Prepositions

When visiting with children who are over about 25 months I always end the activity portion of the lesson with a short interaction about the "WHERE" words. I bring in a small cup and plastic butterfly and ask the children to put the butterfly under, on top, beside, inside, outside, next to, in front of, behind, etc. the cup. I only do a couple and then offer the parent the butterfly for her turn to practice with the child. This is always pretty difficult for the child at first but with practice they eventually get the hang of it, one preposition at a time. One week I was visiting David, who was 29 months old. His mother was asking him to put the butterfly in different locations in relation to their computer chair. He is a pro at this and was correctly placing the butterfly on, under, beside, and "flew" the butterfly over the chair. Next mom asked David to but the butterfly in front of the chair, and he did so correctly. Then she asked him to put the butterfly behind the swiveling computer chair, and instead of moving the butterfly to behind where the chair then stood, he simply swiveled the chair around 90 degrees so that the butterfly was indeed behind the chair. We all had a big laugh and congratulated David on his great higher level thinking skills.
Jamie