Science for Students in the Autism Spectrum

Temple Grandin worries that schools do not value of hands-on learning. In a recent blog, she wrote, "One of the worst things the schools did was taking out the hands-on classes such as art, music, sewing, woodshop and auto mechanics." Art gave her something to look forward to doing at school every day: "My ability in art was always encouraged, and both my mother and my teachers encouraged me to draw and paint many different things. I loved getting recognition for several of my best elementary school art projects."

We are blessed to have part-time and full-time students in the autism spectrum at our school. I think Grandin might like our approach to science and art by the scenic trail of nature study. The primary and elementary classes are reading Minn of the Mississippi by Holling C. Hollings. To help them feel the "realness" of the story, I shared pictures of my family's visit to the headwaters of the Mississippi at Itasca State Park about ten years ago.


Some autistic students develop the habit of frustration for a variety of reasons. It takes time to help them find joy in learning what is beyond their pet interests. Every person is different, so what works for one autie may not inspire another.

Eman is teaching me so much. He often refuses to try because either "it's too hard" or "he's bored." He does not enjoy keeping a nature notebook until he finds something that delights him, in which case he begs to draw. One day when he was dragging his feet, I let him tape pictures to a page and narrate what I should write. Novelty is a big hook for him, and being able to use double-sided tape for the first time made a few notebooking experiences positive. When that novelty wore off, I tapped into a positive episodic memory of last year when he joined us for the turtle release party. I showed him pictures of those very turtles: the cage my friend constructed to protect them from crows, the nest, the hatchlings, and the dud.



When the classroom after lunch was too much for him, we switched to reading Minn in the morning. We focused on finding joy in his tasks. When he wanted to draw a story about Minn in his silly notebook (comic strip things that make him laugh), I encouraged him to start an unsilly notebook (comic strip things related to what he is learning). When he asked to read outside on a sunny day, I agreed if he promised to do his best on the notebook. And, he did! One day, he drew seven different scenes representing the most emotional moments of Minn's life: her hatching, getting her leg shot off, her canoe ride, meeting the fox, scaring the boys in the pond, laying eggs, and snapping at the dog's tail.

Right now, working on the pond gives him joy. Watching what happens when we turn on the water pump that pushes water through our homemade water filter is exciting. We stand at the little pool and watch it with anticipation until the water reaches the top of the stones and forms a waterfall. One day, the filter overflowed and he watched the headmaster solve the problem. Somehow, cleaning leaves out of the pond gets him to thinking about turtles. Before long, he is ready to read more about Minn's adventures, draw it in his unsilly notebook, and read it to his mother.



On another day, a cockroach caught his eye. He was shocked when I shared my plans to draw it in my nature notebook. "You keep one, too?" He was so interested in seeing mine that I promised he could look through it once he had finished making an entry in his.

At another time, two doves enchanted us with a stroll around the little pool to get a sip of water.



Speaking of problem-solving, Grandin spotlighted another value of hands-on projects: "Practical things do not always work right and people skilled in the real world learn how to improvise. When I made a mistake on a sewing project, I was sometimes able to fix it and other times I could not. Mistakes I made cutting the fabric wrong on a sewing project taught me that I had to slow down. I had to be more careful before I cut the material."

One day, he helped his class with the compost bin. The lesson screeched to a halt when they discovered worms. He watched the students find grubs and toss them into the pond to feed the fish. Two weeks later, his cat showed up at school. He decided to see if she would eat a worm and he knew exactly where to find them. The cat did not!

And, then, there was the day he found the dead fish. Eman studied it in the net for quite some time. He wanted to touch it but was afraid he might get cut. So, I offered to do it first. A bit grossed out, I put my finger on it for only an instant. "No, you need to do it longer!" So, I held my finger on the squishy fish and it must have been long enough. He mustered his courage and touched it himself.



Mason's thoughts in connection to literary books like Minn of the Mississippi: "The approach to science as to other subjects should be more or less literary, that the principles which underlie science are at the same time so simple, so profound and so far-reaching that the due setting forth of these provokes what is almost an emotional response" (Pages 218-219).

Mason's thoughts in connection to outdoor work: "They are expected to do a great deal of out-of-door work... They keep records and drawings in a Nature Note Book and make special studies of their own for the particular season with drawings and notes" (Page 219).

