Buzz Lightyear (Toy Story figurine)

I recently signed Zack up for an Art Carnival Camp with a new Art school called “My Art Studio” and he loved it tremendously.  He attended this camp together with Ethan for 2 days in June 2010.

Free style Art

Fish feeding at Coral Island

Zack loves feeding animals.  At Coral Island, he fed the fishes.  At the fish farm, he fed big fishes and even the stingray.  At the small ‘free’ zoo near the cable car station, he also fed some deer.  He enjoys interaction with animals and it fulfills his sensory needs as they are very calming for him.

Feeding the deer - he was not frightened of them

Perhaps in time to come, we may consider a pet in the house, but for now, there are too many ‘puppies’ around that need our constant attention.

Here are some photo shots of Zack enjoying his sensorial experiences. 

See the small pineapple?

The reason behind this was, I had intended the children to spend the evening at grandma’s house yesterday, so I brought the 2 iPods there, and left it in her house, so that the children could play with it, while Soon Guan and I escaped out for a quiet dinner together.

However, the dinner didn’t materialise and we didn’t go to Grandma’s house as planned, so I didn’t have a chance to take the iPods back.  So, that night, Zack had to call Grandma to complain why she ‘took’ his iPod.

<Smile>

Overheard today….Zack was watching Jurassic Park on the mobile DVD player in the car, and he said, “the girl cannot feed the dinosaurs, it’s dangerous. The dinosaurs will bite you”.

Zachary’s sentence structure and grammar is getting better, and I am sometimes caught unaware by the vocabulary and sentence structure that he uses.  We haven’t gone for speech therapy for a while, so I’m eager to find out what we can do to finetune his pronounciation.

At the moment, he has difficulty pronouncing ’g', ‘c’ and ’k’ sounds and also ‘r’ sounds….guess we have to do a sound inventory again to recap the language gaps…..

Considering that they spend an equal amount of time playing together on Facebook games, I must say that Zachary must be doing a great job with it, because he is only 2 levels behind Ethan, in terms of the gaming level.  Looking at it at face level, I think they scaffold their learning from each other, and it is a very interesting thing to watch them playing and learning and each other.

I believe the greatest thing to give a special needs child, is to give him/her siblings.  With siblings, they scaffold each other’s learnings, and the parents are not so focussed on just one kid (not that it’s a bad or good thing), but if we think positive, it is always for the better.

Zack is progressing academically as well, and is able to do simple addition and subtraction on his own (with pictorial type of sums).  He loves his Art classes, and I am wondering if he should take some form of music class….just not sure what he would like….maybe drums?  Hmmmm…..

I can see that his co-ordination skills are getting better, but it is never easy to wrench him away from his iPod.

He even sleeps with it.

Chinese handwriting

Zack has been learning Mandarin in his class, and whenever he has a chance, he would either be drawing or practising to write his Chinese characters.  This was what he wrote on Sunday morning, at church.

I must say, he is not just ‘writing’ but he actually remembers how to pronounce some of the Mandarin words (without help).  He would be able to read things like “Shang” (up), “Xia” (down), Xue Siao (school), and several other words like Ren (man), and so on….

Even though he would be exempted from learning Chinese, I think it is great to know that he is getting to learn some basic words to be conversational in it in the long run.

Ocean Life

We attended the 1st Birthday Party Bash at My Art Pod, and Zack had 2 of his art works displayed.  It was really wonderful for him to see it being displayed, but he was surprisingly not quite interested to take a photo of himself with his art work.  Perhaps, he was distracted and was hungry, because I later found him eating happily away in the cable-car that was located outside the school.

They had Art-in-Motion (flick painting) for each child, and also had a magic show.  The kids loved it, and also had their balloon sculptures custom-made by the magician.  Zack really enjoyed himself.

Tiger in the Park

Whenever Zach come to grandma & grandpa’s house, he will go for the LEGO blocks.
Each time he will construct something different. The theme currently is being influenced
by the TV programs he viewed – Transformers.
Zach has an eye for details, symmetry and balance.
All these are done through his imagination, without any plan.

Zack's Toys

Zachary has taken a liking to the camera, and takes photos whenever he has a chance.  I would say they are mostly random and not really planned, but this particular one taken today, made me think otherwise.  Its a simple photo of his toys.

I think if there is a photography course for kids, I would surely send him for one, given his interest in it.

Self-Portrait

A drawing of his Super Yo-Yo

There was a time when Zack was crazy about Super Yo-Yo, and this was a drawing that I stumbled upon in his file recently. It shows fairly good fine-motor control, as he could colour different colours within a confined space. I can’t otherwise describe it, but I believe an Occupational therapist would be able to tell me that it is a good indicator of Zack’s progress.