Week in Review

It has been a busy week here.  It was a good week of school and I feel like we are finally falling back into a rhythm that is more like what we had last year before we moved.  Tyler is once again interested in what we are doing in school and not spending all day telling me about all the other things he would rather be doing.  Christian is happier now that I have stopped doing workboxes with him.  I really wanted it to work for him but I just can't see continuing on when it causes him so much stress.  He and I have done a lot of sensory activities this week as he seemed to need a lot.  We have also been to the park almost every day this week which seems to benefit both of them and me too! :) 

Tyler has been enjoying learning about and praying for Pakistan this week.  We have even decided to extend it for one more week as there is a lot we would like to explore yet.

Here is our prayer center for this week and next.

He has been really into reading Three Cups of Tea with me.  He hasn't been overly excited about any books lately so I am thrilled he is into this one.  He made his collection jars for Pennies For Peace and has been earnestly looking for pennies to put in them for children to have schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Here are his jars.  He is doing well so far.  We found out that we have a whole lot of pennies in our house.  His goal is $10.  We will count them tomorrow to see how we are doing so far.

We are going to do a fun project this week to go along with learning more about Pakistan.  We are going to make a painted truck out of a box.  Pakistan has these wonderful painted trucks which is something somewhat unique and memorable and I thought he would enjoy designing his own.  If you have never seen pictures of this interesting art and would like to check it out you can here  or here.  I think he will enjoy it. 

Tyler has also been working through Amanda Bennett's Dog Unit Study this week and will be for the next couple of weeks.  I have to admit I have also learned a lot so far.  I actually thought it might be a bit boring when we decided to do it but I am enjoying it.  Tomorrow he will be researching Seaman the Newfoundland owned by Meriwether Lewis and he will be learning about the first seeing eye dog so there is a lot more than I thought to this unit.  I envisioned learning the breeds and maybe training and care of dogs so I am excited to see it explore so many areas.

He is also enjoying going through Revelation right now in Bible and grasping it remarkably well.  He is learning more about angles in math and in grammar he is doing a lot of punctuation rules.  He is loving semicolons right now for some reason and so everything he writes he tries to include lots of semicolons.  It is a little strange but I am glad he gets it.  His workbox system continues to be a marvelous solution for him and he enjoys knowing what his day looks like.

Christian as I mentioned before is happy to be without workboxes and is back to working with me during structured floortime.  I am employing a technique that I have seen work well with him when he has had at home therapy which is to bring into his room a large tote with the things I would like him to do with me and allow him to explore the bag and approach me with something that interests him.  This removes a lot of his apprehension to try new things because he can touch and explore them before he approaches me to find out what my expectation is for the object or task he has selected.  We are able to do most of the same things we did in the workboxes except this allows him the freedom to choose and the opportunity to communicate more with me.   Of course this all needs to be recorded in a much different way then the workboxes so I dug out some of the old floortime goal sheets and recording forms I have used in the past and I am making new ones because he is doing things he wasn't previously doing and so it also encouraged me a bit to look at some of his past goals and see that indeed we have made some progress.  Sometimes it doesn't feel like we are making a lot of progress because with Christian it is very slow and very small steps. 

We had a nice weekend here.  Yesterday my husband got up early and he and Tyler went out to breakfast at I-Hop and then went back out to the pumpkin farm we visited last weekend so that Tyler could go on a hayride and get a pumpkin.  Christian really does not enjoy hayrides so he stayed home with me.  It was nice father and son time for Tyler which I think he really enjoyed.  Then last night we watched Faith Like Potatoes together which is an inspiring movie.  It starts a little slow but once it gets going it is just amazing!  Today we caught up on some little things here.  I baked an apple pie which was fun because I got to try out my new apple peeler.  I am really geeky that way when I get a new kitchen gadget I get all excited!  We also went and got a new thermometer today as I have major flu phobia.  It is a Temporal Scanner which you use one the forehead.  Christian is next to impossible to take a temperature on so I wanted to make sure we had something that we could use for him if we need to.  Tyler also had an Elvis ornament that he wanted to get so he was able to get that today too.   

We had a big milestone in our house this weekend.  Tyler shaved (with the help of his dad) for the first time.  He has been getting a lot of comments on his hairy upper lip lately and so we thought now was a good time.  He is not overly comfortable about it all.  My husband used his electric razor with him because we don't want him to cut himself and make him more apprehensive about it all but he complained a lot about the electric razor tickling him too.  If anyone has been through shaving with an autistic child I would love to hear about your experiences and any advice.  Christian is just around the corner too and I really have no idea how we are going to do that.

Well it seems this is a rather long post.  Sorry about that!  I am going to go to bed now.  I was hoping to catch up on my blog reading but I guess that will have to be tomorrow.

 Have a blessed night!