MamaStories

I promised to put up the video of Amie drawing this picture. I just managed to upload it onto youtube. Have a look-see!

It’s a bit long (5 minutes) but the demonstration is followed by a not-to-be-missed review of most of Amie’s “people” drawings.

Enjoy!

Amie loves this quality drawing paper. It is stiff so it won’t buckle under the pressure of her pen, and it’s smooth, sucking up the Tombow’s ink just right. Expensive materials for a two-and-a-half-year-old, true, but it’s worth it. The only thing that bothers me is that the paper is a bit larger than letter-size. Amie utilizes the page from edge to edge, so when I scan it some part of the image is cut off.

She now automatically draws bodies and attaches the arms and legs to them. I’m afraid this time it really (almost certainly) is the end of the tadpoles. Sometimes there’s even a chin or a neck, and usually also a mess of big floppy ears and crazy hair, with here and there a beard thrown in.

I videotaped her drawing the second drawing above. It got really messy as she forgot which was the head and which the body so it ended up looking like an alien! I’ll try to get it on YouTube soon so you can get an idea of her drawing: very spontaneous, with big gestures and with running commentary. It’s so funny and clever.

She is also keen on signing her name now that she can write the letters without our physical help (some verbal cues are still appreciated). In the first drawing below she ran out of space for the letter I and E so she added them in front of the A and M. And sometimes she rotates the page to get at the empty space to sign her name. So, no, she didn’t draw the human figure on the last drawing upside down (I love, though, the way the ears attach to the hairdo!)

To witness the development of Amie’s drawing, check this out or click here.

What with all the house and land hunting, premature planning of gardens and scrambling to find a new preschool - after all the hassle we went through finding one here in Brookline! - I may be blogging less, but that doesn’t mean we’re playing less around here!

And even though I haven’t posted her drawings lately, Amie is still producing on average more over three “pictures” a day.

Here are some she made yesterday:

I drew the large tree outline, which she colored with green and brown. Then she added her own tree: the blue one, on top. A trunk, a crown! She did this spontaneously, after observing the tree I drew - and the one her Baba drew for her to color yesterday.

First, “little guy”. The ears are now the prominent features, but for the rest, these tadpoles have become quite formulaic and she is getting rather bored with them.

I suggested that she might want to draw the head higher up, next time, so there is more room for the body. She immediately took that advice to heart and drew Maisy and Cyril (”Cyril starts with ssssss” and so it does!):

I don’t think it matters to her (yet) whether she has enough room for the legs. What seems to matter more is that she makes use of the entire space underneath (though all that space on top in the previous draiwng didn’t bother her a bit). She does like to draw those “long legs, Mama! Those are looong!”

And again, note the big ears. I don’t quite remember anymore how Cyril (to the left) works: I think the blue oval-ish shape is his head/body and the black oval and circle are his ears…

Then, the drawing that amazed me most! This is Bambi:

When she wanted to draw the spots on Bambi’s back, she had to ask, though: “Where is Bambi’s back?” How strangely they sort out their shapes and body parts and directions. wish I could see through her eyes (and brain)!

(About her signature: she wrote the A and the i by herself. I guided her hand for the M and described the E verbally as she drew it. )

(If you want to follow the development of Amie’s drawing, check this out or click here.)

Amie gets it! She was talking about something and suddenly said:

- Mama, more begins with M.

I had always found it strange that she could rhyme so naturally - she picked it up in one day, months ago - but that she couldn’t isolate the first letter, or sound, of a spoken word, until now and after a lot of practice. Rhyming seems to me a more complex task, especially the way we play the “rhyming game” (I say: “cat rhymes with…” and she needs to sift through her vocabulary looking for a word that rhymes with cat). I guess I was wrong.

Now that she is so interested in writing, we’ve been working on it, of course. It is a part of our day now, to analyze the words we say into sounds. But today she isolated the sound spontaneously, without help or recourse to her memory.

And in the evening, this scene:

In the background, our lovely, newly-acquired roommate but old yet ever young friend Laura, reading The Magic Schoolbus while Amie tears through her favorite Kiss the Cow.

Oh, I feel so right at home!

Amie drew “The People” today. 4 of them. 1 big person and 3 tiny ones:

She also signed her name on the back:

We’ve been working on letters, and this is her first full written word (besides “8oo”, i.e., “Boo”). The A she has down pat. The M still tends to flatten out and go on at length. For the i and the e she needs a reminder in the form of a verbal description: “a line up with a dot on top”, “a line up and three short lines across”.

She has been very keyed up lately. Very repetitive, anxiously so sometimes, swallowing sounds and whole words in order to get it out as fast as possible: a song sung for the tenth time, a statement made the fifth time around. She talks and sings nonstop. She can’t fall asleep because her mind is racing. Her head hurts when you comb her hair. “Growth spurt,” we call it.

She has also been very imaginative, making up songs and stories, some cute (”Yesterday there was a dinosaur here and we played well together”) and some quite outrageous (”Mama pooped on the floor yesterday and I had to clean it up!” - so not true!).

Toddler life. Nonstop. Breathtaking.

I’ll let you know what I’m working on.

