New Jet Skills
Apr. 3rd, 2006 07:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
liralenJet has gained many skills in the past week. The Brezney's Free Will Astrology predicted verbal virtuosity within this week, Jet has been showing it off with a loquaciousness we have not heard to this point.
The most fun application of this new skill has been singing made up songs with John and I while the three of us drove somewhere this weekend. Jet is actually rhyming and filling in phrases whenever John pauses in his songs. I was vastly entertained. Who needs DVD players in their car?
In the middle of last week get decided he had to see Schoolhouse Rock. We had lent our DVD to someone else, and John went on a special trip just to retrieve it. It was worth it. Jet sought every episode of Grammar Rock and then went through every single session of Multiplication Rock as well, even though he hasn't been doing multiplication yet, not in any form. He watched most of it on my lap, and we talked about multiplication and what it meant. The truly amazing thing was that before this Jet wasn't able to count past 12. For some reason after about 15 he would start mixing up all the numbers. It was obvious that he wasn't getting the idea that the last digit was just like the first 10, in order.
Since then, he has been counting 20 and above with no trouble at all. He was rattling off every number between 30 and 50, in order, with no trouble at all. He really connected on the concept.
Another big thing has been moving too rewarding Jet with stamps when he does something "special". It's no longer a routine thing for staying dry all day. So Jet has become very creative about ways to earn stamps and to do something special, which usually translates into helping John or I with something, be it cooking, washing dishes, raking dead grass out of the lawn, collecting up debris into a basket and going up a laddar to dump it into the garbage can. It's been great. And he volunteers now to do thing! I'd love to keep doing this for a while.
The most fun application of this new skill has been singing made up songs with John and I while the three of us drove somewhere this weekend. Jet is actually rhyming and filling in phrases whenever John pauses in his songs. I was vastly entertained. Who needs DVD players in their car?
In the middle of last week get decided he had to see Schoolhouse Rock. We had lent our DVD to someone else, and John went on a special trip just to retrieve it. It was worth it. Jet sought every episode of Grammar Rock and then went through every single session of Multiplication Rock as well, even though he hasn't been doing multiplication yet, not in any form. He watched most of it on my lap, and we talked about multiplication and what it meant. The truly amazing thing was that before this Jet wasn't able to count past 12. For some reason after about 15 he would start mixing up all the numbers. It was obvious that he wasn't getting the idea that the last digit was just like the first 10, in order.
Since then, he has been counting 20 and above with no trouble at all. He was rattling off every number between 30 and 50, in order, with no trouble at all. He really connected on the concept.
Another big thing has been moving too rewarding Jet with stamps when he does something "special". It's no longer a routine thing for staying dry all day. So Jet has become very creative about ways to earn stamps and to do something special, which usually translates into helping John or I with something, be it cooking, washing dishes, raking dead grass out of the lawn, collecting up debris into a basket and going up a laddar to dump it into the garbage can. It's been great. And he volunteers now to do thing! I'd love to keep doing this for a while.
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no subject
Date: 2006-04-04 06:17 pm (UTC)I have to admit to skimming a few of your recent entries rather than giving them the good reading they desvered - but Jenni mentioned the sticker idea last night, and I think we're going to follow in your footsteps on this. Maybe with some display place on the fridge, so he can put stickers up and be proud of em.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-04 10:18 pm (UTC)I wonder, a bit, if it's actually a memorization thing, to a certain point... and when concepts can be "gotten" and numbers linked to the concept rather than just the rote memorization... that could be a neurological thing to try and think up that level.
The stamp thing worked great for potty training, though we were a bit indulgent and awarded a $1 per stamp price to the prizes, and Jet could "spend his stamps" on whatever he wanted. So he has mildly unrealistic expectations of money, now. But he's actually quite good, now, at guesstimating the "stamp price" of things. Just this morning, he was playing with a juice glass, and we asked him how many stamps he thought it would to replace it if he broke it, and he wrinkled his brow at it and said, "Two."
Which is fairly close (http://www.target.com/gp/detail.html/ref=br_1_1/602-9873926-9918238?%5Fencoding=UTF8&frombrowse=1&asin=B00004ZBSG).
By-products of the stamps thing has been that Jet now knows how to "save" for things, he seems to understand the approximate value of things and that it's different for different things, he counts to 10 really, really well (we used to have a restriction that he had to have 10 to spend any), and understood, fairly early, about multiple "10's" for really special things, and he's actually saved up to 30 of them to get his Polar Express game.
The consequences were mildly unintended, but he definitely seems to get a kick out of having the power to get what he wants, eventually.