Restart of School...

Max and his new teacher have been working diligently at getting to know each other.  Max has really been enjoying 6th grade, just in time for it to end.  We've put in the request that his new teacher come back next year too.

He's been working on Ancient Civilizations.  I think we have finally started to understand, or explain better, how Max likes to learn.  He enjoys making things, and having work to show off. We say he likes to do first grade things, at 6th grade subject level.  This means he likes to color, and listen to music, and short videos, and shorter books.  Once we have picked up on this, he's taken off! He's been filling up his wall with his work and loves to share them with everyone.

Let's take a stroll through some of his work lately.

He's doing a good job of communicating to his teacher what he wants to do.  It usually is coloring, listening to music, watching a video, but occasionally he will ask for homework.

They are working on how to best do math.  It's been a subject he knows, and doesn't especially like, but it's difficult to figure out the best way to communicate through with his talker.  He gets frustrated that he can't quickly answer these easy questions and then wants to shut down. 

 This was some of his homework, a Maya mask.  He wanted to do it in water colors.

This is Machu Picchu, he wanted to color it red, redder, and black.  He was having an especially emotional day (something we'll talk about in another post) and these colors represented his mood while he listened to the blues.  

Then we met the llamas of Peru. One is very fancy.  One is brown.  This is how he wanted them....so, we went with it!  He made Machu Picchu in the background of his picture by tearing the paper into mountain shapes. 

He's been interested in the colorful clothes they wear in the Andes, and was interested in the weaving too.  Weaving is a great activity for someone with fine motor skills, which Max has very little of.  But you know that didn't stop me from coming up with a way for him to weave.  We pulled out some yarn from his Nonni's stash and let him choose the colors he wanted.

I made a little "loom" out of cardboard and used a pipe cleaner shuttle to guide the yarn through. After his teacher and I would weave it through each side, we would help Max  grab ahold of the yarn and pull.

Then I made a little beater (complete with a handle for him to hold onto) to tap tap tap the yarn down. 

He chose Nonni's yellow yarn first.  Then orange, furry purple and finished with the soft yellow. 

The fact that he got to make something creative with the yarn mom left behind was pretty special to me.  She would have really loved the finished product.  I know I do!

School is out in just a few weeks.  He has more work to do between now and then, so hopefully I can get another post up of his activities.