Pix and Some Web Info

Web Info--Your Three Year Old Now

Your 3-year-old nowWhat's one of the all-time best gifts you could give your child? A box. Seriously! A large carton can become a spaceship, a grocery store, a car, a house. It can provide more hours of emotional, intellectual, and social stimulation than any fancy electronic toy.Pretend play becomes more complex and interactive at 3. It's no accident that preschools have plenty of props — plastic tools, kitchen gear, blocks, dress-up clothes — for kids to pretend with.Children learn by doing and imagining. When they pretend they're a police officer or parent, they have the freedom to explore at their own pace a world they're learning to navigate. They hold the power. They can express their emotions, punishing their pretend children as they've been punished. They learn to negotiate and solve problems (how to stop the bad guy or what to cook for dinner). They learn to walk in others' shoes, helping to develop empathy.Creating stories about pretend characters encourages language development and abstract thinking. And being able to see that a belt could be a lasso or a block could be an iPod is a precursor to realizing that those symbols on the page are actually letters and words.To encourage imaginary play, have a stash of props handy for your children to explore: boxes, clothes, shoes, household utensils, blocks, stuffed animals, and writing materials. Then step back and have fun watching what the props become.

WEB INFO 2--

Your life now

Often parents take loads of photos when their child is a baby and far fewer as they get caught up in the busy whirl of everyday life with a preschooler. But you'll find that your best images aren't the posed family portraits but the ones you catch on the fly during play. Keep your camera handy at the playground, during baths, or when your child is deeply engaged in play. It doesn't matter if you don't get around to downloading them for weeks; at least you've captured these magic moments.

From...

http://www.babycenter.com/0_your-3-year-old-timeline-your-childs-imagination_3651863.bc?responsys_count=0&scid=mbtw_post3y_10m_1w:366&pe=2TPM5bj

Jimi uses his imagination a lot. He calls me Grandpa Abel and calls Chris, Grandma Carol. Sometimes I call him Uncle Jose or Yo-Gaba-Gaba. And he pretends that he is reading to us--and the stories are pretty good.

Sometimes he imagines that he is eating a donut hole like in this picture. For a little realism we slipped in a few real donut holes.







He loves to pretend that he is facing me when I tell him that I want to take his picture. Sometimes we play this game for half an hour or more while I chase him around the house trying to get him to look at my camera. He delights in mocking my picture-taking efforts. If I was usually real non-digital film, his elusive run away techniques would have caused me to declare photography bankruptcy some time ago.






In this picture (L) he is imagining that he is taking the bath that
that we had to begin about 45 minutes ago to avoid being late for
an important appointment. This imagination game makes him almost
helpless with laughter.