Picture Schedule

Well, it's been quite a while since I've posted - I got engaged and have been planning a wedding, so things have been pretty hectic!  Today's post will be a short post, but I promise I'll be trying to post more!

I've started working with a private client - a family with a five year old boy with autism named Daniel.  He is pretty high functioning so the parents are having a hard time getting services through DDD (Arizona's Department of Disability services).  I have been working with them for half an hour a week - half an hour is the most Daniel can focus, and getting him for that long is even a struggle!

I made a very simple picture "schedule" to use with Daniel.  Kids with autism often have a very hard time dealing with transitions and knowing what is coming next.  I don't know Daniel that well so don't know if he really needs a schedule like this, but it couldn't hurt!

Here is the front:

I kept it pretty simple.  Normally for something like this I would use "first" and "then", but since Daniel has a pretty small verbal vocabulary and English isn't his first language, I decided to just use 1 and 2.  The activity he is expected to do goes under "1" and then his choice/reward for completing the activity goes under "2."  He has several activities to choose from, as what may be reinforcing for him one day may not be another day.

Here's the back:

The choices for 1 are on the top and the choices/reinforcers for 2 are on the bottom.  I used Boardmaker software to get all the symbols, then laminated everything and used velcro to keep everything together.

(Sorry for the low quality pictures, apparently Droid isn't known for their camera quality)

It's been difficult to get actual "yoga" started, as I'm a new person to Daniel and presenting a new activity.  Hopefully laying this ground work down now will enable us to have many more productive sessions later.

I'm hoping that not only will our sessions help calm and focus Daniel and give him some bonding time with mom, but that the different poses and stories we work through will increase his vocabulary as well.

Pose of the Week

Thanks to my fabulous model Mercedes, I will be attempting to post a Pose of the Week on a (hopefully) weekly basis!  This week's pose is a very simple cross-legged comfortable seated position.  In my kids yoga classes, when it's time to listen, we all come to a comfortable sitting position.  In school, I call it "criss cross applesauce."  This pose is a grounding pose and helps the children focus.  We also sit in this position when we do breathing exercises.

To get into this simple pose, we ground our bottoms to the mat and bend our knees, crossing one leg on top of the other.  It's important to practice good posture, as a lot of the students I work with have low muscle tone - this can lead to breathing problems and back problems down the road.  We reach the top of our heads toward the ceiling and practice shrugging our shoulders up to our ears and then rolling our shoulders back and down a few times before finally settling into the pose.  To get class started, I also like to do a few audible exhales - we breathe in deeply through our noses, then breathe out loudly through our mouths.  Here's Mercedes having some fun with this: