They are the same color.

Jman has continued to work on his math language using ProLoQuo2Go. Last week we played a card game in which he demonstrated mastery of "They are the same" vs "They are not the same." He is on a VeggieTales kick, and I had an old VeggieTales card game that plays like Memory/Concentration. I pulled out the 4 cards each for Bob the Tomato, Larry the Cucumber, and Junior Asparagus, shuffled them, and Jman and I played a game of Outhouse Solitaire. I pulled the top and bottom cards of the deck and held them up. He, being Jman, made sure they were "upside up" ("upside down" is NOT allowed in Jman's world!). Then Jman's job was to tell me, using the ProLoQuo2GO, whether they were the same or not the same. If they were the same, he got to keep the pair of cards. If they were not the same, they went into the discard pile.

It took him just a couple of turns before he figured out the game, and he was always delighted to get a match and keep the cards. Once he had all the cards matched in pairs, the game was over and so was the 'lesson.' It was especially neat when he'd look up at me with a big grin when he got a match. That's showed me that we were working not only on language but also on experience sharing. He wanted to share with me how happy he was and look to see what my reaction was. Hmmmm. Down the road maybe we can compare our reactions and whether they are 'the same' or 'not the same.'

Prior to the math lesson, btw, Jman wanted to do Reading Milestones. However, he never even waited for me to open the book. Instead, he punched into the ProLoQuo2Go his memorized version of the story: "The boy rock jumps. The boy log jumps. The boy water jumps. The boy fence jumps. Home. The end." I throw that in here to point out some of the 'disorder' in Jman's language. He comprehended the story (the boy jumps over those various obstacles to get home), but his language is mixed up in describing it. Instead of subject-verb-direct object, Jman said subject-object-verb. That's something we'll have to work on down the road.

Back to math language now. Today Jman and I played a different version of Outhouse Solitaire using the VeggieTales cards. Instead of identifying same/not the same characters (completely identical cards), I wanted him to learn to identify when thing which were not identical ('not the same') were still the same in some way, in this case the same color. Instead of having 4 each of identical cards, I had only one each of certain character cards. Most of the Veggies are green (Larry, Junior, Archibald, the French Pea, Pa Grape), two are orange (Laura the carrot and Jimmy Gourd), and one is red (Bob the Tomato). I left Bob out (no other match for red) and Pa Grape (had an odd number of green veggies). That left me with 4 green veggies and 2 orange veggies.

The first pair of cards I showed to Jman were the same color, but of course they were different characters. Jman quickly punched in "They are not the same." He thought he was correct, and of course he was correct. But I pointed out to him that they were both green, and modeled for him, "They are the same . . . color" using two different buttons (one for the phrase and one for 'color'). We set them aside and pulled out two more cards. I again had to demonstrate for him that they were the same color. He was thinking, but still not quite sure what we were doing here.

Through a few more turns I developed the pattern of showing him the two cards and saying out loud, for example, "Junior is green. Larry is green. Are they the same color?" With this extra bit of scaffolding, Jman was able to figure out the game and begin to correctly respond with "They are the same color" or "They are not the same color," depending upon which two cards we were looking at. We had to reshuffle the cards a few times, since I had so few cards in the deck, but he was okay with that. And once again, once Jman had the game figured out, he would look up at me with huge grins when he punched in the right reply. It was way cool!

So, that's our update on math language as of today. A next step will be to compare colors of other items. Then we'll want to teach him to identify when things are not the same, but ARE the same color. We also will want to compare other attributes, such as shape and size. But one step at a time. The goal is not to frustrate or overwhelm him, but to let him learn at the best pace for him.

Speaking of learning, Jman likes to stim on ProLoQuo2Go, which I think I mentioned before. However, some of the words and phrases he stims on he is beginning to use in real life. This morning when Habeeb left for work, Jman said, "Good bye" to him. When I got up and said good morning to Jman, he replied back "Good morning." He's getting opportunities to practice some of the words on his on, and is applying them in real life. That's way cool.

Last little bit of info: Yesterday we dropped the bucks and got Jman an iPod Touch of his very own. That way I don't have to share mine with him (he was deleting things and rearranging things and surfing youtube and such), and he will always have access to his "words." Now we just have to order a waterproof case for his if we want it to survive! Anyway, he was very excited to have his very own iPod/ProLoQuo2Go, despite the fact that we passcode protected all the online stuff so he can't use it to go online and watch videos himself. It'll be fun to see how the increased access works for him.