31 for 21, Day 23 - 2012

Mat man appears.


Maya's been using her magnadoddle a lot lately. She been scribbling on it, making marks here and there, dots, etc. Today I caught a glimpse of something beautiful. It was a drawing. A real drawing. Maya made it all by herself. It is the first time that I've seen her work really look like something. It was Mat man.

Who is Mat man you ask? He's a figure that is created with wood pieces and other parts. It's part of the Hand writing without tears program. You sing a song and you put the pieces together.

"Mat man has one head, one head, One head so that he can think...
Mat man has two eyes, two eyes, two eyes so that he can see...
Mat man has one nose, one nose, one nose so that he can smell..."

And on and on goes the song. By creating the parts one at a time and singing the song Maya is starting to understand parts of the body. After you create Mat man with the wood pieces, you can draw Mat Man, singing the same song.

Maya's OT has been using this technique in the last few sessions. Last week she showed me the first time that Maya tried to draw Mat man on her own.

Today Maya drew Mat man without any prompts. She was just standing there drawing. I was so lucky to see it. Because she usually erases everything right after she draws it. So who knows how many mat man's she has sketched before I saw that one. This is a huge milestone! What is most wonderful about it is that even though we have been working on her pre-writing skills, I was not expecting her to draw Mat Man so soon. This is so encouraging. I'm looking forward to doing more work with the Handwriting without Tears program for certain.

Meet Mat Man, on Handwriting without Tears website.
http://www.hwtears.com/gss/learning-lounge/matman/meet-mat-man