Autism Society: Thursday

Once again we had to wake up super early to return to the high school.  The day started out the same, but after morning work we had a different off campus outing.  We were a little freaked out at the beginning because three of the boys showed up with bedbugs, so there was a little chaos since there were delays, and transitions were messed up, all of these things can cause problem behavior in people with Autism because transitions are a little difficult anyway.  But, we made it through! Thursdays are cooking classes in this special education room!!! Again, we were divided in half, and went to two separate locations. This time, we did grocery shopping with the kids.  I was in the group that went to Target for shopping.  This time we were not assigned to a kid, but wandered around and hung out with all of them since we made good connections the first day.  I really liked this because it taught the kids how to get to the grocery store (public transportation) and how to shop, follow the list of ingredients, and how to  act appropriately in the grocery store.

This cooking class was a lesson on how to make home made tootsie rolls. When we got back from the store we proceeded to read the recipe out loud, which taught the kids how to follow the recipe step by step, and how to measure ingredients, and mix them. We had fun helping the kids mix and seeing how excited they got for the finished product. While it was super fun, the outcome was not so well, I would much rather by them from the store!!  I enjoyed this mostly because I would with little children and do early intervention and research.  At my time at the high school I got to see what it was like teaching older kids developmentally appropriate functional skills which was much different than I thought it would be.