Day Four at the Gray School

Today was a good day.

Mindfulness. Great job dressing. The Lark did something new. Instead of getting and putting on one item of clothing at a time, he went down his list, got everything he needed, brought it all over to his bed, and put it on very purposefully.

Narrative comprehension. The reason most of us take the trouble to comprehend a narrative is that we identify with the characters in it. This is a challenge for people with autism and NCDD. To help the Lark discover the connection between himself and others, we took a walk in the rain and went looking for worms. We found several beauties making their way across the sidewalk over to the grass. We stopped and watched their progress. We named two of them and rooted for them. The Lark seemed pretty interested. This is obviously going to be a long process. Today was one tiny step.

Imitation: We did our Spanish movement songs and played "Simon dice."

We went around the room with clipboards again, tallying up various items. The Lark did a super job and got into it. (This is also a math objective--understanding how and why we tally things up in groups of five.)

We worked on imitation along with narrative comprehension and building our core by acting out a little story about a starfish trying to turn over.

We did lots of other things too, but those are the highlights.