I love TinkerLab - it's become a firm favourite for me. A year ago, it wouldn't have been possible for Badger to partake in as much creativity as he can now, and with TinkerLab sharing really unusual, fun and inspiring ideas for everyone - and a whole variety of science and technology fun too - it's featured heavily in the fun that we've had so far this half term.

The #tinkersketch Instagram Challenge is something we're taking part in right now. We were a little late off the start, but we've simply added the days we missed onto the end of the challenge... so, we'll be running into May - rather than finishing on the 30th.

I genuinely can't describe the emotion I felt when I took this photo of the boys: 

Badger's school are fundraising to become more green and have recycling boxes in each and every classroom, rather than just in the kitchens as it currently is. As part of this fundraising, the kids are having a fancy dress with an eco-theme. {On a tangent, this has caused much debate as to what we are going to dress him as, and how to create it with such short notice! But, we've whittled it down to either a tree, or a "marine biologist/diver" anyway.} Sooo, it dawned on me that while we do recycle and we did a good deal of sorting tasks last summer to help Badger know what we recycle and where it goes, we {ashamedly} have not actually done anything about WHY we recycle or WHY it is important. It's pretty clear that Badger does pick up a lot from the activities and arrangements we have at home, so I have spent this evening gathering together a few ideas and resources which are quick, suitable and straight forward, but detailed enough to give a pretty decent introduction to climate change and global warming.

A very short, Australian video for kids gives a really good starting point for any child who is just being introduced to this topic. A really visual resource and not too overwhelming. This is our start point for tomorrow evening when Badger gets in from school. 

On the same sort of wavelength - very visual videos, this little beauty has no language what so ever, it's entirely visual and a very good visual too. This should be a good video to have on with badger for the simple fact that each stage is repeated for a short period of time, so when he glances away and back, away and back, it will all sink in - or should do, anyway - (it can often seem that Badger is paying no attention  what so ever but he will then prove me wrong and repeat, word for word, everything that just happened!) Here is is, the second watch.

To finish up - well, finish off this theme for the day - I think this printable from spoonful looks good, simple, informative but not too tasking either so we'll be working through this booklet. 

We've been doing lots of planting and gardening the last week or so, a chat to interlink the important role that plants play in keeping our environment clean will also be on the cards... And, of course, I will have a costume to finish off too!

Winter has arrived! After a pretty mild Christmas here, the cold seems to be coming and that Wintery feeling is lingering around. We've been talking about these sensations - cold and shivers - and all the other words that accompany this time of year; it's the perfect opportunity to try and expand your little one's vocabulary whenever a season changes or different festivities are nearby. So here I have a selection of winter picture symbols and a mini round-up of a few outside resources I found when we were looking for something to try and help Badger dress himself appropriately!

I don't know about any of you, but Autism in our house means dressing completely inappropriately 98% of the time. Even down to school, which is a uniform - Badger ALWAYS has to refuse to wear one item or another... be it the jumper, shirt, socks or underpants... and to request he wears a hat and gloves: Argh! If you do have this problem, then speak to your child's teacher or assistant about it. We explained that it seems to be just some form of control or demand avoidance, rather than anything sensory related (as the item changes on a day to day basis) and asked to leave a few spares of the usual suspects in school, for him to put on once he was there rather than having a major meltdown and holding the bus up because we've entered the dark side! ;-) The school were fine with this and he toddles off to school and puts them on practically the minute he walks in! -- Why has everything always got to be the long way?

Read on for the downloads and round up.

Right, you may notice that these symbols are slightly different to the usual ones. I used SENteacher.org to create the documents, which is why they look how they do. They are now saved as a PDF for your ease with downloading and printing.

Page 1 Here.
Page 2 Here.

Dressing appropriately round up.

This is a good topic for anyone with both a child with ASD or a younger child... I am not too sure that Bam Bam would understand this quite yet but we will be doing paper doll activities together for the fun, if nothing else, and hopefully something might stick with him too. 

