The Grace App Blog

Look At That, It’s Update Time

Written by Lisa on June 21st, 2010 in Uncategorized 1 Comment

Here are some of the new pics we are adding with our next update. As you may know my “market research” is entirely based on observing my daughter’s interactions and she recently began leading me to look at things. Just to look at them. This kind of spontaneous sharing was miraculous and probably a lot to do with the iPhone videos we take of her preferred activities and entertainments.

So I decided I wanted to add a spontaneous comment sentence maker. My other research was based on what my friends told me their TYPICAL kids use to bring their attention to something.

This is for prompting Shared Attention.

When you are lucky enough to reach this stage in the natural environment (not a desktop discreet trial) where the Child is pointing out something, purely for the pleasure of sharing with you, they may be doing a single word or else incorrectly using the “I Want” card when what they really mean is “Hey, Look at that”
The reason I surveyed parents of typical toddlers is because I wanted it to be a naturally occurring phrase. Sure, we teach “What do you See?” at the desktop in discrete trials;
but have you ever heard anyone outside of an Language For Foreigners Program say:

“I See The Brown Dog” ?

Nope, little kids who are developing language at a normal rate will point and say “look” when they notice something.
To teach it – get down from the desk and put on a video or DVD of their favourite show. Grab the remote and pause it whenever the child is particularly excited about a character.

Say “What/Who’s that?” and point at the character, then prompt them with the “Look!” and then a saved photo of the character which you downloaded and saved from google images using wifi on an iPhone or iPod/iPad, in preparation for the exercise.

So if you are watching Barney and the little girl dinosaur comes on (Grace loves her) you pause and say “Who’s that?”

Then prompt with the phone: “Look” and “BabyBop”and then follow that up with lots of cuddles and smiles. The sharing of the favourite should be reinforcing enough, but offer a tangible reinforcer if you need to make it more engaging.

You can try this somewhere like a Zoo, Aquarium or Open Farm – but you have less instructional control over those damn penguins who might rack off into their pond before you get a chance to prompt the sharing.