1. I’m researching how best to teach reading. Fascinating that whole Whole Word - Phonics war. So much of the history and psychology of writing is involved, and then throw your own toddler and her talents and interests into the mix. I love a complex challenge!
2. In advance of my making up my mind about the letter vs. sound approach, Amie and I started a consistent project with the sounds-letters she already recognizes: a, b, g, m, o, s, and t. We’re having a blast! The moment the fuller than full memory card on my camera can be emptied, I’ll take a picture of our “Corridor Project”.
3. Two weeks ago we inaugurated the cash box. At the end of the month we were always shocked to find that we had saved nothing. Where did it all go? So we are taking out $200 in cash a week and from that pay for our food, gas and small purchases (so not the fixed costs like mortgage, electricity, cable, etc.). It is so much easier to see it going-going-gone. Two weeks now we’ve made it!
4. I’m writing the final chapters of my novel, the ones where everything comes together. It’s so exciting, too exciting sometimes. But Amie has been home sick all week, so I haven’t been able to work all week. The suspense is killing me!
5. I’m dreaming again of the ole homestead… but keeping it small: a little structure to build. What will be its function (live there, guest space, study, workshop, kids’ house), structure (how big, how many floors, windows, what kind of roof and floor), materials (I’m leaning towards cob), energy source (solar, wind, composting toilet). We don’t have any land yet to build it on, but we’re looking! I got the magical Home Work Handbuilt Shelter book from the library and will accidentally leave it on the kitchen table to once more entice DH to share the dream.

I’ll report on all of these (but 4) soon!

I’ve uploaded a new video to YouTube, this one of Amie (at now 25 months) connecting the dots her Baba made on paper, unwittingly writing the letters A and M (guess why those). I was quite skeptical when I saw what Baba was up to: I didn’t think she could do it. But she did it without hesitation! And now she loves the game, especially when using her new easel (above: still the old airplanes!).

This connect-the-dots game was part of a larger drawing experiment, in which she also completed a face and a house. Her placement of eyes and mouth and windows and chimneys was surprisingly accurate! I’m working on a videoclip of that and a new article in the context of the Drawing as it Develops series. It’s quite relevant to the issue of how toddlers see human bodies: whether they really see them as they draw them…

• Letters

A couple of months ago, Amie started showing interest in letters. It was rather unavoidable, as we have wooden alphabet puzzles and alphabet fridge magnets. And she sees us reading, of course, and writing on paper (Mama) and on the computer (Baba and Mama).

She now also pretends to read her books,  some of which she knows by heart. It freaks out visitors, because she really seems to be reading fluently! She can recognize her written name and the A, B, C, K, M, O, P, S (and perhaps X).

• The things and the name/drawing/picture of it

She also pretends to write. On those occasions it sometimes seems that she hasn’t quite grasped the difference between the name of a thing and the thing. She will say:

- “This is a dinosaur!” and will make big movements, while very slowly spelling out the word - “di-no-sau-ah!” (with a flourish at the end). I ask her:

- “Did you draw a drawing of a dinosaur or write the word ‘dinosaur’?” (we have always taken care to make those distinctions between pictures,  drawings, or name(s) of something, and the something). She answers:

- “It’s a drawing of a dinosaur!” (tone: are you stupid or what?)

• The Letter Box Game

In any case, a fun game I invented is the Letter Box. It’s your average small cardboard box that has an easy-to-open flap. On it I stuck two cd-sleeves.

1. Every morning, Amie chooses one letter from a cheapo stack of flashcards. The upper and lower case cards go into the cd-sleeves on top. In the picture above we’re working on M, one of her favorite letters.
2. Throughout the day we collect things that start with that letter and put them inside the box. We cut out pictures of monkeys, for instance, put in (small) books whose titles start with the letter (Maisy), and small objects (money).
3. In the evening, we up-end the box and review its contents. I hope it will become part of our routine.

• Homeschooling Reading

That doesn’t mean we’re learning how to read, let alone actually reading. I have been doing some research on all the elements that need to come together and all the effort that needs to be expended for reading to happen… and I must admit, I am intimidated!

I don’t want to leave reading up to school, though. First of all, because  that kind of school is still very far off, and I think Amie might be interested before then. I also want her to learn reading in her own setting, that is, at home, as part of play, and out of her own volition.

Teaching has always been a large part of our parenting - of anyone’s parenting, for sure, but DH and I are very conscious of our roles as teachers. And Amie is a curious girl. She can now count to ten, for instance, not just say the words, but count 10 things: we taught her that and she eagerly aborbed it.

I wonder what kind of shape our teaching her / her learning how to read:

• it will be a homeschooling project, that is clear (even though DH doesn’t like the idea of full-time homeschooling, as someone who grew up in the extremly competitive Indian school system, he is shocked at how late kids in the States learn to read or count, etc. At age 4 he could already spell ‘handkerchief’ - a word I just had to spellcheck to see if I got it right!)
• but will it be more of an unschooling effort?
• or will I scramble to read the latest research and to offer her many experimental inroads?

One thing is for certain, we can’t wait for our daughter to experience the joy of reading, but we’ll take it one step at a time, letting her lead the dance.