The Bub in the Belly

To be honest, I haven't got many photos of Ryan to share at the moment, just some stray shots here and there. Having said that, I have lots of videos of him! Ryan has become so expressive now and it's so entertaining!

So today, I'm sharing a video of Ryan. This is a Youtube video and it's about five and a half minutes long. I haven't been sharing the videos because I usually want to subtitle them and the subtitles take forever to do so I keep putting that off. Fortunately, this video doesn't need subtitles, plus I felt that the subtitles would distract the viewer from watching Ryan and it's such a joy to watch him in this video.

Before I show you the video, I want to explain how it came about. It was completely impromptu and was done in our bedroom, during one of our bedtime story sessions. Ryan had been playing with his Montessori blue geometric solids so I asked him to talk about shapes. I told him that he could explain the 2D shapes and then talk about the 3D shapes and I would film him. I helped him to set up the "set", reminded him to introduce himself and got the camera going. That's all I did. He took over from there. I did not give Ryan a script - he came up with everything himself. We did not rehearse this at all, so this is the one and only take.

When I watch this video, I am not looking to see if he knows his shapes. What impresses me, and what the exercise was really about, was how he could script everything himself and take on the role so confidently. He understood what it means to give a presentation and he even built in some audience participation! He actually said, "Have a nice day!" at the end, which I did not capture as I stopped the camera too early.

Okay, enough from me. I'll hand you over to Professor Ryan. Let's learn about shapes!

From my previous posts and as my Facebook friends would know, Ryan has been telling me a story every night before we go to bed. We lie in bed and he dictates the story to me while I type it out on Facebook using my phone. He watches the screen as I type on my phone and is quick to point out if I spell something wrong or use the wrong word.

I started this ritual with the intention of giving him more opportunity to use language, to construct sentences, to think sequentially and consequentially, to think creatively, etc. I'm sure you can think of the various benefits. It's basically doing speech and drama at home.

I decided to try a different format to record his stories because I felt that some elements got lost in translation when I simply took down Ryan's dictation. I want to record not only his story but the way he tells his story, with all the cute expressions and actions. So, last night I told him to tell me the story while I filmed him with my phone.

So, this is Storytime with Ryan - Episode 1: "The digger and the man go to the pharmacy". The digger refers to the excavator used in construction. Ryan was looking at a picture of it earlier. Enjoy!