Car! Ca! Ka! Kar! Kah! – Part 2

In the first post about this, I said how we’d got the various photos from Google Images of a car, a motorbike, etc and printed them out on 7”x5” photo-cards, laminated them and stuck them around the playroom as flashcards.

Well, actually, he’s not half bad! And, that’s not me or Claire making it up.

Here’s my proof that he knows what things are called, but not necessarily know how to pronounce their names.

If I carry Jack into the middle of the room and hold him whilst I kneel down on the floor, I can ask him where the car is, namely the bright red Ferrari which is in the centre under the window. Easy, really, as he knows these things that drive around outside are called cars, and that’s the one that most resembles a car.

But then, if I ask him where the van is, he’ll look around, seeing the motorbike and the double-decker bus that are to the left of the car, ignore them, swing his head around to the right of the car, sometimes looking around me, to see a white Ford Transit van on the wall perpendicular to the window-wall. Then, you can see his eyes lock onto it, like a bird of prey seeing a mouse, and whilst his smile forms on his face, his hand is already up with his finger extending the best he can, pointing to the van.

Ok, I could have trained him to do that. So, he knows where the car and the van are, but then if you ask where the motorbike is, you can see his expression on his face change, as if to say, “ooh, I know that one… where is it?” and then scan the images again, looking for the Orange County Chopper motorbike photo.

Between the car and the van is the photo of the Land Rover Defender, which I’m calling a Truck, and he can find that too. To the left of the motorbike, is the double-decker bus and he can do that one too.

The others, namely the helicopter, aeroplane, tractor and Eddie Stobart artic lorry, haven’t had much attention from us yet. But in terms of early progress, I think he’s doing great! Claire still gets confused sometimes as to what they’re called! (Joke!)

Admittedly, if you were to ask him what any of them are called, they’re all cars, but I’m working on that!