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

31 for 21, Day 16 - 2012

Maya the baker.

Every Tuesday I pick up Maya from school.  I have to take her out a little early so she can attend her occupational therapy.  Usually we all drop our kids off from the outside for school, so when I pick her up early I get to walk inside the school.  A place I only see once a week.  As I walked the hallway in the school to her classroom, I noticed the wall had some decorations.  There was Maya or at least a picture of her head pasted to an outline of a baker, on the wall.

I remembered that the week before fall break there was a lesson about cooking/baking.  The class made a couple of projects, one was a chef hat and the other was decorating and eating cookies.  The teacher had mentioned to me that Maya really enjoyed pretending to be a baker.  

It was nice to see Maya's project hanging with the rest of the class.  And to see how she colored her page.  I think she's come a long way with her coloring.  She is still trying to eat the crayons, but every day her interest in coloring gets a little bit longer.

On a similar note I've noticed in the last few weeks that Maya has been gravitating towards using her magnidoddle.  She scribbles "pictures" or maybe she is "writing" stories.  She sits and draws and draws for quite a while (for Maya).  She is practicing holding the pen in a tri-pod grasp. It's good to see this stage.  I noticed she leans towards markers, pens or brushes, perhaps crayons are just not her medium of choice.  I just love watching her develop into her own person.