TECHNO~TOT-SCHOOL

Tot-School here is a little tough going atm. Stitch is really not that interested in 'doing stuff'. He has slots of time each day that each of the children are allocated to do something with him, but his choices are not very variable! He likes screens - what is it about boys!! So, no matter that I spent the last week of the holidays preparing a farm tot-book, with tractors and all (thanks Carissa) ~ he doesn't want to know! All he wants to do is play on the computer, the Wii, or the Nintendo (which he has now managed to damage the charger for ~ sigh!). I'm not sure if its a really big deal ~ he is using these things to learn stuff and 'fine motor skills' are not a skill he really needs to hone ~ he can already hold a pencil beautifully, lace, sort things with large and small spoons, lace things...

His choices at the moment go like this;

#1 Digital Arts & Crafts Studio (DACS)

#2 PoissonRouge ("fish")

#3 Mum I did it 2 (Nintendo)

#4 watch Mummy, or anyone else while they are on the computer!

#5 Race around on Didicar

#6 Wii ~ Let's Dance/Mario Cart

#7 Whine until someone lets him have a computer!

#8 Repeat ad infinitum!!

Occasionally he will choose to do his wide-eye puzzles.

Occasionally he will do a little bit of lacing

Occasionally he will choose to hunt beads in the pasta for a while (and play crazy games with the little animal beads)

Occasionally he will spoon beads for a bit.

He does NOT like getting messy, so he seldom choose sticking or arty activities :(

He LOVES stories, but only at bedtime

He does like to play imagination games on his own and with his siblings ~ often he is the dog in their games of 'Mums and Dad's' ~ even though we have never had a dog there always is one in their games!!

So, from such a limited 'experience' what is he learning (and why am I not interfering a great deal)..?

THE DACS :

• ~ It works on his colour recognition (labelling & application). In just this last week he has pretty much sorted out the rest of his colours and now gets most of them right, most of the time. He can tell me what they are on request and can hand me things and volunteer the colour. On the DACS he can also select from a colour grid and from this he is learning to identify all different shades of the same colour too - brilliant!
• 
  
• ~ cause & effect ~ particularly with the stampers
• ~ mouse control ~ the DACS uses a stylus, but as a result I have seen a marked improvement, in just a week, in his ability to control an ordinary mouse for colouring on poissonrouge. I think he has learnt to notice the little pointer and once he learns to slow his mouse movements down he will have it sorted.
• ~ Creativity in a non-messy way, which he likes!
• ~ IT'S BRILLIANT (and I can fully see why he loves it)!!

BUT ~ just in case you were thinking of heading out and getting a DACS ~ we have had this about 3 years! We could never get it to work with XP or Vista. It wasn't the hardware ~ I knew that ~ but it would freeze up after a few seconds and this, according to the reviews I've recently read, is a common problem. HOWEVER Fisher Price have released a software update for Windows 7 (why didn't they think of that before!) and guess what ~ it works!! No problems AT ALL! :D )

PoissonRouge ~ well what is there NOT to love about this website. And like I said he is even beginning to be able to control the mouse a bit. Mostly though, he ropes someone into helping him play on it so it becomes interactive in another way too :D

Mum I Did It 2 ~ I bought this for Lilo, but it has been a hit with all the small ones. There's no reading involved and the activities are really fun for under 5's who can't read. And I know Stitch has learnt a lot from it too in a 'problem solving' way.

Wii TIME ~ It's just fun! I bought JUST DANCE this week and I think Stitch gets it, so it will be good for his co-ordination and 'music' skills (rhythm and that sort of thing!). Mario-Kart, that's another story and generally leads to frustration so I tend to discourage that one.

Watching ME on the PC ~ often I am sorting through photographs (that's just what I'm about) and he sits and tells me who everyone is! He loves it and it's a great way to make sure he remembers people's names. We also chat about the pictures, what we can see and what he remembers happening in them, so it's kind of like an alternative story time and a time for expanding his language ~ which is developing at an alarming rate atm, with full sentences beginning to take shape :D He asks me questions too, which I love and sometimes I even get to explain to him what I am doing with a photo when I am 'editing' it :D

DIDICAR ~ again plain fun, but great for letting of steam these horrid, wet, cold, winter's days when outside is really not a fun option! He's pretty speedy on this thing, with or without foot propulsion!

Whining ~ only to be discouraged!!

Choosing (very strongly) NOT to get dressed ~ well that's a battle I'm willing to loose most days, so I don't even go there unless we are going out!

Alongside working on his colours, which seems to be his main focus atm, he is also beginning to learn to count. He can fairly reliably get to four :D I think when he's mastered his colours without having to think so hard, that might be his next move! It helps of course that DD and I are doing lots of numbers work atm, and he is overhearing it.

DD (now nearly 5) has nearly got his numbers sussed ~ a few more weeks and we should have 1-10 sorted I think.

And just for fun here's Paul and Minnie on Just Dance!