Lately I have been reminded to follow the interests of the children I am working with–almost to an extreme! My little 2 year-old friend starts saying “Dough” as soon as he sees we arrive at this door and I have a running joke with his mom to see how long he will stay with a new activity I bring before he starts pointing to my bag and requesting playdoh! I think I broke a record the other day with a 10 minute start with a mini train. Of course we moved right into making a dough track and plastering playdoh on the mommy and daddy figures that he called, “Dough face!” In order to elaborate and teach more words, I have to introduce toys where dough can be implemented into the story–Fisher Price vehicles and people (make dough blankets, food, roads or hats), trains (load dough objects into the cars), boats (make a dough lake) or puzzles (stand the puzzle pieces up in the dough). Woody is a favorite character of this little guy so we made dough buttons and belt which were perfect for modeling 2-word combinations. It’s much better to give in to a child’s interests than to plan a new elaborate activity–whew. I guess I like it better that way too.
About Erika
