Video for Social Skills

Waiting...Waiting...Waiting!  One of our first Lego Education Kits came in. Woo...Hooo!  I found a great deal off of Ebay for a Lego Mindstorms NXT Education Kit and saved our team $130.  The rest of the kits which were ordered from Lego Education have not arrived yet.  Meanwhile, I am not sitting back doing nothing.  I have gathered my team together.  I have planned my lessons on how to learn robotics with the NXT's.  I have started a facebook page to communicate with parents.  I have also created a video (for visual learners) to help with our first social skills lesson, which will be about being a flexible thinking person.  I used Xtranormal to make it.  I would show you a preview, but I can't because the kids haven't seen it yet. 

Why is being a flexible person important especially for kids with Aspergers? The play of a child with Aspergers is repetitive. They enjoy rituals and can prefer to do the same thing over and over again. They love sameness and are troubled by changes or unexpected things happening. When they interact socially with peers there is a lot of things going on that are unexpected since they are unable to control the behavior of the other children. For children with Aspergers the inability to be flexible and handle changes makes it very hard to interact with others on a social level. This can make teamwork, one of the first core values, a wreck just waiting to happen.

Field Trip to Inspire Us

We decided to go check out Best Robotics one Saturday afternoon as a field trip.  It was real exciting to see the vehicles try to get the balls where they were suppose to be.  Lots of excitement!

I believe I can fly....

Whoooo-hooooo!  I believe I can fly.....the grant proposal was accepted and awarded!  Thank you AUSVI Pathfinder Organization.  I also want to thank Sci-Quest, the ARF (Autism Resource Foundation), Coach Wallace Willard of the Montessori School of Huntsville (for his generous donation and believing in us) and  I want to give a special thanks to Jane Veverke for her input into our Social Skills curriculum and volunteering her time. 


Now we are off to a running start........ 


After a week of working on other commitments and brainstorming, I gave a presentation to the Autism Resource Foundation about First Lego League and how we plan on implementing the Social Skills .  I took along a Robot my son and I had constructed together. This is what it looked like....

I think the presentation went well because I saw a lot of smiles and nods when I presented the social skills ideas.  The only regret was, the ARF wished that I could have done a Jr. FLL as well.  Let's see how we fly this year and work out some of the programming bugs, then we will think about adding more.

First, I want to request a tour from Alabama Robotics Technology Park to get the kids excited about robotics.  I would also like to take the kids to some robotic competitions to see what it is all about. 

Next week we will be ordering Lego Mindstorms Kits and other supplies needed.  Sci-Quest has generously offered help in getting a table and I already have a mat with puzzle pieces on it from the FLL Puzzle Power Challenge of 2007.  

We are almost at lift off....

Song by R. Kelly