Mason's thoughts on nature notebooks: "The nature note book is very catholic and finds room for the stars in their courses and for, say, the fossil anemone found on the beach at Whitby. Certainly these note books do a good deal to bring science within the range of common thought and experience; we are anxious not to make science a utilitarian subject" (Page 223).

Old Friends and a New Friend

Except for last year, I have spent every President's Day weekend since 2009 at my kitchen door counting birds for the Great Backyard Bird Count—open worldwide for the first time ever. Don't let the bright sunny pictures and winter-blooming camellias in the pictures fool you. Every morning that I counted (Saturday through Monday), water in the bird bath iced over in the wee hours of the night. While the birds might have shivered on the chilly, windy days of the count (relatively speaking, my friends up North), I stayed warm. I set up my station so that I watch from inside and get some chores done when my eyes tire. Since we are doing so much science this year, I opted to do this count solo.

During the count, I sighted many old friends. The most exciting moment was today when I spotted a red-breasted nuthatch—a winter visitor to the Carolinas. I have not seen one since we moved from Colorado in 2001. Imagine my delight!



Another delightful moment was making a new friend. Today, I identified a ruby-crowned kinglet for the first time in my life. This teeny, tiny bird is another winter visitor to the Carolinas. Discovering unfamiliar birds makes bird-watching addictive. Talk about awe and wonder!





While some homeschools have children memorize the state this and the state that, I prefer to know these things by getting to know them in real life. Meet the South Carolina state bird, the Carolina wren. Its favorite food at our feeding station is suet, and I enjoy watching it hang upside-down on the suet cage. Relationships are vital and nourishing.



Two birds I find difficult to shoot with my camera are friendly Carolina chickadees and the tufted titmouse pictured below. These related species behave in the same way at the feeder. They hide in the safety of the camellia and do a hit and run on birds, fleeing back to their camouflaged position. What I love the most about the titmouse is its round face with a black button-eye. Relationships allow you to make connections.



The Baltimore oriole first caught my attention a few years back. First, I caught it taking a bath. Late, I figure out that, when an isolated spot in a camellia waved wildly back and forth, an oriole was feasting on camellia flowers. I never knew the bird enjoyed dining at our feeders until today! Relationships allow you to refine your observations.



SQUIRREL! When attention wanes, it helps to change your thoughts to something completely different!



Some things require closer attention. These birds—a mourning dove, Northern cardinal, and chipping sparrow—may appear friendly to you. They are not! In the past three days, I have seen them shove each other off feeders and defend their turf with fancy aerial acrobatics.



Forget about that cute little mockingbird song. The northern mockingbird is one of the biggest bullies on the block. I once watched one aggressively defends its crepe myrtle tree against a flock of migrating American robins. They think nothing of thunking a squirrel on the head. The mockingbird belongs behind bars!



Bird-watching invites curiosity! I catch myself tilting my head like this American goldfinch all the time!



Speaking of finches, I just love this shot of a house finch surrounded by camellias!



Only a few species of female songbirds in North America sing. The female Northern Cardinal is one of them. I did not know that! My next line of investigation will be to catch one in action.



As Valentine's Day was the day before the backyard count started, here are a few shots of my favorite couples!

Feeling Pressed for Time?

We all have busy lives for one reason or another and often feel pressed for time. I understand the feeling. Random events conspire to steal time when the clock is ticking. Steve is coming home for a visit, and precious minutes this morning were spent cleaning up a shattered pyrex bowl. Oh, yeah, and our lone dog has thrown up twice and now has left a little present that lacks its usual form. At least, she was nowhere near a carpet. So, now, on top of all the other cleaning, I have the worst kind of mess to remove and disinfect.

Charlotte Mason suggests we should change our thoughts when anxiety strikes.

Change your thoughts? Really? Have you seen my floor?

Before running off to do the dreaded task, I crank up Handel's Messiah. Thanks to an intriguing video about feeling short on time, I realize my problem is not the lack of time. Rather, it is the lack of awe. What better way to restore my sense of awe than to hear a masterpiece?

