Fireworks

To have said that introducing challenges to Alex turned out to be the key was an understatement. Today was a day of breakthroughs I could not have imagined. Something burst open in his mind and he's been chewing up knowledge like so many Swedish Fish.

I only started the NickJr.com Alphabet packs on Tuesday. I'd printed out only some learning games for him on Monday. This had been inspired by their 'Get Ready for Kindergarten' promotion. They provided an online test and based on your answers, they suggested learning games and activity packs for your child.

Alex is two years away from Kindergarten. I wasn't really trying to get him ready for it. I took it to see if any of the suggested packs looked like they would be fun. 'Fun' turned out to be an understatement.

We worked through only three days of activities and Alex's mind just burst open, it seems. He wanted more and more activities. Today, we did four different lessons. One was quite difficult - an emotional/social readiness game intended for 4 year olds. It was a series of cards, showing a character named Rintoo with different facial expressions. The backs of the cards explain scenarios that would prompt the emotions connected to the expression shown on the front. Alex had a really hard time distinguishing 'sad' from 'mad'. He didn't understand 'relaxed' at all. Frankly, he's not supposed to at this point.

He tried hardest with this game, asking the most questions of all. He wanted to play it again and again. Hours later when the subject cartoon came on Nick Jr, Alex recalled what he'd learned from the game and started to apply it to the story.


"Rintoo is mad." he told me, "He's mad because he lost the race." That was one of the scenarios on the cards that he hadn't gotten right before. This was amazing.

During the lessons, he also selected math lessons, which we'd never tried before. He loves a particular math-based cartoon named "Team Umi Zoomi" He wanted "math" because that's what Team Umi Zoomi does. Here again, he ate up his own mistakes and worked hard to correct them. Asking to try again. He worked on a numbers-to-numerals game and a pattern recognition game. He did the latter one twice, asking for crayons so that we could do it "right". (He had to color figures in to match the patterns). In a shape and numeral scavenger hunt, he was thrilled to participate, squealing all the way through the game and asking to play it again.

The most outstanding was yet to come, explained in the next entry.

This was an astounding day for us. Really, astounding. Along with his break through on lessons and his learning hunger, he obeyed Quiet Time with a reasonable grace I've never seen in him.

"OK Mom," he acquiesced to me, "I'll go now. I won't sleep late today." (He often delays his nap so long that he winds up not getting enough of a nap and lasting to past 4 PM.)

He used the potty religiously. He ate all of his meals and asked for reasonable things as snacks instead of sweets.


Wow. I couldn't believe it.

September 9, 2010