Here are some pictures of things Dilara has come up with on her own, without any prodding from me. Most people probably overlook what is going on here, but a trained teacher, like me, will have a great appreciation for what lies beneath the surface.--Lydia
| Dilara did this over fall break (second week of October, 2014). She found a "roly-poly" outside and wanted to keep it as a pet. She accidentally spilled her Sea Monkeys some time back when she was showing them to her neighbors , so I gave her this empty container to put the roly-poly in. She TOTALLY ON HER OWN INITIATIVE got paper and crayons and drew the "habitat" (her word) for her new "pet" so that it would feel comfortable. |
Dilara did this on her own. It is a 'shammy towel' from the dollar tree she wanted to use for art. she first cut a hole, then she used the negative space as a mouth for a jack-o-lantern. People who haven't had training like I have may not realize how wonderful this is. When I took a workshop years ago in Germany at a conference for early childhood educators, I heard the suggestion to cut holes in paper and let the kids draw around them, and they could use the parts that were cut out in other ways.
-"Word Bus"-
We were working on spelling bee practice. Dilara's spelling is way behind her reading. Anyway, I had written some 'oo' words to refresh her memory. She thought it was a 'u' word. Just now, she looked at the board and said, 'that looks like a word bus.' I asked her what she meant and this is what she did. I asked her if she learned this from school, and she said, 'No.' She does watch 'Word World' and she practiced using letters to make pictures at her CC GeoDraw camp. I was just amazed how she looked at a vertical list of words--good, book, look, took--and saw a picture in two of them when she looked at them together. That took a LOT of imagination. She is interested in constellations, too---and I can see why, after this. It takes a lot of imagination to fill in the gaps to see "Orion" or "The Big Bear" in the sky, but if she can see a bus in these two words, I expect she can see pictures in the sky, too.
-"Word Bus"-
We were working on spelling bee practice. Dilara's spelling is way behind her reading. Anyway, I had written some 'oo' words to refresh her memory. She thought it was a 'u' word. Just now, she looked at the board and said, 'that looks like a word bus.' I asked her what she meant and this is what she did. I asked her if she learned this from school, and she said, 'No.' She does watch 'Word World' and she practiced using letters to make pictures at her CC GeoDraw camp. I was just amazed how she looked at a vertical list of words--good, book, look, took--and saw a picture in two of them when she looked at them together. That took a LOT of imagination. She is interested in constellations, too---and I can see why, after this. It takes a lot of imagination to fill in the gaps to see "Orion" or "The Big Bear" in the sky, but if she can see a bus in these two words, I expect she can see pictures in the sky, too.