Care4autism

As a part of the non fire series , I started with yogurt parfait , as that is something he enjoys.  To begin wash and chop the fruits that would go into the parfait.  Take 500g of thick curd, place it in a  cheese cloth and make a knot , the whey collects in a vessel at the bottom. Drain for an hour.   Next whisk the hung curd , sugar( 1 tbsp)and fresh  cream (200ml)in a mixing bowl.Stir in the mixed fruit jam ( 2 tbsp) and vanilla extract(1/2 tsp)and nutmeg/ cardamom powder(1/4 tsp).  Take about 100g of digestive biscuits, place them in a ziplock bag and polverize it to a bread crumb consistency , not to a powdery form... Add sugar( 1 tbsp) and 2 tbsp melted butter to this. Assembling the ingredients Place the 2 tbsp  yougurt in the glass, sprinkle the biscuit crumbs over the yogurt,put in the chopped fruits, again spoon some yogurt and repeat the process.

At the outset categorisation sounds easy and simple , given a set of flash cards and the child is asked to sort the pictures into categories , transport, fruits , vegetables, clothing.That would be the basic sorting. However Categorization is a difficult skill for children on the spectrum, and for children with speech disorders and cognitive abilities.Dwell a little deeper into categorisation, categorise transport into air, road  and water, categorize household items. A little deeper , state the functions and ask the child to categorise given the functions of the object, categorise objects in a room, it gets a little trickier.  Identify an object by the senses. For example it taste sweet/ sour. It grows on vines and is green or black in colour. It is a fruit. Name the fruit. Or try giving the objects in a category and ask them to name the category. Taking it a step ahead , discriminate among a given set of objects , pencil, pen,chalk ,door . What is not used for writing? Fur...

I find the perler beads activity an engaging one.It was introduced to me by my daughter. Whether it is making cartoon characters or coasters , this one helps in focussing, copying patterns, fine motor skills  and in moving towards independent work skills . Works as a family fun activity as well .To see the designs emerge after placing it on the iron board, gives you  a sense of creative satisfaction. Parental supervision will be required. More pictures on my fb page.

For a start, they both begin with A. Is there more to Alexa , than just requesting songs.  There is this interesting article on use of Alexa in a classroom from the blog Autism Vault.  From setting timers, to answering /asking questions, to encouraging the kids to articulate clearly , the author puts those view points in favour of Alexa.  At home parents find varied uses for it as in making lesson plans for their kids,guided meditation, working on giving commands.... The timer functions of Alexa helps in giving clear start / stop instructions for activities like cooking or other tasks. I could think of spaces like restrooms, where you want to give the person his privacy but give the necessary prompts to move on to the next activity.There are some parents  with kids on the Retts syndrome who have hooked it up with Tobi eye gaze system. Alexa seems to be a good thing to help with independence goals. This is an article in favor of this view point ,h ttp://fortune.com/...

I just checked out some books from the local library to teach Ramam punctuation. Here are the titles. Punctuation takes a vacation Punctuation station Alfie the apostrophe Yo! yes The girl's like spaghetti, why, you cant imagine without apostrophes! Greedy Apostrophe: a cautionary tale. Twenty-odd ducks: why , every punctuation mark counts!                                The illustrations are a delight in themselves in all the books.  This one is form the book, twenty- odd ducks.                                              The punctuation station book also has some beautiful illustrations with a ticket window for the tall animals and an another one for the shorter ones, My 6 th grader daughter also enjoyed these books.               ...

Ramam being in ESE high school, my priorities as to what I should teach him in functional academics seems to be getting clearer. This would be a long term project with the beginning, interim and advanced stages. a) One being to execute a simple transaction, which would be to do with word problems and actual handling of money. b)To know where to look for the items in the correct aisles c)To know after a purchase where would the things go in , do they belong to the pantry, to the fridge, basically categorization d) Making a grocery list e) Buy items needed selectively for a recipe. f) Compare the prices of generic and branded products g) Understand the savings when buying things on a discount. h) comparing the prices online, with brick and mortar stores. i) Making a budget to go shopping Now to begin the process I the process. Eventually a used the online shopping app of Publix and their fliers.I found the app Proloquo2 go very handy to help me put the categorization in place. ...