Monkeying Around

Now that I've found a way to connect you all to video (even if I can't post it directly on the blog), I'll try to post some of the stuff I've been meaning to post for a while. But here is a nice clip from yesterday -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cswo992u4Pk

Check out out Noa looks from side-to-side to find the Monkey's face. She has been doing more and more of this. I suspect she is "seeing" something, but as you can see the Monkey's head is always touching her so she can follow it that way - AND she gets that the head (or face) is something to look in the direction of. As simple as that sounds, that's a big deal. After all, where do we get the idea that we should look at a person's face? For us the face gives us important information (identity, but also expression). Blind kids tend to look down (esp. kids like Noa for whom it might be preferable to not have all the visual clutter of looking up which can be distracting). But Noa really gets faces and also turns her face to people more now too. It's actually hard to convey what a big deal that is for us - just emotionally to have her attending to us by turning toward us, it's just a level of interaction that is nice to have - it's a connection even though its not a visual one (if that makes sense).

The other cool thing is that Noa totally made this game up by herself. I just happened to be able to snag the camera and catch it.