Reading books, singing and telling stories - Matai's long 'chat' has taken off recently!
Reading books
Matai has upped his reading. He takes himself to our 'reading corner' 3 or 4 times daily, grabs himself a very large pile of books and spends 20 minutes reading them to himself.
He is at the stage now where he will read every page and whilst I can't understand most of what he is saying, the odd word comes through and the story is constant. It is pretty cool and I love that he gets so much enjoyment out of reading. He also now says 'read' when he is making his way to the books. Photo books are still his favourite but anything familiar will work.
Of interest is that we have a sounds book 'The Noisy Book' by Soledad Bravi and each page has a picture and the words 'the donkey says.... Hee Haw' etc. Just in the last few months we have realised that Matai can do all of the sounds by heart. The visual aid is huge for Matai and key to tap into. The approximation of the sounds is not too bad either. But I guess the key thing that comes out of this is that his confidence has grown. He would've used to refuse to attempt most of these sounds, however now he is happy to give them a go and if one doesn't come out right he isn't too bothered. We can get through the whole book, whereas in the past it might have been thrown away if things became too hard.
Singing Songs
Again, just in the last few weeks we have witnessed an explosion of singing! He has some very well worn music DVDs and it used to be all actions that would come out of watching them but now we are getting word approximations and some kind of tune! This morning he has been singing 'all day long' from The wheels on the Bus and this is pretty cool considering we haven't heard him put 3 words together in other areas of language yet. It is also fun to sing the songs to/with him and leave out words for him to put in eg. Row, row your ________ .
Telling Stories
The other noteable verbal development is that Matai will now tell very long stories that he fully expects you to listen to and he gets quite annoyed if you cut in or take your attention away. The stories have gestures attached and seem to have genuine meaning to him. We hear these the best when Aaron comes home from work. Aaron will asks what Matai did today and Matai's answer is long and detailed. The exciting most recent thing is that after Matai has his own go at babbling, I will help out by saying something like 'We went to the _______', and Matai often makes an approximation at the word (in this instance 'park') and 'Matai went down the ______' (slide).
I am excited about this increase in chat and babble. Matai wants to communicate and often finds it frustrating when he can't, but I feel like his confidence is growing lately. I don't know if any of this will be seen at preschool or not but 1:1 I am sure it can be brought out and I know Matai feels that his talk is of value when he is listened to.
:) Happy chatty days.
