Day Five at the Gray School

Lots of fun today.

Narrative comprehension--discovering connections. Children are not born with the ability to comprehend narratives, and young children work very hard to develop this ability. They ask to hear stories over and over, they study the pictures and try to recreate the story from memory, they act out stories in an effort to work through the events and the characters' actions and intentions. Young children are motivated to do this work in large part because they identify with the characters in the story. A child who has yet to discover the connections between himself and others has very little motivation to try to understand stories about other people (or characters). The Lark is going to have to discover these connections on his own. This is not something anyone can teach him. Our job is to help him make discoveries.

Today we took another worm walk. The sidewalk was covered with worms from last night's rain. I suggested that we "rescue" the worms that were stranded on the sidewalk and help them get to the dirt, where they would be happier. The Lark joined in this activity eagerly. He spontaneously imitated the way I was picking them up with a stick. In some cases, when that wasn't working, he improvised and picked them up with him fingers. After a while, I pointed out that some of them were dead, and we didn't really have to move those ones. After that, the Lark moved only the ones that wiggled when he touched them. I announced that I was naming one worm "Amber," and the Lark added, "Amber the worm," to distinguish her, I suppose, from Amber the person we know.

Physical integration: The Lark's jumping jacks were even better today--perfect, really. This is one of many activities that we're doing to help the Lark learn to integrate his top half and his bottom half--something that has been surprisingly difficult for him. Other activities include swinging on a swing (which is going very well) and "frog hopping" (which he is still struggling with).

Other connections: Yesterday we made limeade by squeezing limes. The Lark enjoyed it so much that he asked if we could make grapefruit juice too. So we did. Today he was having a popsicle and decided he wanted to make popsicle juice. I asked how we should do it. He suggested putting the popsicle through the juicer. I said I didn't think that would work, so we decided to let it melt in a cup. We went and did some math and reading, then we came back and drank the popsicle juice.