Last weekend we signed our little girl up for a few activities. We are feeling like she needs more activity away from home and she needs to see how kids/people interact with each other. Soccer and Chinese dance (very low key) are her two Saturday activities. She enjoyed them both and did very well with them! She was especially excited about soccer because Katie, Mark and Johnny play soccer. She let each of them know that she is also a soccer player now! It was pretty cute- she called the two older kids on the phone! We knew one of the soccer coaches- he had coached Johnny and Mark last year. So he made sure he showed her what to do because she could not understand all the verbal instructions. Sarah was surprisingly fast and aggressive! The only problem was we forgot to show her the boundaries of the field so she was often on the wrong field! I think she may have scored a few goals for the wrong team, too.
There are 2 things I assumed about children in an orphanage setting. I don't know why, I just figured it would be true and no one told me different but now I know better.
1. I thought they would be in good cardiovascular shape because they ran around with children all the time- wrong, very wrong. Sarah was very winded with her activities and her legs got tired. She is healthy but not strong and not in good shape.
2. I thought since they were around children all the time they would be used to playing with children. Our little one really has a hard time playing with and I stress "with" other children. She can parallel play with the best of them, but her interactions while playing are very limited. I think this will improve as her language improves. We will be working on this skill for awhile!
I am taking pictures of some of our friends and we are going to practice their names and how to greet them. She is getting very comfortable at ELL class. I am no longer in the room and she is doing great all by herself! Today she started speech with Ann- again she did great! Both speech and ELL will probably only go thru May.
1 comment:
Great Sarah for being so excited to participate in something new!
What you have learned (#1 and #2) are exactly true for our daughter as well. She's strong/healthy (not even a sniffle since coming home) and good at athletics and learning new sports- but does get winded. Her grip is very weak also. She also doesn't play very well "with" other children; at just short of 4 months home, she is just now starting to play board games with Morgan (younger by 6 months). She will gather happily around the computer with Morgan and/or her little siblings. But, she still rarely engages with other playmates. If she does engage with kids her age at school, it's in a very immature "little sister role". I guess it's just going to take some time! :) Jennifer
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