This is a dog.

A quick update on Jman's language work before we head out the door to watch Sly's rocket launch at Starbase.

Trying to find a happy medium between 'working' on language and having a little fun at the same time, today we pulled out a cut n fold Kumon project. It's a picture of a dog with a bone. Then when you fold it, the dog has the bone crammed into his mouth. It's pretty cute. It's an expansion of a Kumon cut n fold we played with last week of a panda playing peek a boo. Jman enjoyed the panda last week, and he was enjoying the dog today.

While we were playing around with the dog, Jman was trying to copy the dog's mouth--first wide open, then chomped closed with cheeks puffed out, which of course led to some raspberries and cheek popping. I began modeling some of the simple language we could use with the dog. Jman was interested and 'listening with one ear' while making his faces. Sometimes he'd whisper echo what I had said.

Then we worked on some basic sentences. I wrote them on a sheet of paper, and we/he read them out loud. Honestly, just that much is still quite challenging for Jman. Even when he knows what to say, he's very hesitant to actually say it. But that's a whole other post. Anyway, we/he did read the sentences out loud.

This is a dog.
He has a bone.
The dog eats the bone.
Yum!

Yes, not very creative, but Jman actually WAS interested, and the fact that there was a bit of a story to it I think helped. My biggest goof (other than using TOO many sentences and language concepts in general) was that I used the pronoun 'he.' I should have re-used the antecedent "The dog" instead, since we're not to the point of working pronouns yet. That comes developmentally later.

Later, I wrote the corresponding questions above the sentence answers:
What is this?
What does he have? (again, should have used "the dog")
What does the dog do?
And I didn't write a question for yum.

I carry a little mantra in my head for working on language in a multimodal way (seeing, hearing, speaking, writing) is "read, recite, copy, compose, dictate, narrate." It's a modified wording of the points described by Tammy here. Jman isn't ready to do all those things with me YET, but he can read, and he can recite, and he can copy, so long as he's WILLING. So, those are the three we're targeting right now. And, of course, conversing throughout the day ('narrate' because it rhymes with 'dictate').

However, Jman did NOT want to copy today--he wanted me to do all the writing. However, I wanted HIM to write, not because I'm anal and refused to compromise, but because the act of handwriting will help cement things in his head. There's nothing like using multiple parts of the brain at the same time to help you learn and remember something.

Here's where scaffolding came in. He wouldn't copy the sentence "This is a dog." But as soon as I made little dots for the first letter of the sentence where I wanted him to write, he grinned and traced 'T.' Then he looked at me and said, "Dots!" Okay, fine--dots it is! I gave him dots to trace, and he wrote "This is a dog." Unfortunately, he for some reason was unhappy with his 'dog' and freaked out and erased it. It took a bit to calm him down and have him re-finish, but eventually he did. And that was a great stopping point, as is this. He/we can work on copying the other sentences over the next couple days. The trick in working with Jman is balancing helping him work and learn language, and not being overbearing and discouraging and compromising his trust in me to lead him. It's a fine line, sometimes, with the autism.

Now, off to the rocket launch!