I recently wrote about our family’s experience with gluten free with regards to our son’s Aspergers. To that end, I spent all of Thursday making gluten free freezer meals with a friend. I will be posting more about that and sharing some of the recipes we used in a few days.
We celebrated our own Autism Week. Einstein has Aspergers which is a form of autism. Tomorrow, he and I will be doing the Autism Speaks Walk.
The symbol for autism is a puzzle piece so the sensory bin was so easy to make. I put a plea out on Facebook for mismatched puzzle pieces and my friend A. responded with two big bags filled with all shapes, colours and sizes of puzzle pieces. I threw them into two bins and called them our sensory bin for the week! This was for sure the easiest sensory bin I’ve ever made!
We used the puzzle piece in other ways too such as making paper puzzles and cardboard ones. We discussed how Aspergers makes some things a challenge for Einstein and makes some things easier. We watched some YouTube videos geared at explaining autism to kids.
For our lunch on Friday, we made a special a la Einstein plate for everyone. It had the puzzle piece tribute in the form of cheese and it was all orange, Einstein’s favourite colour.
We started learning about human cells and we made one out of Jello and candy. Before we did that, the kids filled out this worksheet:
Our nucleus, nucleoplasm and nucleolus was supposed to be a plum, but I didn’t label the plums with a “science experiment” sticker and The Husband ate them! It was kind of funny to tell him that he had eaten our nucleus! In desperation, we used an avocado pit instead. The plastic wrap represented the cell membrane, the Jello was the cytoplasm, gummy fruit was the golgi complex, round sprinkles were the ribosomes, gummy worms were the smooth endoplasmic reticulum, gummy worms rolled in sugar were the rough endoplasmic reticulum, a gumball made up the vacuole, and the mitochondrion was a large peanut M+M.
We went to the Calgary Zoo as a family. It’s a wonderful zoo and their new Penguin Exhibit is now open, making Granola Girl very happy!
There was a zookeeper there who explained to the kids all about the different types of bears and had interesting things to show them such as claws, skulls and scat (droppings).
The kids thought it was super cool!
I’m reading…
My Life and Lesser Catastrophes…an Unflinchingly Honest Journey of Faith
I’m cooking…
Thai Noodle Salad, Snuggle Puppy’s birthday dinner, Eggs Benedict, Avocado Grilled Cheese, Tortellini
If you are looking for information on making sensory bins, you may be interested in my book. 
Gluten Free freezer meals!! I will be checking back for those recipes. I’ve often wondered how they’d turn out. I would love to be able to do that. 🙂
I love how your family is excitedly involved with your own Autism Awareness Week! I stongly believe that explaining and celebrating each other’s differences teaches our children how to love people as individuals.
And fantastic job on the animal cells! I can’t wait to do that one day!
http://ajoyfulmess.blogspot.com
I love your sensory box and that human cell. What a wonderful week. I look forward to your gluten free freezer cooking entry.
Blessings, Dawn
Happy belated birthday, Snuggle Puppy!
Love the Jell-o cell! How fun! (I have that worksheet pinned! LOL)
What a great idea to learn about Autism! We have done a few things in the past for my youngest who has Sensory Processing Disorder so that the older kids (and him) could understand better what he is going through and to learn patience when he’s having some challenging times. It really does help the WHOLE family!
Love the jello science project!