Now I know my ABCs

I know it looks a bit counter-intuitive to have the alphabet reading right to left, but I knew Sho would be turning around to check his progress. He's also left-handed, so I wanted to see if this way around would  make any difference (plus Yusuke  was running capital letters on the other side of the table to 'mirror' his progress). Not entirely scientific but it worked!

Rule of the house is 'If you're using materials, milk them!' So the ABC song at speed, then a rock/scissors/paper (janken) race. Now, taking out a few letters each time to upset the rhythm/actually recognise the letters (and not repeat a memorised pattern) a real challenge they got their teeth into.

Lastly, for fun, same games but using the animals - some unusual ones to slow proceedings down (promote 'need' to ask me 'What's this?' in a hurry - narwhal, squirrel, umbrella bird, jaguar & vulture).Again, take out the easy ones & you've got yourself a dentist's dream - high speed drilling!

Back to school

I was very happy to be getting out of bed this morning to teach at our pre-school; it has been a little while and I have missed the intimacy of our little learners and their go for it personalities.

Case in point is Hinata's use of scissors - bizarrely had to tell her mum that she is left-handed (thought surely a mum would notice something obvious like that?!) and as a result was having a lot of difficulty with regular scissors & getting quite frustrated, poor thing. Now with the right tools, the girls are really in business! (The two lads pictured are both southpaws trying hard with inappropriate tools).

Today we were looking at /Nn/ words in particular (new flashcard set will be up on Quizlit tonight), colouring, cutting, sorting & sticking. We also played a couple of 'new' games - making letter sets, pairs, and flashcards on the floor/dice race kind of thing. Amazing what even a few weeks can mean in terms of development. Much more co-operative & democratic mood!

Proofreading - what the doctor said

I have been helping a new student out with his paper for this conference in Singapore next month.

I can actually guess a bit when it comes to 'cortical processing of language' because I do some myself from time to time. With pictures, I can also get an idea about positron emission tomography (and the Latin, as I have said, helps).

I have no idea what otorhinolyrngology really means, but I can guess which part of my body might get poked and prodded if I went to see an otorhinolyrngologist!

I found talking with this very clever surgeon about language acquisition, learning, visual and audio cues, hearing, speech, speech therapy, voice timbre, rhythm/cadence, bi-lingualism & left-handedness/ambidextrousity absolutely fascinating - it does have a lot to do with my trade and from a completely opposite angle. We had polar perspectives but arrived at very similar conclusions (his empirical & medical, mine observational & linguistic)...

We finished our first chat together realising we had been talking about the same person for an hour! His data on hearing loss, and his insistence on the importance of early learning for speech development convinced me more than ever before of the crucial groundwork we are laying at Luna in our pre-school.