Autonomous learning in practice.

Rye has suprised me a few times today with stuff he's learned just by being with me.
I was on the kitchen and he was annoying me a little trying to reach for everything on the worktops and playing with the cutlery drawer. The obvious solution was to give him his red mixing bowl and a spoon and tell him to go and "bake a cake". I carried on with what I was doing, popping into the understairs cupboard to get something out of the freezer, when I emmerged, Rye was in my pull out larder getting out the ingredients for making "cake". Hows that for autonomous learning in practice, I natter to him while I bake and he helps; mostly by trying to eat the flour in the bowl, so I had no idea he'd taken in so much and is aware of the ingredients.

He's picking up on colours too. I asked him to hand me his green t'shirt this morning and he did, made more impressive in that there were other t'shirts on the sofa he could have picked up.

I am really pleased, he may not see the need for speech very often but at least he's taking everything in. Mind, he is saying more and he's progressed from the "uh uh oh oh" type of conversational speech he did. He is now clearly trying to say proper words, sadly I have no idea what he's saying when he looks at me in all seriousness and tells me something that is clearly of vital importance to him. I nod and say "Oh I see", not really sure what alternatives I have as I'd prefer not to say "I don't understand", too often.

He is saying "please" and "thank you" appropriately too. I try not to push or prompt as I would prefer for Rye to learn manners not for the sake of but because he can see the pleasure it causes and instead I prefer to tell him that it makes me feel happy when he says please or thanks me for his juice etc. My CM is quite hot on manners although she is respecting my wishes and rarely prompts Rye, however because he sees the other children using manners he is copying.

All good.