3V1096.01 Time sensitivity: When vs. Before (1/22/81) Miriam and I got back from Boston around 9 pm. We emptied the car, got off our coats, and all that. I talked with Peggy a while and she told me of her activities earlier in the day. I can’t recall the specific activity, but at one point …
3V1091.01 Breaking up an idiomatic expression: [By Beatrix Potter] (1/17/81) Peggy brought “Peter Rabbit” and “The Flopsy bunnies” to my lap. As I have read them to her in the past, I have moved my finger along the title. Earlier (1/26/80) Peggy recognized “by” in two books as being “the same.” Here when I finished …
3V1089.01 Explanation by wrong causal inference. [Cold hands. Because the wood is cold.] (1/15/81) Peggy sat before the stove while I loaded some logs in. My hands were cold (perhaps I had recently been outside). The logs were from the living room, and warm. What is striking here is Peggy’s assumption that a causal inference …
3V1084.01 Counting Irregularities (1/10/81) Peggy “counts,” ie. recites the number names in a quasi-standard fashion. (omitting “seven” more often than including it.) Although she has put objects in one to one correspondence, she has not done so successfully in the standard sense. She counted on her fingers today showing no non-standard variations. First she counted …
3V1073.01 Preposition discrimination: “OUT” and “OF” (12/30/80) Peggy came to Boston with Miriam and me. Overnight, she slept on a sleeping bag, surrounded by her crib bumper — and with her own pillow and afghans for covers. Awakening as Miriam did, she stood up and said “I have to get OUT of my bed. Mimi …
3V1071.07 Confronting the illogical: “I’m not here.” (12/28/80) This evening, I retreated upstairs to write while Gretchen read a large collection of library books to Peggy. Later, Peggy called to me “Dad…Are you up there ?” I replied “No. I’m not here.” I heard Peggy go into the living room to look for me there …
3V1069.03 Her first orthographic word: “by” (very impt) (12/26/80) Especially as we read the titles of Peggy’s many books, Peggy imitates my pointing to words and saying words. After I read “The Tale of Peter Rabbit,” she pointed more or less randomly: “The” (for the tale of); “Tale” (for Peter); “of” (Rabbit) “Peter” (by) (Rabbit” …
3V1069.02 Counting and one-to-one correspondence (12/26/80) Having bought her two of Beatrix Potter’s books for Christmas, I have read them over and over to Peggy. At one point in the story of Peter Rabbit, old Mrs. Rabbit goes to the bakers and buys ‘five current buns.” I decided to see how Peggy would follow or …
3V1069.01 Planning a trip: to B-A-S-T-G-A-K (12/26/80) Peggy wants very much to go along whenever I go to Boston. She loves to travel anywhere beyond the house , and argues she should go and the older children stay home because “Some kids are too little to be left alone.” I hate to let her overhear …
3V1067.01 I wonder I’m hungry”: idioms and structure (12/24/80) In chanting recitations very like “I thought I saw a pussy cat,” Peggy has repeated the phrase above, most as noted but with a few variations, e.g., “I wonder I’m sleepy.” This utterance is noteworthy because it is one with the surface structure of a grammatical …
3V1066.01 Reading letters: new development (12/23/80) Peggy often gives evidence of not distinguishing words from letters. (See especially her play with letters in the past videotaped sessions). Consequently, it was quite surprising today to hear Peggy saying letter names as she poked around in Scurry’s food bag. My best appreciation was that she pointed at …
3V1065.01 Past two months: PUPPY DOG: an invented game/role (12/22) A quick scan of these notes shows no notice taken of something very important to Peggy: she has created a game-role for herself, the character “Puppy Dog.” This began months ago when, playing with Scurry, Peggy fastened the leash to her collar and ran about …
3V1063.02 Reciting number names: varied responses to correction (12/20/80) I drove to New Haven. Miriam and Peggy came along for the ride. On the return trip, Peggy stood behind and between the two front seats of the Saab, holding on and exclaiming amazedly at nearly everything seen. As I drove from I-91 down onto route …
