Week ending 2018-06-15

| review, weekly
  • Field trip
    • I went for a bike ride with A- in the trailer. Good thing I picked a nearby destination, though, since she insisted on walking on the way back. Even when she got tired, she still didn't want to get in the trailer, so I put her in the carrier and walked the bike and trailer back.
  • Fine motor
    • A- was interested in making valentines, so we folded paper, cut out shapes, and glued them.
    • A- wanted to build a Duplo city. We pretended the blocks were houses. First we started with one line, then another, and then a few towers. Then A- focused on filling the space with blocks, butting them right up against each other. She was momentarily stymied by a small gap that she couldn't fit a block into, but figured out after I asked a few guide questions.
  • Sensory
    • A-, the babysitter, and I got drenched in a sudden downpour. A- was upset when she was in the rain, but we were able to reframe it as an adventure. Since the power was out in our neighbourhood, I took A- to a restaurant a little further away for dinner.
    • A- liked being swung up in the air, like in the book Nelly Gnu and Daddy Too.
  • Language
    • We read lots and lots and lots of books.
    • Talking about incipient actions: “I'm about to go down the slide.”
    • W- was counting out loud. A- smiled approvingly and said, “Daddy knows the words.”
    • A- talked about the letters on the babysitter's shirt. I gave her a few magnetic letters, and she matched them up. I gave her a cookie tray so that she could play with the letters closer to the babysitter's shirt instead of turning around to the fridge.
  • Music
    • A- participated in music class today. She started off a little sleepy and reserved, but she helped clean up, and she let me put her on the floor. She liked hiding under the scarf and shaking the jingle bell sticks.
    • At circle time at the JFRC, A- brought over a stool and sat on it. She imitated the family support worker's gestures and softly sang words too. She waved the scarf around, and she flapped the parachute up and down. Best circle time engagement so far!
  • Self-care and independence
    • A- didn't want to brush her teeth, but she changed her mind when she saw the “Shiny smile time” page in a book.
    • A- and E- played in the sandbox while Jen and I chatted on a bench a short distance away. It felt like a big milestone. We eventually moved closer to help them with social interaction, but still, this is a start.
  • Social
    • We talked to our neighbour about her experience with a Montessori private school. She gave a glowing review. I might be willing to give up having an extra year with A- if preschool is a good fit for her. I'm not worried about helping A- learn her letters, but I think preschool might do a better job than I might at arranging regular social interaction. I think Montessori is interesting. I like Reggio Emilia a lot too, and I want to explore options for that as well. We'll see!
    • Together with a couple of other kids, A- scooped sand into the tube of this activity centre. They all took turns, and they managed to fill the tube all the way up by using wet sand.
    • A- asked me to transfer her to a swing closer to another kid.
    • A- almost wore just a diaper to music class. She relented and let me put pants on her. I brought a bubble wand, which helped keep kids engaged while waiting for class to start. Also, playing the excavator game got A- a little involved in cleanup, although she still mostly clung to me in class.
    • I was looking for my keys, and A- helpfully piped up that they were on the floor. Yay! Later, I was looking for my headlamp, and A- got them for me. It was tucked into a corner, which was a little odd. Hmm…
    • Because the power was out, I brought down my headlamp. The babysitter remarked that she had a similar one. A- blew the whistle cleverly integrated into the headlamp's strap. The babysitter was surprised and thanked A- for teaching her something new.
    • We ate at a restaurant because power was out at home. We talked through the process, and A- practised what to say and do. I asked her to say, “Excuse me, check please,” and she tried that at our table a few times before we talked to the easier.
    • I feel pretty good about how I'm playing with A- and helping her learn, and I look forward to getting even better at it. The babysitter experiment is also working out well. Even when we're both there with her instead of my going off to do consulting or kaizen stuff, it's a good opportunity for her to see social interaction and for me to pick people's brains.
    • At the JFRC, I shared a large bunch of grapes at snack-time, and they were well-received.
    • A- imitated what I look like when I'm fighting the urge to sneeze.
  • Pretend
    • A- was interested in playing with the pretend kitchen at the JFRC and putting on the scrubs in the doctor kit.
    • A- liked pretending to be an excavator or a Bobcat. She also asked me to pretend to be an excavator.
  • Cognition
    • We built two towers of Duplo, and then A- wanted to put a block across the top. We built a couple of other tower pairs. I started counting the blocks I added: sometimes one, sometimes two, sometimes three. When we got near the top of the second tower, I asked A- how many more blocks we needed to add. She said a number that happened to be the right answer. She was probably just lucky, but hey, why not incorporate more math into our activities..
  • Kaizen
    • I moved more winter things into storage.
    • I made Tasker scripts for adding descriptions to my pictures, logging them in my journal, and linking from my journal to the pictures. I learned how to call Java functions from Tasker and how to work with images in scenes. I want to use this to create more pedagogical documentation.
    • I wrote some code to watch a directory and add Org links to new files, managing them with Org attachments. I also experimented with org-download and dragging and dropping images into Emacs, and I wrote a command to read the caption from an image's metadata and insert it into the buffer.
    • I installed Resilio and used it to synchronize my pictures with the NAS.
    • I added pictures and printed out last week's review. I also replaced # with Unicode stars and labels in the image filenames.
    • I wrote a shell script to add photo captions for printing.
    • I migrated my blog database to utf8mb4.
  • Us
    • A city tree inspector came by. We had a pleasant chat about the permit process and assured him we would file all the proper paperwork if we decide to go ahead with changing the backyard.
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