Hope the occupational therapist is still reading my blog? You didn't leave a name, but hi! I started to notice how ds2 held his pen only after you tagged! So I didn't really know how he holds it. Just wanna confirm. Below left is the pinch grip and below right is the close grip? He seems to alternate between these two grips. At least for that observation session that afternoon. :-) With ds1, I taught him most things, including how to hold his first crayon. With ds2 somehow he learnt everything by himself cos mummy has been too busy. Aiyoh, so, I don't know how many patterns of holding he has.
But one thing I know, he is more relaxed than his brother and there are certain things he picks up very fast without me ever having to teach him, cos he has learnt how to survive by himself. :-) As much as we try to avoid the birth order stereotyping, I guess it is just unavoidable that when you have 2 kids, you get busier and somehow cannot show the second one the same amount of attention as you can, to the first.
So although ds2 is slower than ds1 in reaching certain milestones, like speech and language acquisition, he is good at finding solution independently. I noticed that ds1 requires my help in searching for certain websites, like the PBS Kids, Fisher-Price and CBeebies ones that I let them explore, learn and play while I do housework?
But ds2 can get it there himself. I have really no idea how, he must have observed me before or he did it by trial and error. He is less reliant, definitely. I think I blogged before, but anyway, he will turn on dh's laptop by pressing the power button, wait for everything to load and boot up, go to Internet Explorer and open that window, go to the Favourites section and click on the website he wants. he can differentiate between PBS, FP and CBB too, maybe by the position on the favourites list, or by the icon at the side.
That's not all. While ds1 will stick to the games and activities I introduced to him, ds2 will explore the whole website by himself and find other movie clips or drawing or puzzles online to do. I am often surprised when I stop by to see what he's up to, and he is doing some activity on that site that I've never seen. Well, I must monitor this kid closely for sure, cos he will reach an age where there are SOME sites I certainly don't want him to explore. :-)
Ok enough of that...
We went Discovery center again on Wed and ds1 went for his first art class that's part of a series of 4. It is for the 4 weeks in April. Costs $10 for the 4 sessions. All materials included and each lesson will focus on a great artist and his techniques.
Will share with you all so that anyone who wants to, can try on his own. :-)
Picasso was the artist this week. We were shown some of his most famous pieces. ds2 was pretty distracting so I missed most of the slideshow presentation but the gist of it was the kids will try his cubism technique. Here are the steps in brief.
1. Paint an animal. ds1 painted this.. which he calls a cheetah.
it wouldn't work well cos it doesn't really look like one and when we cut it up we may not be able to piece it back, so teacher got him to paint a lion she printed beforehand.
2. Draw lines on the lion and cut it up.
3. Paste the pieces separately onto another piece of paper. Then cut that piece of paper up again. Sounds confusing right? See pic below on left.
4. Then paste the pieces of papers together roughly in the form of the lion again.
I realised it doesn't look very lion-ish cos ds1 painted the lion till you couldn't really see the lion's features, and then the pieces of papers that were the background were of too many colours and too big.
So I did another one with him at home.
Left: ds1 drew a wasp and he signed it "because all great artists sign their work"... oh ok...
Right: we cut the wasp up and just pasted the pieces together again on a single sheet of paper.
The white pieces are a printed wasp which ds1 coloured... which we tried out first. I only have a piece of coloured paper at home so we had to use the same one. :-)
Think the effect is slightly better?
Anyway, just for comparison, in case, with ds1's works you can't figure out how to do it... :-)
This is from the Master himself. (taken from www.bendicioness.com; http://www.artchive.com/artchive/P/picasso_syntheticcubism.html;
http://abstractart.20m.com/Pablo_Picasso.html; http://io.uwinnipeg.ca/~morton/Telecourse/White_Hotel/picasso_woman_in_armchair.1913.jpg)
Above left: "The Guitar Player" Analytic cubism. Above right: "Woman in armchair".
Below left: "Girl with mandolin". Below right: "still life with chair canning" Synthetic cubism.
Ok final activity: Montessori method has this life skills or sensorial part, if I remember correctly. And since ds1 is not in preschool, I should let him try some of the stuff I like from various methods... Waldorf method is interesting too, although I can't follow everything for sure.
Anyway I let ds1 prepare his own snack after breakfast from items I didn't need. I placed the stuff on the table and let him do what he wanted. He cut up a slice of bread into squares, sprinkled rice puff cereal onto them, then spread Betty Crocker's milk chocolate frosting onto the bread again, then refrigerated it and had it for dessert after lunch. The spreading part was most difficult for him I think. The frosting was so sticky. I hope this constitutes the life skills component. :-)
