What a great day!

I had a great morning with 3 year old A today. On the way in I remembered to grab the empty 1 litre water bottles I had been saving in the car. They were such a big hit. The first exciting moment was when I discovered that his toy cars had been removed from their casings. (I had pointed out on another visit that they were impossible to roll with the screws still in the bottom.) Not only was A interested in the cars, but when I walked the little dinosaur over and asked if he could hop in, A opened the car doors and helped him in! Using a toy in a functional way(as opposed to just lining them up or spinning it's wheels repeatedly) is a great sign for a child with autism. I was able to take the car around behind me then drive it down my leg back to the table where he opened the doors and let the dinosaur out. We played that game a few times, and created a ramp to roll the cars down. The bottles I used as pins for a knock-em down game. A is practicing throwing at the moment and using his words. I got to collect two sets of data at once, as he asked for the ball (with much improvement on his enunciation) and aimed the ball to knock down the pins. I love it when the learning is natural and not too forced. Saying words correctly is really hard for A. He tends to say the end of the word "all" instead of the beginning "ba", so the fact that he loved the game meant he was willing to put the effort in to get it right.
I discovered a website about whole brain learning on Autism Games. While the website is an educational tool not specific to autism I agree that there are elements that will work well for these kids who need a little more to keep them focused. One of the elements of Pivotal Response Training is Responsivity to multiple cues. This means that they need to process the sounds as well as the visual, or the kinesthetic. You can imagine the difficulty learning language if you can only look or listen, not both at the same time. You see the ball, but you don't hear the word, or you hear the word but can't see what they are talking about. Due to information processing difficulties they don't always make the connections between the words we use to label things. Using gestures to anchor the phrases in memory is also a tool of NLP (neurolinguistic programming) and spells. They hear the words, they see the gesture, they mimic the gesture while saying the words. The use of repetition and familiarity will appeal to most children with autism also. It will be different working one on one rather than in a class environment, but the first thing I should do is find gestures for all the common requests I make of the kids. A call to attention with a fun learned response should be easy to implement too.