Friday, April 30, 2010

April Development

During the weekend of April 10th, Smiley developed a sense of drama. He suddenly wanted to act in big, loud, or startling ways. He did a lot more jumping indoors, crashing into our legs while saying "Ba!" or "Boo!", and wanting to play hide and seek.

During the past week this new sense of drama extended. Now doing story-telling with his duplo people and stuffed animals is the normal method of play, not something that happens comparatively rarely and only with my guidance.

Also, all sorts of things are funny. Most anything that seems wrong or out of place makes him laugh and say, "That's funny!" He even avoids boredom by creating funny moments and then declaring, "That's funny!" (This is not always helpful. Experimenting with how far he can put his hand in his mouth when I am reading a bedtime story was only entertaining for him, but I patiently waited until he was done).

On Wednesday he began using self-narration more when playing. He still only self-narrates when someone else is in the room. I expect that soon he will when alone. It is an interesting milestone I would not have guessed was related to the other aspects of drama.

Perhaps unrelated, yesterday he was really enjoying his three wood puzzles. For months they had sat unused. Perhaps he was simply pleased that his fine-motor coordination had developed so they were not physically challenging? It may be unrelated to the sense of drama.

I decided to rewrite a nursery rhyme to include the phrase "That's funny!", since I know from other 2-year-olds that this phase will last a while.
Silly Simon met a pie man walking down the street.
Said silly Simon to the pie man, "Please let me have a treat."
Said the pie man to silly Simon, "Please show me your money."
Silly Simon showed him a bear. The pie man said, "That's funny!"
(I usually change the object shown to the pie man, to fit what Smiley has been playing with or looking at.)

No comments: