the "Long" and "Short" of it

One or two Saturdays each month, Lowes and Home Depot have workshops for kids to build little pre-fab projects for free. They give the kids shop aprons and safety goggles and the kids earn patches and certificates when they complete the little building project (which requires little more than hammering a handful of nails, and sanding or maybe putting on stickers). It's, of course, an excellent marketing scheme to get mom and dad in to the stores to spend money! But it's also an excellent opportunity for moms or dads to do something fun and educational with their little kids. It would be a terrific opportunity for Jman, except he just cannot handle the crazy noise level. Between the noisy kids and all the banging hammering from all the kids, and the generally terrible acoustics of such warehouse style buildings, he just can't deal with the environment. So, when we remember to go, we just ask if we can have one of the project kits to bring home and do later. They have always said yes.

So, today I pulled out the February project from one of Jman's workboxes. It was a kit to make a little wooden jewelry box for Valentine's Day. It took a little while to get Jman's interest really going. I began by just holding and commenting on the hammer, then holding and commenting on the bag of supplies. No interest yet. So, I opened the bag and set it on the table and again waited. Then I began pulling pieces out one at a time, studying them and commenting on them. After a few pieces, Jman pulled out the bag with the 2 piece red heart. He worked very hard to get that troublesome little bag open and the parts out. I had to consciously STOP MYSELF from trying to help him. He didn't need HELP. He just needed TIME. So I waited. And it was HARD. I didn't pull out any more pieces until he was DONE getting the heart pieces out, and then I commented on the heart being 'like a puzzle.' Finally, he was ready to move on to the next piece, and I began pulling things out again.

Eventually we had all the pieces out, including the instructions. And almost as slowly we began putting it together. One of the first challenges was deciding which length of nail to use at any given time. There were 3/4" nails and 1/2" nails included with the kit. Then it occurred to me that we had an excellent opportunity here to work on language! "Long" vs "short!" So, rather than gathering the right nails, I picked up one of each and told Jman we needed a LONG nail. It again took a while before I had his full attention, but once I did, he correctly selected the long nail and even SAID "long." Very cool!

We used several long nails before needing a short one. I tried simply asking for a short nail, and that didn't work for him. So I went back to holding one of each and asking for the short nail. Now, you'd think he'd just KNOW that it must be the one that wasn't long, but I'm not entirely sure that he really did. Maybe it was just an attentional issue, but I decided to spotlight sh-sh-short for him anyway and contrast it with looooong. After that, he had it down and could correctly get a long or a short nail each time for the rest of the project. Isn't it just amazing how a buiding project can turn into a language lesson?

I actually considering trying to take some pictures once we were about half way through the project, but things were going so well that I really didn't want to mess it up by tossing in the 'performance' challenge. So very often if Jman knows (or thinks) that you're trying to get him to perform 'stupid human tricks' he will rebel and disengage. I didn't want to potentially jeopardize the excellent togetherness we were having for the sake of a few more pix for the blog. But after all was said and done and he'd moved on to some free time, I found him and asked for him to pose for a picture with his box and the hammer. And here he is! That's a happy smile!