A Peek Into Our Preschool Time

 I thought I would share a few pictures from our preschool time this morning.  Our four year old (who turns five tomorrow) goes to a special preschool in town where all his therapists are.  They help him with everything related to his autism.  But homeschooling is very important to us, so we do some activities at home too.  Everything I've read shows that the biggest gains for a child with autism are made when the child is young.  So my goal is to do all I can to help him out.

He's very interested in cutting right now, and wants to draw with markers more than any other writing utensil.  He will grab crayons when the markers are put up (which they are when I'm not working with him directly). I set out a box of scrap paper so he can draw anytime he feels like it.
 

This morning he drew a bunch of T's - the first letter of his name, and I drew several shapes on a piece of construction paper for him to practice cutting around.

When he was putting the markers back in the box, he was naming the color of each marker - including pink and brown, which to me are the lesser known colors.  This is noteworthy because if you ask him what color something is, he won't tell you.  But he clearly knows them.

This was the most impressive thing from today.  This is his cut out rectangle.  Typically he just chops papers up with his scissors, and that's what he did with the other shapes - a circle, square and triangle.  He specifically asked for a triangle, and knew that the three I had already handed him weren't triangles, so that was a good discovery too - he's figuring out shapes.  Anyway, I had never seen him cut an entire object out so well.

We played with our magnetic letters (from Melissa and Doug) for awhile too, but he wasn't interested at all.  Oh well, we'll try again tomorrow.  They are sticking on the side of a two-drawer filing cabinet that I moved into the room so we would have a magnetic surface.  It doubles as an end table for the couch.  The two year old really enjoyed playing with the magnets too.  He even tried naming the colors of the letters (incorrectly, but at least he was aware of the colors and trying to name them.)  I think these two kids are going to be pretty easy to teach together.  They seem to work well together and like the same activities.