Part of the reason that Joe has so little imagination and probably why
he has trouble occupying his time (outside of homework)
is that he never had a chance to develop it. (gotta tell you about the activity jar sometime)
He never had a book read to him until he met us!! Never! Not even in
school...I guess they don't read books to the kids after lunch like our
teachers do.
Tonite we had a couple of sessions of "close your eyes and picture this"
and had him describe the scene we suggested...was tough.
Then I suggested a game ( I don't know the name) each kid gets a piece
of paper and draws a shape...pass it to the next kid...they add to it
and so on.
You can make up your own rules (must be an animal, or a
vehicle)...little kids can play... use pen, so no erasing...there is no
winner (best part at our house) and there is no right answer.
Here are the results:
Our boys walk similar paths so often. FX's main teacher opened that kettle of fish with me last month, and we talked through strategies to "teach imagination" to our ten-teen. And it is a sad knowledge. We're realizing that so often, he wasn't even engaging with anything he watched on television, at home or school, because he was so used to watching shows in other dialects or in English when he lived in Beijing, that he just sat and consumed without understanding plot or character names. It's so odd to be working with him on the idea that a story has a plot, a sequence of events, a big idea holding it together, characters whose names are important to being able to tell the story...and whole worlds to imagine. Sometimes we ask him to close his eyes and think of a horse. We ask him what color the horse is, and whether he's riding it, and what is he wearing, and is the horse standing on grass or dirt...it took so long to get past him opening his eyes to try to figure out what the "right" answer was. Strange work, Mama! I am looking forward to trying the drawing thing y'all do-you'd think a recovering art teacher would have done that for her arty son by now! Hope we get to see you on this trip. In Philly from Jan. 24-30, surgery Jan 26.
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