One of the few blessings of my son's autism is his above average intelligence. We met with his teacher on Thursday night and learned they are teaching him mostly from the First Grade curriculum as he has an excellent grasp on the Kindergarten curriculum already. It was so amazing to see our son sight read and recite the classroom rules. And then we also learned that starting in January, they are going to start Darin on an inclusion program. That means he'll go sit in with a mainstream Kindergarten class for part of his day. He'll have an aide with him and he'll start with small sections of time - like going during story time. And when he is going to the mainstream Kindergarten for long sections of time, they'll start decreasing the amount of time the aide spends with him. This will allow Darin to have models of behavior outside of his fellow autistic classmates. Darin's teacher said that all it really boils down to for Darin is getting him to use words instead of crying when he needs to express something and some of his speech therapy. That's all that really separates him from mainstream Kindergarten. She showed us the method she uses to signal to Darin that he needs to stop crying and use his words - and it has already helped at home. And she also explained the purpose behind the glitter pumpkin:
It wasn't just an easy craft project. It was meant to get these kids to face some of their tactile issues. They had to paint the glue on the pumpkin and then roll it in the glitter. Each time Darin got glue on his hands, he went over to the sink to wash them. Then he felt completely out of his element when he realized he would have to pick up the sticky pumpkin in order to roll it in the glitter. They eventually let him scoop and pour the glitter over the pumpkin, but he still ended up getting glitter and glue on his fingers, but in the end, it didn't really bother him. Yes, when the activity was all over, he quickly went to wash his hands, but for a few moments, he was okay with the mess.