I love New Year... The festive feeling is still well and truly alive, the children have picked out their favourite toys and are loving making the most of it, more family, more big food, more drink and a sense of optimism for the year ahead.

For a lot of children with Autism, however, it is a hard time with lots of noise, too many people and not really quite understanding why on earth we are celebrating a new year. Fireworks can cause distress, songs may need to be only from a certified playlist and food could well be snubbed in favour of retreating as far into themselves as is possible.

Recognising your Child's Sensory Preferences.

Sensory preferences are the sights, sounds, smells, movements and feelings that your child likes. These could be, the feeling of pressure on the skin, listening to a certain song, running back and forth etc.
By knowing and understanding these, you can help promote communication - if your child has a preference for listening to music, then singing, rhyming and such like, can be used to help your child understand instruction better and have them pay attention for a longer and hopefully enable progression through communication barriers. And of course it will help you engage with your child.
The above may seem fairly obvious to you, or it may be a totally new concept, either way, using this checklist below - (Formed using the "More Than Words" Checklist) - can help you to keep a track of your child's sensory preferences.

For your free print out of the Checklist below, then please click here.

Below, is what the checklist looks like, what it covers and you can then see whether this may be of use to you and your child. I have highlighted those which Badger has trouble with, to give you an idea. We first used this when Badger was very young and we were following the Hanen Programme at the Child Developement Centre. We created the checklist and kept it up to date, giving copies to his pre-school setting and then when he started in reception... it is useful to keep anyone who is caring for your child in the loop and this checklist is extensive enough to cover everything that you may otherwise forget to mention, or maybe didn't think to mention. 

Hope it is of some use to you!

Tomorrow, for me, is always a few days late... I posted last time that I would explain the recent success (albeit minor, but gradually getting to a major point) that we have been having with Badger and sleep. Or rather, staying asleep, or, rather, staying in his own room past 1AM... I said I would post "tomorrow" but with all the best intentions in the world, I just don't have time to post every day, so here we are now!

To start off, and give you a brief idea of what I am getting at here, I will just share this excerpt of an email I sent to school, attaching the sleep rules/sequence visuals we have been using - which I shared in my last post. So: "... I already said that B doesn't sleep brilliantly, I saw there was a sleep workshop - we have seen all sorts of people about this and nothing worked, I also can't make it to the workshop anyway, it's just something we have accepted.. he goes to sleep now and has a good bedtime routine, it's that he wakes up after a few hours then comes into our room. Anyway, I made a bedtime rules visual, decorated and attractive which seems to keep B in line better from previous experience, to go by his bed and bought an alarm clock, one of those light changing ones, we set it so that he can come into our room no earlier than 3am at first (he was generally getting in at 1-2ish) and changed it to 4am this week as he seemed to be sleeping a bit longer... which he has pretty much stuck to. The aim is to get him to 5.30 - when Dear Hubs gets up for work - so that he doesn't disturb everyone in the house! Don't know how long it will take, but the theory seems to be working. Just wanted to share, because I know it's a common problem..."

Here, is a board that you can use (or you can use our specific one if it suits you, with symbols already on) to help teach your child their bedtime rules or sequence if you are experiencing any night time difficulties.
Badger does already follow an evening routine, and thankfully he will now go to sleep in the evenings. The challenge we face currently is him staying in his own room and sleeping beyond 3am... which I will post about tomorrow as recently, we have been having some success.

For now, as I must get to sleep myself soon, please feel free to download these attractive little A4 boards! :)

Just a site update to let you know that the Verb section of Free Symbols is on! A whole host of doing words for you to use, these are sometimes the trickier ones to come by for free or to think up when trying to compile your own list, so hopefully the new section will be a good starting point for all the doing words you will need.

I will be posting shortly some activities, outside worksheets and so on to help anyone who is interested in helping their child's English / Language Arts / Literacy. This is something which we are now starting to work on with Badger. He is still very low verbal, especially compared to peers, but the more confident he is becoming with using language and the stronger his understanding, the more confident he is at expressing his questions, thoughts and comments. Come back to read more and get your downloads.