Melanie Rudd, who wrote her dissertation on time perception, explains that experiencing awe makes you feel like you have more time available and "makes you feel more rich in time." She and two other researchers conducted three experiments and concluded that people who experience a strong sense of awe felt like they had more free time, were less impatient, were more willing to spend time to help others, sought experiences over material goods, and were more satisfied by life.

What is awe? They defined awe as a powerful positive emotion which arises from encountering something so vast and large that it causes a person to seek more knowledge and understanding. They offered examples of situations that produce awe: thunderstorms, childbirth, and the Grand Canyon. They suspect that awe helps people savor the present. It harnesses the power of living in the moment and focuses attention on what is unfolding.

What conditions produced a sense of awe in their experiments? Reading a brief story. Reliving a memory. Handel's Messiah unfolds the greatest story ever told from beginning to end. Hearing Messiah triggers many wonderful memories: singing it at my alma mater, going to The Middletown Tavern afterwards with friends for cheesecake, and introducing it to my children when they were young. Messiah led me to other great choral works! Pamela requested it for our composer study for the first term, and she has already experienced a moment of awe. Intense stretches of music in the overture swept her away, and she smiled and clapped in time for a couple of bars.

Rudd describes two defining characteristics of awe: the event must create a sense of perceptual vastness—something large, complex, intricate (and Messiah is certainly that). It must also inspire a person to seek more knowledge to help one interpret and understand the world.

Some days, I feel like there is not enough time to pack in homeschooling plus all that other stuff. I feel pressed and I feel like I am dropping some forgotten ball somewhere. Somehow, things always get done. And, yet, Pamela often remarks about a homeschooling block of time, "That was fast!"

I think how we explore our great abundance and variety of books and things creates a sense of time flying. Short lessons that offer many diverse ideas means we have more opportunities to experience awe! Those moments of awe cause the mind to reason, imagine, reflect, and judge. Mason wrote, "History must afford its pageants, science its wonders, literature its intimacies, philosophy its speculations, religion its assurances to every man, and his education must have prepared him for wanderings in these realms of gold."

Pamela and I wander in these realms of gold every day! After reading about trade and London, Pamela brightened up when she recalled that we ordered our doorbell of our Edwardian era house from London. To provide background knowledge for a biography about Michael Faraday, we are studying electricity. When we played with a balloon, comb, and hole-puncher chads, seeing the power of static electricity made Pamela gasp and say, "Wow!" several times. The first chapter of The Yearling describes scenery very much like our own, and, after reading about the construction of a flutter wheel from sticks and palmetto fronds—readily available here in Carolina—I looked for pictures of one on my Nook. The illustration of Jody's flutter mill by none other than N. C. Wyeth created a sense of awe in me, and I am looking forward to building one with Pamela when the weather is more tolerable.

Do you experience glimmers of awe during your day?

Do you feel pressed for time?

Don't run to your calendar or to-do-list and find a better way to slice up your day. Go out and find some awe!

Lessons from a Snail: Shut Up and Teach

I've been meaning to blog this since October. In September, Pamela and I headed out to the yard to study a dogwood bud. As most flowers bud in Spring, I thought Pamela might enjoy nature's little anomaly. We were delighted to find a garden snail clinging to a dogwood leaf! Comstock's Handbook of Nature Study suggested we build a little snailery. Since I didn't know how long our new pet would stay, I added some cuttlebone which I had on hand for our bird.




The Comstock book has some wonderful ideas for observing our snail. We watched it eat fruit; we watched it walk—or really glide—on one foot. We saw it climb the side of the glass jar and even cling upside down to a clear glass bowl. We studied the eyes and watched its reaction when we slightly touched one of the eyes. We did the same with the feelers. We saw the snail in the early stages of drying up when we did not offer quite enough water. We even set it on its side and watched the snail right itself. Snails have much in common with turtles: they move slowly enough for Pamela to process and keep up!

Since I'm always looking for something to show the kids in our church afterschool program, I decided to bring our pet snail for nature study after our Bible lesson. The children who have been in my class for the past few years weren't a bit surprised to learn I had a pet snail. The new kids were shocked and one cried out, "You have a BUG for a PET?"

The first thing we did was to gather around a large glass bowl. We simply watched the snail glide across the bottom of the bowl. I didn't do much teaching for the snail taught the children simply by doing what snails do best: move slowly. The students began to have little side conversations and, in essence, they were teaching nearly everything I would have said:

"Snails sure are slow!"

