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Things to do with Your Kids
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From basketball to piano lessons, kids benefit from moving and doing. Non-academic pursuits stretch minds and bodies, build social skills and bolster confidence. So, is football good for a shy child? How long should a child have to stick to a new spor...

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    If you were to interview a child every 6 months or every year, starting at about a year, what questions would you ask/how would you do it?
    Qlandav2ex_small

    Right now your interval for filming should be much shorter. You could use even a monthly schedule to capture the explosion of growth that will occur in language and physical abilities over the next couple of years and even up to the age of five. Capturing part of a meal and any other tabletop activity will serve to give you a static target with closer view to be able to see facial expression, body posture and skill of hand use. (Think of all the home movies of small children that are wildly moving around a room as the parent tries to keep them in the frame.)

    So to start, how about lunchtime, so you can get the coordination of use of hands with baby foods, finger foods, later utensils. You can talk about the tastes of foods (a plate full of different fruit slices or chunks or many other things to pick up and taste). So later think about what you will have - snippets of eating baby foods in a high chair, using fingers, using a spoon, later a fork, transition to less supportive chair, sitting at the table, drinking from a sippy cup to later a small glass, etc. And the language samples, lots of stuff about color, textures, tastes, favorites, and new things. You could also film some tabletop play with stuffed animals, dolls, toy vehicles, etc.

    When you get past those first few years (and eating skills are established) use a different focus for activity, like art endeavors (drawing, coloring, painting) - still a largely stay in one place activity but now you can talk about color, shape, intent and interpretation, AND you can save the artwork to keep in a scrapbook to go along with the videos. As your child ages use board games, counting out spaces, moving board pieces, excitement, disappointment (there is nothing like board games to learn how to have fun without having your ego suffer when things don't go your way), rolling dice, spinning a wheel, counting out money, manipulating cards, etc. You can always use one of these tabletop venues as a way of being at a place while you also pose one of your recurring questions or themes over time.

    Ideas for questions (your original query here):

    What is your favorite color?
    What is your favorite food?
    What is your favorite toy?
    What did you learn this week?
    What made you laugh hardest this week?
    Tell me a dream you had last night.
    What do you want to do this weekend?
    What do you want for your birthday? (when time is approaching)
    What should we do for Mom this weekend?
    What are you good at doing (what are you best at)?
    What do you want to learn how to do?
    Show me you favorite book this week.
    What is the hardest thing to learn in school right now?
    What do you want to be when you grow up?

    And, of course, the questions will have to change and grow with his intellectual abilities.

    Try to have a regular setup for you camera. A shelf or wall mounted cradle or attachment point to hold it and have it be stable and pointing at the table or area you will use. That way it is not a big production to put together and it does not become the focus of what is happening for the child. It will just become a background feature that he will ignore. As for time period, turn it on and let it run until it is obvious the activity is over (it won't always be a good session). Invest in memory cards and a good large hard drive to download to and store footage. I would suggest not editing and/or playing the movies too much in front of him so it does not become performance time but instead you get a genuine look at his personality in these sessions.

    Lastly, be willing to abandon the endeavor if he decides he doesn't like doing it at that time (or ever).

    By the way, I think this is a pretty neat idea and hope you find some ways that work for your family to pull this off - it will be a project that you will put years into and could be a really nice documentary about the development of a mind.

    Russ Campbell, NWEBS answered in Things to do with Your Kids 8 months ago
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    Are there any play groups or play spaces/activities suitable for a 6-month old in Capitol Hill area?
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    Tougo Coffee has a play area. There is a tots room at Miller Community Center. The Parent-Child Center at Seattle Central offers a great play space along with parent education which is really great. I don't think the next classes for younger infants start again until November due to usher cutbacks but you should check with them by email (do a search on Parent-Child Center Seattle Central and it should come up in the results).

    There are also the MadronaMoms and capitolhillparenting Yahoo Groups where you can set up your own playground with other families in the group.

    agness answered in Things to do with Your Kids 10 months ago
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