Chez PLJ

Call me a gullible slave to the movie industry, but so help me I actually watched much of the Oscars last night.

I regret those forever-lost brain cells.

The one bright spot was the NFB film Ryan coming through with a win in the Animated Short category; it is an exceptional film and shows what 3D computer animation is really capable of. Watch Ryan in its entirety at the NFB site (Warning: strong language in places).

(March 4, Edit: Alas, the NFB took the movie off the site. There’s still a clip available at the NFB.)

It’s in it’s sixth season, so why hasn’t anybody told me about Alton Brown and his show Good Eats before??!! I only just discovered it. Clearly I’m not holding up my end in the flipping channels department.

I just love the mix of wacky humour, cooking and food science. To my mind, his educational style is not unlike James Burke’s take on science history. Just a little more wacky. And with food. Mmmm.

In our never-ending quest to introduce Jon to new things we occasionally try to get him to watch DVD cartoons with us. He’s been pretty resistant up till now, which is odd because at school his class has “video day” every Friday, where they watch a whole movie—and he seems to enjoy it! He even saw (and told us he liked) The Iron Giant, which we then had to beg him to watch with us a few weeks back, since neither Peter or I had seen it yet!

Jon’s favourite scene in Totoro.

This week we thought he might actually enjoy My Neighbor Totoro, so we borrowed his cousin Meghan’s DVD and played the titles and end credits songs for him (Jon loves movie credits because of the music). Sure enough he got hooked and started playing the beginning and ending incessantly: Totoro, totoro/Totoro, totoro… Oy, what an earworm!!

For those not acquainted with My Neighbor Totoro, it’s a Japanese animated classic by the same man who made the more recent and famous Spirited Away (which won the animation Oscar). It is quite different from a typical Disney movie; much of Totoro is quietly contemplative, there are no villains, and the kids are portrayed fairly realistically. Totoro is a forest spirit that only children can see (and unlike Disney movies, adults accept this without disbelief).

On Saturday we took the plunge and got him to watch the whole movie. We try to make movie-watching a special event: We move the couch close to the TV, get snacks and snuggle under blankets. He got a little antsy during the last third of the movie, but he certainly liked it.

Friends Andy and Christine had suggested Totoro for Jon several years ago; we checked it out at the time, but found it was way too visual. In fact it was only in the past month that we felt that his vision and cognition were up to the task. Totoro does not talk; he only roars (usually with delight, but still), which made us question whether Jon would understand or freak out. But Jon loved the roars, and he immediately loved the Catbus!

In fact, he loved the movie so much he demanded a Totoro poster in his bedroom and gets a little ticked off when we tell him we don’t have one yet. Anyone know where we could get a nice Totoro poster or calendar?!

We started this note Wednesday evening after a banner day for Jon. Such peaks generally don’t run much past the day they happen in, but this time, the momentum just kept going:

From Wednesday:
Jon’s just bombing ahead in his reading/writing: Today his teacher phoned us in an incredible high state of excitement over his latest sample of creative writing (this story was totally unprompted; the only thing the teacher told Jon was that in book titles each word is capitalized):

My Favorit Book

My favorit book is Dr Soous The Sneaches . I love The Sneaches story because they have stars . Those stars were not so big . They were small . My gramma reads it to me because she bot it for me .
Jon

Wow. No copy typing – this was straight into the computer from his head. She had reminded Jon before they began that titles and names required capitals, and a couple of times he made a query such as:
J: “Does The Sneeches have capitals?
T: “Is it a title?”
J: “Yes, so it has capitals.”

She did give him a couple of other prompts, such as “Tell me about the stars”

Another impressive thing was that Jon was extremely insistent that he write the story. He had a choice of “free time” (playtime on computer) or “creative writing” and he actually chose writing over free time.

Earlier, while he was reading with his teacher, a call had come in and she told Jon she had to go to the office for a minute and she’d be right back to continue reading, leaving him alone with book while the EAs in the room were working with other kids. A few minutes later when Tami returned, Jon was appropriately ahead in the book, reading aloud, having just continued with his task. One of the EAs confirmed that he was reading it, not cheating or skipping.

And Jon showed several other social and developmental flourishes today to boot. His teacher tells us that he’s pretty much fufilled his year’s lesson plan, so for the next five months, it’s gravy. And she had planned a tough course to start with.

Well, Thursday, Jon did it again. Another creative writing story at a similar length about his favourite game. His newly displayed talents had turned a few heads in the school too – he read his story to both the principal and the vice-principal, and it looks like this will change certain curriculum issues for next year.

My Favorite Game

My favorite game is Arthers First Grade . I play it when I have some free time at home . On the computer at home I first do some tiping . In the game I do letters with DW.

Jon

Come Friday, 10 minutes before lunch, Jon announced that he wanted to go to the computer. They all thought he wanted to play a silly game that he had played earlier, but he announced that he wanted to do some creative writing and would not be swayed. Tami offered to give him a title, but he already had one in mind “Hop, Skip and Jump”. When she pointed out that was the name of his reading primer, he replied “It’s the title of my story”. He continued his writing ten minutes into the lunchbreak, at which point Tami – who had been negotiating and pleading – physically pulled him away from the computer on his fifth sentence, Jon yelling, “But I’m not finished! I’m not finished!” as he clawed at the receding computer. Tami said they could finish after lunch, but Jon pointed out it was Video Day. Tami reassured him that they would start the video late so he could finish his story. And suddenly he was as happy as a clam: “OK, we’ll finish it later. It’s time for lunch. It’s pizza day!”

For this story there was only one direct prompt, “What did the little red hen do?”. He remembered that all titles have capitals. He remembered that periods immediately follow words, with no spaces in between.

Hop Skip and Jump

I love doing some reading. I like reading Come Out Puppy. I like reading Help Find The Bear. My favorite story is The Little Red Hen. The little red hen took the wheat to the mill. She made the bred and she ate it all up all by herself.

Jon

You never know when this is going to happen, when the little gold nuggets will suddenly pan out of the silt. Three days in a row is even harder to believe, and that is even more precious. He’s starting to show his own vigorous and creative spark; not just something by rote that we trained him to do. This is a pure chunk of Jon that he developed, all by himself. And it leaves us breathless.

We all had a surprise this morning, and for Jon it was a nasty shock. Jon went to turn on the TV to get his morning fix of the Local Forecast before breakfast. He flipped to 518 to get the forecast in French; to his horror he was greeted by an onscreen box saying we weren’t authorized to get this channel. Zut alors! Météo Média was part of the digital channel freebie month last month! (We had no idea – we only discovered the channel two weeks ago.)

It was a very teary breakfast. I imagine that after school today Jon will be trying channel 518 in the vain hope it was all a nightmare this morning. He’s already hit all four of denial, anger, bargaining and depression at various times this morning; let’s hope acceptance isn’t far away!