Taylor and the Otter

Taylor’s teacher Ms. Deb is absolutely the best teacher ever. She keeps the children so entertained and they are learning so many valuable things. One thing that Ms. Deb had talked Ryan and I about is Taylor’s lack of participation during circle time. She said he get really shy and refuses to talk when the other kids are around and all looking at him. (She says that is absolutely not the case when he is one on one with either her or one of the other children. She says in setting like this sometimes she has to ask Taylor to go play in a center because he is talking so much she cannot get the things done she needs to do.) Back to the story – Ryan and I have been working really hard with Taylor and trying to do thing that will help him participate in group settings. We are really making progress because this week he brought in a pumpkin/gourd that looked like an acorn, and he talked about it during circle time. The week before he brought in a dinosaur book and talked about it and then Ms. Deb read it to the class.

Each week the children get to take home a bag of books and a stuffed animal - they call these kits book buddies. This weekend in Taylor’s book buddy was a magazine about Sea Otters. Taylor absolutely loved this magazine and loved learning about the Sea Otter. So this week for circle time he is going to give a book report over the magazine and he is also going to bring in a stuffed sea otter that his Aunt Emily gave him last year.

Another good story – the reason Emily gave Taylor the sea otter was because I had taken him to see the documentary Artic Tale. It was about the current environmental impact global warming is having on the Polar Bears and the Walruses. For some reason during the whole movie Taylor kept calling the walruses “sea otters”, and for a long time after that he refused to call them anything but a sea otter. Emily picked up on this and found him a Sea Otter lovey at the NYC Central Park Zoo. I promise I do not make my children watch documentaries but Taylor asked to go and see this Artic Tale and he loved the full two hours of it. He loved it so much we now own it on DVD. I do highly recommend it though for adults it is great movie – very eye opening.


Thank you Ms. Deb for working so hard with our little boy, and thank you Aunt Emily for the Sea Otter.