Thursday was: FUN

During Workshop time, some students got to work on the computer in the room. When they were done, the program they were using was still up and working, and for the REST OF THE DAY the computer periodically emitted the sounds of birds chirping. This pretty much set the tone for the day.

In the morning, instead of doing the usual "Let's meet an Alphafriend" phonics/phonemic awareness stuff, Miles wanted to go back and practice rhymes with the students. So, he did this great activity where the kids all drew monsters, adding body parts based on a rhyming sentence. First he started off by saying something like, "We're going to draw monsters, yes, that's what I said, so let's all start by drawing our monster a ___." The kids all yelled out "HEAD!" and then drew heads on their papers. With every body part, Miles drew his own on a large white board, and, amazingly, the girl with autism sat right down and drew a monster - sure, hers was a carbon copy of Miles', but she did it. AND, she used multiple colors! Up to this point, her color palate has been quite limited - in fact, the only color that she has really been working with is orange. On Wednesday, a mother of one of the students brought in a pinata [we had been talking about families and the different ways that families celebrate] which the kids got to smash open outside. As the pinata split open, candy and confetti spilled onto the playground. Thursday, during afternoon recess, the girl with autism spent the whole time picking up only the orange pieces of confetti.

Instead of doing Math on Thursday, we took our first trip to the COMPUTER LAB. The kids all got to log onto their own computers, and then play some "find the keys on the keyboard" type games. Since there was some goofy dialogue and songs in the game, each kid got a pair of earphones to wear - the girl with autism wanting NOTHING to do with her pair, though. All in all, I was WAY amazed at how well most kids were versed in a computer keyboard - the computer revolution IS upon us.

Friday afternoon, I went in to school because the kids had earned a "Kindness Party" to be given that afternoon. Miles said that he was going to bake some cookies and bring them in for the kids, but, I offered to make them instead - I like to bake, and I'd been wanting to make chocolate chip cookies for weeks. When I walked into the room, pan of freshly baked cookies in hand, the kids were gathered on the rug for a visit from the Oral Hygiene woman - she was presenting something referred to as "A Smile for All Seasons" [which continually makes me think of the song "Girl for All Seasons" from Grease 2]. Basically, she gave them all toothbrushes and showed them how to brush their teeth. As I walked to the storage room to hang up my coat the kids noticed me and started yelling out, "ERIC! ERIC'S HERE!!" I immediately shot the kids a "Hello,-but-go-back-to-what-you-were-doing" look, and the Tooth woman said, "Sounds like this Eric person is popular." Yeah, well... Miles came up to me and said, "You might want to hide the cookies away. I don't think the Tooth lady would appreciate being followed up by chocolate chip cookies." The girl with autism sat next to me and refused to stick the new, bright pink toothbrush in her mouth. Instead, she started brushing my hand with it. "No. Don't brush me. Practice brushing your teeth." She still wouldn't do it. For the kindness party, Miles turned the lights down and put on some dance music so that we could have a Dance Party. As luck would have it, one of the kids' parents AND the Principal chose this time to walk into the room. The Principal jokingly remarked, "Looks like a lot of academics are going on in here..." The girl with autism actually grabbed my hand and hopped around to the music - I was pretty surprised. As the day was winding down, Miles gave me a piece of cake that one of the kids' moms had brought in that morning. I bit into a piece and found something pink and blue and HARD. At first, I thought that maybe it was some kind of "hidden candy" cake, but just then I overheard one of the students in class mention something about "finding the baby" in their piece of cake. Turns out, it was some kind of traditional "Three Kings" cake that is eaten in January, and, normally, there is one plastic baby in the cake and if you find it in your piece, you get to have a party at the beginning of February. Wow, I feel so lucky. But, I just wish that someone had told me to be on the lookout for a small, plastic baby that I was in danger of either choking or breaking a tooth on.