Ajab’s 2nd Week In School at They Might Be Curly Giants!

While the first week (and it’s zoomed past us in a flash!) was filled with a lot of unknowns, the second week of Ajab’s school life was slightly less intimidating. I don’t know …. maybe the thought of going back to school, sitting in a classroom and facing a teacher (even though she’s not teaching me) gives me the creeps (apart from making friends, I’ve always hated school).

Ajab’s shown improvement from the first week. He’s better at waiting. When told to sit and wait in the kids’ waiting area, he would do so without much hesitation. He only needs to see us and know that we’re there nearby to be calm enough to sit and wait on his little Ikea stool. But one wrong move, like if we were to take a couple of steps away further from him, say to talk to the teacher for example, he’d start to whine and call us back.

It’s basically the same as last week. Lots of singing, making eye contact with the pictures on the flash cards, engaging their attention, making them ‘work’ by solving simple puzzles or just getting them to press a button on a toy, which can be a problem for some of the other kids who have difficulty following instructions. Ajab still has problems in making (and keeping) eye contact with his teachers, preferring to look down at his feet when they talk face to face with him. And his aggressive nature is still evident when he wants something but doesn’t get it (a toy he’s not supposed to play with, for example).

But I’m happy that he’s getting the hang of going to school, sitting in class, taking part in the activities and so on. Singing he still finds somewhat odd I feel, judging from his ‘lost’ expression. He either doesn’t get what he’s supposed to do with his hands in terms of actions during sing along time or he’s simply not interested, although his face lights up when we countdown to the end of each activities, always gesturing to me to count down with my fingers, even though he is only capable of making his hand into a fist and extending one or two fingers. He does very well in recognising people and stuff, like when the class starts to sing London Bridge, he’ll put the tips of his fingers together and form a triangular shape with his hands without being prompted.

Prompting is what we do a lot with him to get him to do something new, although today a funny thing happened when he was told to put a shaped block through a similarly shaped hole (square block through a square hole, etc.). The teacher was just getting ready to show him how to do it, but he snatched the block from her, shoved the block in the right slot and proceeded to roll his head and rest it on the table like as though he was bored with this activity. I swear I could almost make out his expression going “Yeah …. *yawwwwwnnn!!*” (and he did yawn!) as his teacher and I were clapping enthusiastically to show he had done well in putting the block through the right hole.

Here’s a couple of videos of him in class last week:

This is him during water play time where the kids get to play with a tub filled with water and an assortment of toys. Free play this time with some structured play being scheduled for this week’s session. Ajab kept filling up the bucket with water again and again, always careful not to spill any water. At the end of the session he was one of the driest kids in class, compared to one kid who was soaked to the skin, having been so excited to see the tub he wanted to climb in. Ajab, I feel, initially thought that the tub was meant for bathing and looked at it suspiciously, but he warmed up to it and started to play happily, so much so that he totally ignored his teacher when she sang the ‘finish song’ which signalled the end of that particular activity.

And here he is playing by himself. He had the whole mat of toys all to himself because the other kids were cranky and had to be whisked away and calmed down before they were let back onto the mat. I think one of the kids wanted to play with the same toy as Ajab but the kid didn’t understand the concept of taking turns.