OK, guys. If you had any lingering doubts about my undying love for you, I feel pretty confident that the following will put them to rest once and for all.
You see, dear readers, I’m about to show you – and in so doing make accessible via the Interwebz FOREVER – photos of myself looking pretty much like arse.
Why? Well, because a) I think they demonstrate a really fabulous tool for our kids, b) I’d like to believe that I’m not really vain enough to care (I am, but I’d like to believe that I’m not) and c) my kid sure as hell didn’t care what her Mama looked like when we took the pictures.
So ..
Deep breath.
Shake it off.
Here we go.
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The other night, between shower time and bedtime (hence the wet head), Brooke and I played with the Photo Booth feature on my laptop. Brooke LOVES Photo Booth. She can sit in front of it for ages, playing with the various effects and making silly faces for the camera.
Her particular favorite is making herself into twins, a concept that, while nifty from a visual perspective, sorta scares the bejeezus out of me.
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Doesn’t mean I wasn’t going to give it a shot though. Hey, Luau, look! You think I drive you crazy now? Imagine if there were TWO of me! (Insert evil laughter here)
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We played around for a while. At one point, Brooke decided I needed a royal blue boa. And who doesn’t really?
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I think that was one of the thousand pictures for which Brooke directed us to ‘sing opera’ though it also might be from the batch in which we were ‘saying poop’. Cause hey, who doesn’t like to say poop? Try it. It’s surprisingly entertaining.
We even tried out this nifty Andy Warhol effect. I thought it was kind of cool. Mostly cause you can’t see the dark circles under my eyes. Brooke? Not so much.
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But then I had an idea. Like a big idea. Like a stop the presses this could be REALLY useful for my kiddo’s development kind of idea.
Don’t you love those? Those perfect moments when a fun activity suddenly lends itself perfectly to something that you work on ALL THE TIME and the next thing you know you’re working but it doesn’t feel like work at all? Uh huh, like that. Nifty, right?
And that’s how it happened, my friends. Practicing emotional recognition and identification became FUN.
We started with SLEEPY, cause that one’s our favorite.
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Then we tried SURPRISED.
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The coolest part was that Brooke could study my face at the same time that she looked at hers. When she had the tolerance for it, we talked a little about the various elements of each face. For example, what are the clues we can use to identify surprise? Mouth agape, face pulled back at the neck, eyebrows raised, crinkly forehead. She worked on making our expressions match. Pretty cool, right?
After surprised, she wanted to do her second favorite after SLEEPY. What, you had to ask?
HAPPY!
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It’s been extremely interesting to watch the evolution of Brooke’s on-demand smile. Even when she’s actually happy, she doesn’t tend to smile. It’s when she laughs that her face lights up and we see what we think of as a ‘happy’ expression. You can see how difficult it is for her to create a typical smile here. Anyway, that’s a whole post unto itself. Moving on ..
How about SAD?
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I love that she insisted we add the hands in ‘for drying the boo hoo tears.’
Then MAD. Grrrr.
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Then Brooke requested SILLY and well, who can resist a little silliness?
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For the record, she calls that face I’m making ‘the hot dog bun’. Too much information? Yeah, probably. Sorry.
Next we tried SCARED.
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OK, I can’t help it – doesn’t Brooke look like she’s doing Marlon Brando here? We just have to teach her to say, “I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse.”
No? OK, maybe it’s just me.
Next we toned it down a little with NERVOUS.
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OK, so they can’t all be perfect.
But now we have a FUN way to work on them!
How do YOU work on emotional identification in YOUR house? I’d love to hear your ideas!