3V1063.01 Hop on Pop: the right phrase; the wrong orthographic order (12/20/80) Peggy brought me this book to read and spontaneously read the title, pointing to each of three words, “Hop on Pop”… Subsequently, (again spontaneously) she read on the title page, “Hop on Pop.” This was most interesting in that she pointed to “Pop”, …
3V1043.01 Singing “offstage”: The Fox (11/30/80) I tried to get Peggy singing “The Fox went out on a chilly night” during P149 today. She refused. But this evening, alone in a chair in the living room while the rest of us were there but otherwise occupied, Peggy began reading/singing the story. She did fine at …
3V1035.01 Constructive reading: Reading pictures and her own memories (11/22/80) Peggy’s crib is an unbelievable mess. There is hardly room for her with all the animals, covers, books in it. When put to bed before she’s sleepy, she will often read silently to herself. I have heard her, in the mornings, reading aloud. It is …
3V1033.01 Holophrastic verbs: imitation of Peggy by Miriam as confirmation (11/20/80) Peggy imitates Miriam — sure enough — but the opposite is also true. Miriam has begun imitating Peggy’s single word descriptions…. single VERB descriptions. Peggy may pick up a cookie, say emphatically “eat” and pop it in her mouth. When reclaiming toys from the …
3V1029.01 Graphics as names (11/16/80) Peggy sat on the floor, a large Richard Scary book opened to the title page which was decorated with the drawing of a large moose. The words, of course, were the title of the book. Peggy read it: “That say ‘moose’.”
3V1026.01 “walrus”: Peggy’s assertion that graphic symbols name things (11/13/80) On one of the walls at the Logo lab is painted a large rhinoceros — in that blue paint which may be used as a chalk board. That drawing has many things chalked on it: one of Miriam’s “queens”, binary arithmetic, a set of matrices. …
3V1022.02 Appetite for Reading: (in text between two notes written up on 11/12) Back in May, Peggy began to request a Tintin in her crib at night. Sometimes she “read” it, but many times she just wanted to have it there before she would lie down and go to sleep. And of course, it would …
3V1015.01 Like a birdie: concrete inspiration of observation (11/2/80) Peggy came around the dining room table with a turtle bean-bag in her hand, moving it up and down, “Turtle flies like a birdy.” she said, and the turtle’s feet did flap like wings…. but when she turned it over, I saw a patch of the …
3V1013.01 One to one correspondence (10/29/80) I found Peggy with the Train book, looking at a diagram of a locomotive. She was pointing to the numbers (denoting parts that were described below) and reciting random letters of the alphabet, one to each number: “B…E…K…D…” when I approached to see what she was doing, she pointed …
3V1011.01 Jumping Jacks and Counting (10/27/80) Peggy sometimes goes to gymnastics make up classes with Miriam. She has seen the girls do jumping jacks and counting them. Whenever she feels full of energy, Peggy is as likely to break into jumping jacks as any other activity. Usually Peggy counts, but with the numbers 16 and …
3V1010.02 Singing (10/26/80) Peggy’s favorite song is “The fox went out on a chilly night.” This is her first song, (in the sense of having parts well enough known for her to begin singing). Her original version interleaved two lines, “The fox went out on a chilly night” and “town-o, town-o…(repeated a variable number of …
3V1010.01 Playing with coins: progressive discrimination (10/26/80) After P143 (where we played with many coins) Peggy found the pile of change and asked me to join her in playing with them on the floor. As we did so, Peggy separated them and said, “I’m picking the big pennies out and putting them on the floor.” …
3V1006.02 One to one correspondence: words and things (very impt)(10/22/80) Gretchen was reading to Peggy from “The Big Book of Real Trains.” At the bottom of each page is a little picture reviewing each of the cars introduced in the previous pages, each having an engine at the head. As Gretchen read and turned the …
3V1006.01 “When Mimi was my age, Christina was my age too” (10/22/80) I judge this an amazing statement for a child of Peggy’s age. Christina is a coeval of Miriam’s who rides to and from gymnastics in a car pool. Christina is of significantly slighter frame than Miriam. It is possible that Peggy imagined Christina …