Story Time

I had the idea tonight to do something crafty with Rachel tonight. I had hoped to do something more Christmas-y, but couldn't find any Christmas-y magazines, so I had to settle for a Newsweek and two old Consumer Reports. For the first story, we cut out and named some people (most of whom she didn't use) and then tried to find photos to match the story she was creating, with limited success. For the subsequent stories, I cut out a lot of photos ahead of time and let her use the photos to help determine the course of the story. She had a lot of fun with the glue stick (it goes on purple so you can see where you've applied glue) and I at times I had to encourage her to think more about the story.

I asked leading questions like

• What is their favorite color?
• What do they like?
• What don't they like?
• What's happening here?
• What happened next?

to get her to think. Since there was nothing but a blank sheet and some pictures, it forced her to really think. I think she had fun. Click any photo to enlarge. The bad handwriting is all mine.

Babies develop magic of imagination by age 2

MSNBC.COM --
If someone tells you a friend got her nose pierced, you can visualize the new look and incorporate the information into your thinking and expectations. Young infants can't imagine such things. Their thinking, instead, is based highly on what's in front of them, what they can see. So when do children gain this ability to visualize things based on what they've been told? More...