"I think it's opening its mouth!"

"What are those things?"

"Those are its eyes. Snails have alien eyes."

"Look at how it glides!"

"Do you think it can fit back in its shell?"

"Well, the shell is its house."

I didn't need to take an active role as the teacher for the children were doing all of the work––they were observing, thinking, asking, and answering. One turned to me and said, "Mrs. Tammy, I think it has another set of eyes on the bottom." So, I supplied the vocabulary word he needed, "Those are feelers. They are like fingers that touch everything."

Then, I turned the snail on its side, and the children watched it right itself. They were so enthralled that they asked me to do it one more time! Turning the snail on its side revealed the foot, which lead to more conversation.

"How many feet does it have?"

"A million?"

"Zero?"

"I think it's one. Look at how it curls up its foot."

After this, we handed out art supplies and children depicted the snail: watercolors, markers, and crayons. The boy who knew the most about snails was not interested in illustrating it. The snail inspired him to draw a diamond-backed rattler. He is the same person who said he could not draw three years ago!

While they were working on their art, I turned on Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. One child sighed and said, "Miss Tammy, I wish I could live with you for a week." That comment was sweet, but convicting. My role as teacher is not to be the mediator between the child and the world. My role is to lay out the materials and ideas and see what they do with them. Am I the showman to the universe or the one encouraging them to lay hold of interests when they leave church?

Our error is to suppose that we must act as his showman to the universe, and that there is no community between child and universe except such as we choose to set up.

Interests––Have we many keen interests soliciting us outside of our necessary work? If we have, we shall not be enslaved by vapid joys.

Interests are not to be taken up on the spur of the moment; they spring out of the affinities which we have found and laid hold of. And the object of education is, I take it, to give children the use of as much of the world as may be. ~ Charlotte Mason, Volume 3, Page 219

I hope that our time together has taught them to grab hold of what interests them and to develop life-long passions that add meaning to life.

Two weeks later, Pamela and I met a distant ancestor of our snail at the National History Museum in Gray, Tennessee. We added the fossilized shell to our nature notebook entries for our pet nail.

A Caterpillar Convention, or Deer Rubs Don't Run

For the third week in a row, we took a turn, a rather long and meandering turn, at the Santee National Wildlife Refuge. The ideas of Charlotte Mason (how this family learns and lives) and Relationship Development Intervention (how this family guides persons with autism) began criss-crossing in my mind like the muscadine vines along the path.

Take this pair of mushrooms for example. Our state has a long list of things that ought to be taught and when they ought to be taught. I don't have the time to read through it, but I began to wonder when they recommend children should begin to learn about fungi. Will their first brush with the fungus among us be as something to pick off pizza and toss out? Will they ever see mushrooms in the wild before they meet them in books? Will they have ever tried poking small puff balls to release spores and notice that the white ones are duds, and only the brown ones work sometimes? Will they have seen the many beautiful colors that toadstool mushrooms show off for the world? Will they have ever seen shelf fungi growing at the bottom of a trunk or a dead stump covered in all sorts of mushroomy looking things? What creates the most awe and wonder: reading about them in a unit on fungus or finding a yet another sort of fungal friend in one of many long walks?

Will they ever see a toad hanging out in a chestnut tree crotch before they study the life cycle of a frog in books? Find a dozen frogs dotting the swamp grass? Catch a toad and wonder why their palms feel wet?


Will they ever see for themselves that The Very Hungry Caterpillar and The Very Busy Spider both spin webs? They will if they ever see this caterpillar house in the woods or if they find web worm nests in trees.


Speaking of said caterpillar, will they find eggs before they meet the book? A wee, whispery voice in me wonders if seeing a spotty leaf in the woods one week, then finding it overrun with wee caterpillars the next, and seeing the leaf transformed into holy lace another week inspires more delight.

Will they feel the thrill of naming a cluster of critters—"caterpillar convention" coined by one child naturalist—before hearing a very proper term army? Will they know on their own that a caterpillar army hugging a limb might relate to autumn's chill?

Will they see all sorts of camouflage like the little critter on the left who cannot change colors but hides well in autumn spectrum colors? Or will they think animals that change color and shape is only to amuse little children?

