Sunday Recap 5-3-2015

Wow, I can't believe school is out already! Friday marked the last day of school for this little two-bit town, and I couldn't be more scared. Meltdowns happen when there is no school, because Princess Kitten simply adores school!

Luckily, I'm being proactive in my approach his year. I managed to get a schedule started just in time for what I am sure is going to be the worst week of the year. Hopefully this schedule I have made her will help. Today was the first day it has been in use, and I have found entirely too many flaws. I expected it though, and will be working on solutions.

Princess Kitten did have a first today: Her first ice cream cone! I love mint ice cream, and nearly died when I saw that Schwan's has mint chip cones. We got a box and Kitten had her first cone. She love it, until the bottom of the cone. She actually decided she didn't want the chocolate at the bottom of the cone! Oh well, it was more for me. LOL

Otherwise, the week has been rather uneventful. Hopefully next week we'll have more to talk about. Until then though...

I'm working on doing several things with this little blog. Two of those I will need the help of you, my readers. I am looking for children's book authors and those who live with autism (either diagnosed or caretaker) to do takeover blogs on Tuesdays. I also need questions from all of you to Princess Kitten herself to do a Q&A blog or vlog on Saturdays. Comment on the blog here or send a message on her Facebook page if you are willing to do a takeover or have questions for her. She loves the interaction, and I love the way she smiles when I read her all your comments.

That is all for now, until next time, stay magical!

New Schedule

Everyone I have spoken with has mentioned the need of regularity and scheduling in coping with a child on the autism spectrum or ADHD. Princess Kitten seems to be both, so it should make it doubly needed, right? In any case, I went out and bought some supplies and went to work to make a schedule. What I have so far is just a work in progress. Its not perfect, but using this first design should help me find the flaws so I can make it perfect for her.

To make this, I simply wrote "Daily Plan" on the top of a piece of card stock then laminated it with two sheets of heavy duty lamination. (The velcro didn't go on until much later.)

Then I went online and found all the little pictures I wanted to use. I used Google Image search to find them all, and hit the Search Tools to narrow my search parameters. I specified an exact size of 100px by 100px that way I knew I'd get something small enough for this. Then I copy and pasted each image to a word file and added the words. I made sure to set it to 3 columns to make sure I had as many on a page as I could fit.

These were then printed on regular paper, cut out, and pasted onto card stock. Then those pieces were cut into 2 inch squares. I still had leftover laminate sheets, but I wouldn't have had enough to cover all the pieces. So I redneck laminated them.

The back of each square is covered with duct tape. I was forced to use two strips for each square because the squares are larger than the tape. But once I had them on the tape, I trimmed them so that the tape didn't hang over the edge. Then I used packing tape to cover the top and let that hang over the edges. To give the pieces extra strength and to make sure I covered all the edges, I used three pieces of the packing tape for each square.

Each square got a piece of velcro (the soft side) and was then placed in a ziploc bag. After I (finally) finished all the pieces, I used a few squares to add the other side of the velcro to the main page. There is even a square at the very top of it for one of two squares that say "School Day" or "No School" to help us with the constant question (and subsequent meltdowns).

Unfortunately, I am seeing now that I may need to have more than one sheet for a whole day. No big deal, I'll just have to take care of that soon. I'm also noticing I left a few things out when making the squares. Again, no big deal, I'll add to the collection as we go along.

We shall see how this works for us, see if it helps her transition throughout the day. I'll keep everyone updated here, and maybe (eventually) get my list of squares put up on here so everyone knows what I'm using.

Do any of you use schedules with your kids? How do you do it? Let me know in comments!