Liam broke his arm on Wednesday jumping from a desk we had just put in his playroom. He is doing well. He was SO brave and calm and cried only a bit. He needs to wear a cast for 8 weeks. He broke both bones that go from the elbow to the hand.
We need to avoid physical games with him in the playroom, so here are ideas I got from Megan:
MEGAN: "I have been thinking about lower level non-physical games or things to introduce to Liam. Here are some of my thoughts: an etch a sketch, paints or some of those magical markers, puppet shows to entertain him, imagination themes where we dress up and stay in costume the entire time (e.g. clown, blow balloons, dance, laugh, Santa claus who bring lots of toy magazines to make a big collage for Liam's xmas list etc). Pin the red nose on Rudolph, OR decorate his own personal LIVE xmas tree, OR make ornaments and do a craft with glitter etc, OR make miniature xmas trees for the dollhouse etc."
Other ideas she gave me before Liam broke his arm:
- We can make big labels with big construction paper with the names of furniture that goes in houses. We could put those labels on things that are in his room, but we could label them INCORRECTLY, like the Mixed-up Room. So, you could make a big deal that everything is incorrectly labeled and go through the room correcting everything. You could even have a timer and correct things within a certain time.
- Create remodeling books. I got several decoration magazines this morning and put them on Liam's shelves. I also put big construction paper there. And got glue sticks and tape.
- One option is to start with empty rooms on the paper and to add furniture cutting from magazines.
- Another option is to start with a full room from the magazine and to add labels and glue them on the magazine page.
- We could use a spinner from the twister game, for example, and put labels there and then select what furniture piece we will find in the magazines.
- Another idea is to bring the dollhouse and to have incorrectly labeled things in the dollhouse. It would be the Mixed Up House and we could put all the labels back to the correct place.
- We could do collages of home rooms/classrooms again with furniture we are cutting from the magazines. I got glue and tape to create the collages.
- Since he likes school a lot lately, we could do circle time with his pillow-pets as other students. We could read books and we could pretend we are the teachers and sign songs or do activities where the animals take turns, too. For example, everybody could take turn drawing.
- We could color over leafs or use stencils for shapes and letters, or step by step drawing.
- We could do a memory game with furniture photos from magazines, too.
I asked Megan what to do when Liam wants to go back to using 1-word to tell us what he wants. This is what Megan recommends:
Have a little of an attitude with Liam, in the sense of telling him "I know you can say this" "Tell me more" "What else?" "I know what you are doing" "Come on" "You can do it" "You can tell me more" "I can wait"
She thinks that maybe Liam is thinking "What can I get away with here?" I have seen that sometimes he DOES say "I want" or "give me" but it is in a whisper. If you can hear the whisper, that's enough, congratulate him for saying a complete sentence and give him what he asked for. Megan thinks that Liam is challenging us back, so we need to challenge him back, too. He is exercising control and independence, which is great, but we can show him that sometimes we know he can talk more than one word.
If he says "brown crackers, YES", don't give him the brown crackers. That is the response to a question, but it is NOT a sentence. He needs to say "I want crackers" "give me crackers" to get the crackers. If one of us gives him crackers with "brown crackers, YES", he will continue doing it.
==== DUCH ====
For Duch, we had the issue this week of her escaping through the backyard gate to go see decorations at other houses. A neighbor brought her back on Tuesday. Megan suggested to create a game where she and her animals and you have to ask each other:
"What's your name?" What is your phone number?" "What is your address?" If we do it a lot, she will end up learning her phone address. I have to do the same with Tony, too.
Kristen had great success with the "voice memo" application on her Iphone recording Duch answering and asking questions. We will try with a camera, too. Megan told me to also try a "Talking Cat" application on her Iphone, which repeats everything you say in a funny voice, so it could be a way to practice asking and answering questions. Does anybody know that application?
Let's try all these things throughout December, ladies! We are aiming for Dec 14 for our mini-meeting and Polar Express Christmas party!