What, you don't see the little amphibian yet?

That's a clue!

Will they ever plunge clean hands into a pond to grab a water hyacinth? Will they dirty their nails to rip open its bulb and find styrofoam that God hid inside? Do textbook writers find this idea worthy of making the cut?

Can children whose time is ground up by busywork, homework, worksheets, testing, and standardized exam preparation ever find out if one really can make ink by grinding up oak galls? How many galls will it take?


"But, wait!" exclaim my RDI friends. What does this have to do with autism and experience sharing? What does walking through the woods have to do with developing relationships with people in the autism spectrum?

My friend, the child naturalist, knows the answer. When looking at a deer rub, he shared, "Deer rubs don't run!" He knows that the woods are full of wonderful things to see and know. It takes time to hunt crickets and catch them in a bug glass. Deer rubs take less time to catch because they don't run. Two years ago, when my friend's days were busy with traditional schooling, time was precious. He never had enough time to know all the things he longed to know. Sometimes, his parents took him and his siblings out of school to go on raptor rescue adventures. But, he still never had his fill of time.

It takes lots of quiet time and long experience in the woods learning how to provoke the antlion larva just enough to come out of its home to fight off intruders. Explaining too much too soon destroys the pleasure of seeing it unfold after long hours of exploring. Pumping buzz words into a child and attempting to extract said words steals joy and mystery from the experience. Pushing through the trail quickly while an expert explains all the important stuff on a field trip pushes out time for rabbit trails. Experience sharing is not about getting the job done and all the stuff known. It is about meandering and musing like the endless weaving of muscadine vines.

It also takes someone more experienced in the ways of the woods to guide. My friend spent many long hours learning things as a child naturalist. She carefully chooses when to share her knowledge (how to turn a ginormous beetle on its back and hear if its a clicker beetle) and when to let her children discover for themselves. To know what time is ripe for exploring and discovering a new thing without a lot of words. To know what time is best for supplying a well-timed word, for holding back an answer to foster wondering and yearning to know, for wandering off the path, for returning back to it. Too many words, too fast a pace, too few visits, too many prompts destroy the wonder of the experience.

I watched this little one pet his first frog and caterpillar today. We had to slow down our pace of interaction for him to keep up. When we did, his joint attention was lovely. Rather than flood his mind with blitz of correct jargon explaining everything a preschooler should know about frogs, his mama elaborated on a familiar play he enjoys. "What does a frog say? Ribbet!" Only then, after carefully studying the amphibian, after his mama quietly coaxed him, after slowly, but steadily reaching his hand toward the frog, did he finally pet the critter.

What life lessons would falter if she had goaded him to touch it, forced compliance, pushed out his time to wonder and ponder?

Even the most nontraditional homeschoolers know when to move on. We came across a garter snake stretched out along the road in a patch of sun. When enough big, loud, wiggly folks ventured too close, the garter snake suddenly sprang into action and sidled to a safe place to hide from the big bad world (just as a person with autism does when we rush too often). We watched the snake wind itself along a muscadine vine, moving onward and upward to blend into the security blanket of camouflage. We all longed to stay for a half hour and see how far it would go. The stomachs of the littlest ones rumbled. The minds of the adult ones knew time was short for we had a hard deadline in the afternoon (the feast of the mind to come). The more experience guides ushered the children along the trail because the time was right to transition.

We know that we will come back to our beloved trail and further our relationship with it. Another day may reveal how high garter snakes climb. Charlotte Mason often said, "Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character." To reap a relationship, we must sow experiences slowly, gently, humbly. When we do that consistently and carefully over the years with our children with autism, then relationships will weave in and out of their lives like the muscadine vines that bear the sweet fruit warmed by the patient sun.

"Why Is There an Apple with a Knife Stuck in It in the Fridge?"

Husbands and fathers of homeschoolers have to put up with all kinds of weirdness. When we were staying with Steve in Kansas, he wondered why an apple with a knife stuck in it was in the refrigerator. I explained that we were modeling why seasons occur. Then, he asked why I had the string and tacks out. I told him I forgot to put them away after drawing an ellipse with a string. He had never heard of that before, so it was our turn to teach our resident engineer something new!

When we read science books, we don't just read them. