Accidents

For many years the Lark has been struggling with the concept of accidents. Until recently, if I accidentally bumped into him he would become angry. He couldn't understand that I hadn't meant to do it. But the other day we were singing together a little too exuberantly and we konked head. The Lark looked at me and said, "that was an accident." And he was not angry. Yesterday he spilled a bowl of rice on the floor. He looked at me with a sort of guilty expression and said, "it was an accident."

I think this is a really big step. It shows a developing awareness of his own and other people's intentions--and an ability to express that awareness. Now we'll try to explore the concept of being sorry.

Hiding Places

The Gray School is back in business now that summer's pretty much over. Over the summer we played a lot of hide and seek. As I reported, the Lark was getting more enjoyment out of being the seeker, but he was struggling with the being the hider, for several reasons. One reason was that he just couldn't come up with hiding places on his own. He just has a really hard time generating original ideas when asked to do so.

Well, yesterday we had an Easter egg hunt, and I had the Lark hide the eggs. He asked for my help several times, but I just kept hiding my eyes and waited to see what he would do. I sort of expected him to just open up all the eggs and eat all the jelly beans. But after a few minutes I went to take a look--and he had hidden all 8 Easter eggs, in pretty good places too. This is a really big step--that he could come up with the places, that they were all in fact hidden and not just sitting out in the open, that he trusted himself enough to act on his ideas, that he was able to resist eating the jelly beans.... Yay Lark!

Hide & Seek

We've been playing a lot of hide & seek this summer. Part of the pleasure of hide & seek is this: we put ourselves into a state of disequilibrium when we don't know where the hider(s) are, and we restore equilibrium when we find them. For young children who are new at the game, the tension and the relief are both much greater--they're afraid they really might not find you. This is why the game is really much more exciting for them. Until recently, the Lark didn't "get" this part of the game. He just looked for me because I would tickle him when he found me. He relied on me to hide in an easy enough place or make enough noise that he could find me easily. Otherwise, he'd just give up.

This summer it's different. I can hide in much harder places, and he works very hard to find me. He gets really nervous when he can't find me and calls out, "where's Mowbow?!" I make a little noise so he doesn't panic, and he keeps looking. When he finally spots a foot or something, he laughs out loud, really enjoying that restored sense of equilibrium, and he doesn't even care whether I tickle him or not. He's enjoying the game for its own sake.

The other role--the hiding part--he never used to get at all. I think he couldn't understand the other person's perspective enough to know what he had to do to hide so they couldn't see him. Also, he couldn't identify with the other person enough to share her feeling of tension and relief--and he probably still doesn't. He does at least understand the difference between a hiding place and a "seeing place," as he calls it. So now the challenges are to be able to come up with a hiding place and to share the seeker's feelings. He'll get there.

Leading

It's been a little hard to keep up with the blog now that it's summer. But we've been doing our grayschooling every day, and it's going well. Today the Lark did an amazing job leading us through the Lion Hunt story. It's a rhythmic call-and-response story. The leader says a line and then "everyone" repeats it. It involves hand-motions and sound effects. It moves slowly forward as we hunt the lion and then we go back through all the events in reverse as we run away from the lion. And the Lark led the way through the whole thing with just a few hints and reminders. And even when he faltered a bit, he never lost his confidence or became upset. I think this shows how much better he learns when there is no pressure. We did this story many times with me in the lead. He just had to repeat what I said. Finally, he decided to try leading when he was ready. I never really asked him to. By contrast, he is still struggling with our little frog story, which is shorter and simpler. But with the frog story I started making demands on him (and his memory) right away. I think that when I place this kind of pressure on him--no matter how easy I make the task--his capacity to take things in is diminished.

More Curious George

Yesterday we looked at Curious George some more, and the Lark was doing lots more thinking and relating. He looked at the first picture of George and said, "He's eating a banana." A few pages later he saw George trapped in a bag and asked, "What is it?" I told him George was trapped in a bag. He didn't know what to make of that, but I was trying to say as little as possible. Then we got to a picture of the ship that George would take back to the City. It was off in the distance and looked like a small boat. The Lark pointed to the little "house" part and said, "There's a bed in there." He was relating this picture to what he knew about his grandfather's boat, which has a little compartment for sleeping. Luckily, on the next page there was a picure of George and the Man in their cabin, which had beds in it. The Lark was clearly pleased that his assumption turned out to be true. He pointed out the blankets and the pillows. He was curious about the curtains on the two berths. "These beds have curtians," he declared. He wanted to know about the little window and the ocean outside. He asked about lots of things. Then he pointed to George and said, "It's like Tony." And he pointed to the Man and said, "It's like [the Lark]." He was comparing this picture to a photo we have of the Lark and his brother in the tiny sleeping compartment on their grandfather's boat. So the Lark wasn't thinking about the story, or the actual relationship of the characters in the story, but he was trying to relate what he saw to his own life, which is exactly what typical children do with story books. It's the first step And the really exciting part was just how hard the Lark was working to make sense of the pictures--he was motivated, and voluntarily doing the work of thinking and making sense.

Identifying with Curious George

After a week's break, we're back at the Gray School (Summer Edition). As I've said many times, one of our main goals in the Gray School is to help the Lark develop narrative thinking and narrative comprehension. An important element of narrative thinking is the ability to identify with the characters in a story, so we are always trying to stimulate identification--with real people, with animals, and with characters in stories.

Today we tried Curious George again--the first one. I remembered that it had pictures of George walking on telephone wires and floatng away with a bunch of balloons. The Lark has frequently expressed a desire to fly, to jump down from the clouds, and even specifically to climb up a telephone pole and to float up with a balloon. So I sat down with him and the book and opened it up to the pictures of these things. I didn't say anything about the story; I just tried to express my identification with George--"Be careful, Curious!" or "Wheee, up he goes!" The Lark was very interested and amused. He pointed at the picture of George hanging on to the balloons and looking very frightened, and said, "That will be the end of Curious George!" (This is a phrase I use when he asks me things like, what will happen if he jumps out of the car as it's moving--I say, that will be the end of the Lark." He finds this very funny.) Anyway, when I pointed to George up on the wire and gave a look of mock anxienty, the Lark matched my expression with his own and then laughed.

The best part is that I resisted the urge to take it any farther than this. I'll pick it up again tomorrow and see what happens.

Meaning Emerges

There are many activities we do with children that they don't understand at first. But if we repeat the activities often enough, they gradually become meaningful. This year we kept a running tally of our days in the Gray School. Every day we added a tally mark, then we sang our song ("How Many Days Have We Been in the Gray School?"), and then we counted our groups of five to find the answer. At first the Lark did not seem to understand this activity, but now he does. He understands that we add only one mark for each day, and that if we count up all the marks, we can see how many days we've been in the Gray School.

The important point is, there are a lot of activities that they don't bother doing with the "self-contained" kids at the Lark's school, because they think it wouldn't be meaningful for them (like Star of the Week and Art Awareness and poetry and class performances and class pets), but if the kids had been doing them since kindergarten, then these activities would have become meaningful by now.