Our Life With An Autistic Child: Week 132

Ryan was so proud of himself this week and couldn't wait to come home and show us his certificate for reaching the "outstanding" mark in his classroom. Getting Ryan to do homework is much easier this year. He tries really hard to sound and tap out words to practice reading and writing. He enjoys listening to us read books and he loves doing his math homework. Ryan going to school full day has proved to be very beneficial for him. He rarely brings home extra work to do that wasn't finished in the classroom. He has time to go to his speech, O/T, and counseling services and complete all of his work in school.

Ryan and Julia have started a reading program in school that is linked to an online program called Raz-kids. Both of the kids easily spend an hour at a time listening to, reading, and taking quizzes about books online. I am usually the one that has to tell them it is time to get off of the computer. They love earning stars for completing the activities and with those stars they get to purchase items for a rocket ship. It is a cute program and it keeps them intrigued. And they are doing a GREAT job learning how to read!


Julia takes a turn reading books online while Ryan watches and helps.

Ryan was watching the news updates about Hurricane Sandy and afterwards we caught him drawing this picture of New York. He also wrote down some of the cities he remembered seeing the names of on the TV. If you look on the left side of the paper, he drew the evacuation map and listed Zone A, Zone B, and Zone C, just like he saw them do on the news. We've said it before, Ryan thinks in pictures. He amazed me when he drew this picture purely from memory of a news story picture that flashed on the screen for no more than 15 seconds.