I took Frankie to "Books and Babies" at our library on Friday, for children under 2. They have music, dancing, stories, puppets, etc. When I brought Lizzy when she was younger, she loved it! Frankie wanted to leave out the door and then started crying. I did not want to disrupt everyone, so we had to leave early.
He does so well at his EI class, and I was wondering about the differences between the 2. The EI class is small, about 8 kids in a circle, with the moms behind them. Each child sits on his own mat in the circle, so he has his own space. The teacher is at the front and every child can see her well. The song titles are on sheets of laminated paper that the children can see clearly and hold.
The storytime at the library is great, but there are many more children. There were probably 30 children plus their moms at the library. Each child does get a mat, but there is not a circle, people sit where they want in a big group. The teacher sits in the front on a chair, far away from some of the kids who are not siting in the front row. She reads a story with a flannel board to illustrate.
It is a great program, but I did not realize until after how hard it would be for Frankie. The amount of people was too much for him, he does not do well in large groups. We were sitting towards the front, but still not close enough that he could see the teacher clearly, and he probably could not even tell that she had a book. He would have had to sit on her lap to see it! Same with the flannel figures. It was just not interesting to him, because he could not see what was going on. I was encouraging him to sit even closer, but he was overwhelmed by this point and just wanted to leave.
I want to try again and this time get there early so we can get a close seat. I think I will talk to the librarian about his low vision and that he may need to get very close. Stayed tuned for how it goes.
2 comments:
Just a thought...maybe if you could find out ahead of time what the story will be, you could bring your own props so the flannel story board wouldn't matter.
Two years ago I volunteered with a camp fire group for VI kids - they did a community service project for our Childrens Center for the Visually Impaired. They took story books and made "story boxes" with props to go along with each story that the little kids could hold in their hands and play with as the story was read. Sometimes if you don't see the pictures in a book well, you miss out on key elements of the story that make it educational. For example, one story was about lost mittens, so the kids found an old pair of mittens to put in the box. Another story had a rabbit character, so they put a rabbit in that box etc. Just a thought from someone too old to actually remember this challenge. Grin!
Thanks, Heather. That is a good idea that I'd like to try. Thank you for your imput and helping Frankie.
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