Hello!

Welcome, clay1416! I had to smile when I read your post because it reminds me so much of my experiences with my youngest who has autism. Here’s a little technique that helped with her narrations. Keep in mind that she has developmental delays, as well, especially in expressive language skills; so I didn’t start asking for a narration until she was 11 or 12, I think. 

We have scaffolded her nature studies, yes. Since her hearing is so sensitive, we started with that sense. On our walk, I asked her to tell me what she heard, and I wrote it down in her nature notebook. As the weeks/months have progressed, we have expanded to writing down what she sees as well. And I am not hesitant to mention what I see too. 🙂  We’ve coupled that with trying to build on her interest in birds. I did an Internet search for “backyard birds of Georgia” and printed out the images of about five or six and labeled them. Then we looked at one each week or two and began watching for it at our birdfeeder. Whenever we saw one and identified it, we put the bird image in her special bird book, which was a record of only those birds she has personally seen. I’d really like to add this year the songs they sing, because we hear them singing in the trees out back even when we can’t see them. And with her sensitive hearing, she really notices their songs.

I hope these ideas give you some encouragement! We can still use CM methods with our autistic ones; we just break those methods down into smaller bites and do whatever scaffolding helps. It sounds like you’re doing a great job!

By the way, I love that your son is singing! Does he sing indoors too? Or is it that nature is helping him organize his thoughts enough to sing? Or just that nature makes him contented? I’m curious.  It’s always fascinating to try to figure out what’s going on inside their heads.

I’ve been reading a book by Temple Grandin, who has autism but has quite remarkably exceeded early expectations and actually has a PhD and designs equipment and systems for cattle handling. The book is called, The Way I See It, and it is mostly a series of articles she has written about autism.

She states that there are three major types of thinking among autistic people: visual thinkers (who picture things as they learn), music & pattern thinkers (who tend to be good at music & math), and verbal thinkers (who tend to narrate a lot of facts & typically like history). If your son happens to be a music/pattern thinker, then the lovely plants, birds, or insects you are pointing out might not mean as much to him. I would have to go back a chapter or two to see if she has more to say about how to teach the various types of thinking, but you might want to get the book for yourself.

While she doesn’t come right out and advocate homeschooling, she does mention it once or twice in the book with no particular opinion for or against it. She does, however, suggest that autistic kids need at least 20 hours per week of one-on-one learning time, and she states that it is unlikely that such children would receive more than an hour or two per week in most school settings. She suggests finding volunteers (grandparents, older siblings, neighbors, church friends) who can help you with this by recruiting them to play specific games, go on walks, etc., with your child. Thus, it would seem that homeschooling is an excellent way to provide a lot of this needed one-on-one time.

Welcome Sue,

    Glad you found SCM. I also liked Sue Patricks workbox system. Her son has autism. She has webinars all about how she makes her learning centers. The workboxes help them focus on getting all of their work done. It also makes it easy for them to learn.   I hope it helps. It has seemed to help me more.  My kids love learning centers.

               Blessings!  Hope to see you on more often.