I taught the girls "The Poochie Lip" song. They love it. This afternoon, while Joe and I were trying to finish our nap, all three kids sat on us, bouncing up and down and singing it at the top of their lungs. After they had done this three times or so, J loudly proclaimed that her favorite part of the song is the line, "If I can't have the vineyard, I WON'T EAT ANY BREAD!" This line was sung by itself over and over and over...
On the way home from church this evening, A informed us in song, "If I can't have the sticker, I won't eat any supper." This is not funny.
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Children's Church was definitely a challenge this morning. Between tons more kids showing up than I thought possible (when only one arrived on the bus), no helpers, a special missions service that took my helpers away once I had them, upset people, and an adult service that let out looooong before I had finished my lesson, I was pretty frustrated and exhausted by the time I got to the gym for the dinner I could eat but not really participate in. And there was still a meeting, a child's injury and her resulting exhaustion to deal with.
But...
I had a strategy. I went into the morning prepared, having given careful and extensive thought to a way to communicate my lesson past the barrier of autism.
And it worked.
At least in part. And it made the whole rest of this awful morning worth it.
~~~~~
A2's version of the story of Moses:
(Pointing one direction) Baybay, (Pointing the other direction) wawa.
(Holding hand above his head) Ic. (Waving hand behind him) Ah Athe.
(Frantically tearing at both feet) Oosh Ah. (Circling hands together) OH-EE!
Translation:
Baby, water.
Big. God wait.
Shoes off. HOLY!
We're still working on adding consonants to words. He just doesn't see the need. And scholars think vowel-less Old Testament Hebrew is difficult to decipher....
4 comments:
I'm sorry about taking your helpers away. I honestly wouldn't have asked them if I had known they were helping.
!
On a good note, the girls told me tonight that 3+3+3=9 and that they just thought about it and knew how to say it. :D I was impressed.
Don't worry about it. It normally isn't a big deal. On usual Sundays, I can pretty much handle it by myself, especially if it's only for a few minutes. You couldn't know we had so many kids.
The homeschool model we're using is really heavy on "natural learning." It uses a lot of concrete math with the assumption that very young children can do quite complicated math if they are dealing with real objects and not just figures on paper. I've been amazed at J's ability with multiplication. I don't call it that. I just try to talk about it with her. She usually starts the conversation and I ask her questions to kind of lead her along a little bit. It really seems to be working well. Now if we can just transfer it to the abstract in a few years, we'll be in good shape!
You'll have to tell me the real words to the poochie lip song. I don't remember.
Sorry it was such a bad morning.
mom
PS Only 4 more days (or sleeps). You lucky thing you. Wish we were going. Everyone is leaving us here alone & blue.
mom
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