Oh my god , what a nice break we got last weekend.It was my b'day and I had a friend drop by with family.We packed ourselves for a weekend at the beaches of Alibaug near Mumbai.Prisha is now 4 yrs and I was keen to give myself a break as well have a speech therapy lesson with a difference.Few days back she had seen the sea and the fishes swimming on TV and she had drawn a lovely picture and made it really colorful.I then gave her play dough to make the fish swimming in 3D and there the artist that she is she loved to oblige.So the day at the beach was the ideal thing to show her.
My sister joined us at the jetty and I showed her the boats and how the people came the boats of all shapes, the waves, the sea gulls,etc.Next day we were at the beach and as she does not like to get into water we gave her the sand set and there she was having her bit of fun.We talked about the sea and I made her recall her painting that she made and that there were fish under the water swimming just the way she drew.She seemed to just take in all the information and look at the vastness of the water body.I showed her a dead fish and the waves and lots of shells.She was fascinated with the shapes of the shells and the way the snails moved.I decided to give myself a break and we played around the water.We ran with my down syndrome niece and just enjoyed.
The speech therapist in me got a little annoyed after a while and while others played cricket I got down to Prisha and we had another speech therapy lesson.We discussed the beach again and made castles in the sand and then I started something she loves.........drawing on the sand!There we had endless patch of drawing sheet and she wrote her name , mummy, she drew things she wanted to.She drew ice cream, goggles and flowers.etc and we talked so much about it.IT WAS SUCH FUN!It was a good change from the run of the mill talk we normally have.I got the recordings and took lots of pictures. will use them to recall the experience on the beach.Hope to repeat it again.
One very funny thing she did.My son was "ugh mom grouse ".But we laughed till our tommy ached as coming from my hearing impaired child it was funny.The way she applied her brains to get us to laugh.Well we were driving back home when she wanted to use the loo.As there was no loo around and were 15 minutes from home my hubby told her to hold on.To get my son to irritate she started to say" Rishabh I will do susu{loo in hindi language} on your face, I'll do susu on the car ...yellow color,etc" we just burst out laughing ...of course I told her to stop after that but I just loved her use of language to crack a joke.Her laughter still rings in my ears.
Thats sounds so wonderful ! Thats just so awesome that you could maximise the contexual learning while having all the fun ! Would love to hear mother-daughter response when you revisit, recall and make more representations and connections with the recordings and pictures as visual and audio memory of this enriching and joyful outing with the family.
ReplyDeleteWhat an AHA experience !
I will share it with my colleagues in Singapore.