Aug 27 - Sept 2 2023 Logs
Welcome to AehSchooling, where we record our journey through unschooling, conscious parenting, and mental health. This week we were introduced to so many concepts like patience, change, group play, and weather exploration!
I knew we were in for it when Sunday rolled around and my husband texted "charge all the devices". I had no idea there was even a storm brewing, so I quickly obliged and got everything on the charger and ready for the moment if and when we lose power. Now, I don't normally spend too much effort preparing for a hurricane, but I do make sure that I have food, water, toilet paper, gas, and batteries. With Bot's Autism and ARFID, my biggest fear was the power being out for an extended period of time. We require a refrigerator for his "chocolate milk". The lifeblood of calcium that we manage to get into his system on any given day comes from brown cows. You could say that we were thrown for a loop as we hunkered down awaiting Hurricane Idalia, and because of this our week looked a bit different. I spent less time asking him about the letter we were learning this week and more time focusing on what life's lessons I had the opportunity to teach on. This opened the door where Bot was introduced to hurricane preparation and learning more about the weather. We experienced a total of 10 minutes without power, and for that I am so grateful for! During that 10 minutes, we were prepared. We talked about how he still had toys to play with, and that the power being out was just a simple inconvenience. Needless to say, we were well prepared for this to occur. To be honest Bot was quite unbothered by it and other than the fact that K1 was home with with school this part of our week was chaotically educational.
During the hurricane, my husband's team at work get called in to feed the linemen that headquarters in central florida. He's usually gone during any and all major storms with a hotel just outside the Nascar track where he works. (lucky him!) We naturally used this as a lesson in itself, with Bot's father being away to teach him about patience. He processed much of this emotion through playing with his toys.
In the recent weeks I have been talking about how Bot has developed a love of filmmaking. He's started creating scripts for the characters (and anyone he can get to play along). He can tell you exactly what to say to reenact all the different movies, and that in itself is majorly impressive.
This is something we have been working on for quite some time. Autism doesn't always allow us the ability to be patient, and it by far is one of our most challenging things. As Bot is exploring his interests and hyperfixation on Toy Story
He has found quite a few videos of Toy Story toy collectors. This is so amazing to see, not only is he showing an interest in fixing things that were once used, but he is also learning to restore what was once broken. For a boy that acts a lot like Sid Philips with his toys, this is so ideal for him to pick up on! For years he has been coming to us to help fix the toys he breaks or colors on, or whatever. Now, he is learning how to do that himself, and wanting to! We took a special trip to the Home Depot store to get him a special tool kit.
Recently, and as he has found this interest, he has also wanted to update his toys to match some of the more "movie" accurate ones. Now, for someone who understands hyperfixations, I am not opposed to finding these toys, is my bank account though? Needless to say, I managed to find the Disney Store Buzz Lightyear on Amazon which we had to wait a bit over a week for. Bot asked every single day that toy. Every time Amazon came, he was on it saying "is that my buzz?"
He got the buzz and within 2 days he was wanting to change the head out for an older one we had lying around the house. HE BECAME ADAMANT! "No this buzz head looks better, its more accurate"
By this week, we were full into Bot requesting modifications to the brand new buzz toy. (Thankfully it was on sale!). I told him that if he could manage to help with the modifications, that we would do it. We're currently 1 screw cap down..
He was learning handyman skills. Last week Bot got his own tool kit to modify Buzz, this came with 7 different screwdrivers and a pouch to carry them in. Though, upon further inspection he is having trouble keeping up with all of the different ones, he does realize they are his.
Since a little boy has a birthday coming up, and September was here, it was time for his first preset. ZURG!
Zerg - for Z is exactly how I taught the letter z, along with the Story Bot's video on the letter z on You Tube.
Bot's speech impediment with Z's make it to where they come out as S's. Where this was cute at the beginning of the week, by the end, we were working on saying it properly.
PATIENCE... Again. Bot is learning that things don't always happen when desired, and that is challenging. He want's his birthday to be today (every day). There are some pretty epic toys he is looking forward to getting.
We are working on learning 0-5, Understanding his age is 5 (he think's he 12, he doesn't want to be a "kid" anymore) He has 1-4 down due to Toy Story having 4 different ones. I am noticing some dislexia pop up with him writing numbers backwards and flipping 2 and 3 when describing the movies.
Bot has a new favorite YT channel. He's been pretty hyperfixated in his free time on the Today I Grew Up Channel. I will be able to come back and tell you more about this later on as I do my own research, I just know that the host is pretty epic and willing to describe and review the various TS toys, which Bot LOVES!
