Playing with words!

Aditya is doing a lot of word play these days.

1. Rhyming
Apparently, his teacher is the driving force and inspiration behind this.    They play a game in school where the kids try putting together rhymes.
Aditya is creating these rhymes ON THE FLY.
e.g. Since I love Mickey Mouse
I can have him in my house

2. Coining brand new ideas... and animals!
While playing with a volunteer where Aditya, the volunteer, and Mickey Mouse went on an animal safari in Africa, he said, "This is a kig."  When the volunteer asked him what  that meant, he said it is an animal with the face of a cat and sound of a pig!

Oh, and if it is not obvious... our current ism is Mickey Mouse.  It is the thing he talks about and plays with when in the playroom.

He is very interactive (i.e. not exclusive), but he always wants to include Mickey in the play, i.e. his only challenge here seems to be needing Mickey Mouse to be part of every activity.

Of course, as we always do in the Son Rise program,  we see Mickey Mouse as his motivation, and we USE it to build our play rather than resist it!

As such, we are using a lot of the "Gerd's new way" (Aditya's term) techniques in our play.  Aditya is fully aware of and has memorized what the new way is!

Something funny about this... he saw me write "use cliff hangers" on the board while talking to a volunteer.  This was a technique to be used by the volunteer, wherein he says something like, "Hey Aditya you know something ... I went to this amazing place yesterday".  This is designed to inspire Aditya to be curious and ask  him about where he went-- thus practicing how to get to know more about your friend.

Since he saw me write that, he then asked me what it meant.  I explained it to him, on which he asked, " Can I use cliff hangers when speaking to kids in my class?"

I laughed but said indeed he could. After a couple days, he told me he actually used that technique with a girl!  How inspiring!