is excellent now. He completes the whole exercise in a minute and asks to do it several times a day.
I was surprised with the pattern board. I thought it would be too hard for him and we would just arrange the shapes randomly on his tray. Nikki chose one of the harder patterns and completed it almost independantly on his first go. I now know that he can match similar shapes (he normally refuses to) - obviously he just didn't have the right shapes to match! All I really needed to do was hand the shapes over one at a time to let him focus on the one in his hand, and re-place the shapes if he knocked them or the board to prevent him getting frustrated.
I was equally surprised when Nikki started not only matching the sound balls, but telling me 'this one is quiet' when he picked up the quietest ones!
He also insisted on independently reading his Russian book and practicing the exercises I have been doing with him with a mix of mostly-English and Russian. This at least prooves that he understood the Russian enough to translate back to English.
The buttons tray was a flop. A few months ago, Nikki would spend all day spooning if I gave him the chance, now he is not interested. Apparently it is a skill he considers mastered.
I did persuade him to play a couple of times - he liked to struggle with the box, but only wanted to use the spoon for stirring the buttons, which he poured from pot to bowl. I managed to get him to follow my instructions for a total of about two minutes!
 |
| Stirring... |
 |
| Pouring... |
 |
| ... finally spooning! |
Tonging pompoms was a big favourite. He wasn't so much interested in matching the colours, but his control of the tongs is excellent now. He completes the whole exercise in a minute and asks to do it several times a day.
I was surprised with the pattern board. I thought it would be too hard for him and we would just arrange the shapes randomly on his tray. Nikki chose one of the harder patterns and completed it almost independantly on his first go. I now know that he can match similar shapes (he normally refuses to) - obviously he just didn't have the right shapes to match! All I really needed to do was hand the shapes over one at a time to let him focus on the one in his hand, and re-place the shapes if he knocked them or the board to prevent him getting frustrated.
He also insisted on independently reading his Russian book and practicing the exercises I have been doing with him with a mix of mostly-English and Russian. This at least prooves that he understood the Russian enough to translate back to English.
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