5 February 2009 8:53 pm
Stream of Consciousness
For the past week or so, Andrea is in a phase that I call "Stream of Consciousness." My guess is that her ability to speak words is catching up to her ability to think words. The result is that we get to see an unedited version of what is going on inside her head.
This can be good, and this can be bad.
Her teacher at school shared a story that was more on the bad end of the spectrum. Andrea wasn't waiting her turn for a toy, and it was explained to her that she needed to wait. Andrea verbalized what we all would think, which something like, "Well, I'm just going to say it was two minutes and take it back from her now."
On the good side of the spectrum, it allows me to understand what is motivating Andrea at any given moment in time. Instead of wondering why it is taking her twenty or thirty minutes to go to the bathroom, wash hands, and brush teeth, I get a running commentary on what is distracting her.
I know that this phase won't last long, so I'm going to try to take advantage of it any way I can.
3 February 2009 8:38 pm
Budding Scientist
Dylan shared with me that he wants to be a scientist when he grows up. He wants to do experiments. And he wants to write about them.
Yes, he wants to not only do science, but he wants to also share his findings with others.
Dylan is well on his way to his goals, as he wrote his first lab report last weekend. He did some experiments with his new science kit ("Mind Blowing Science"). Then, later that weekend, Dylan actually drew pictures to represent what had happened in the experiments.
Dylan was also creating a bar chart last week. He was polling his friends at school to pick a number. He then added a box to each bar to see which number was picked the most. He had some other complicated grid system that was designed to indicate how many friends he still had to ask. Unfortunately, I was there to pick him up and he didn't get to finish his master plan.
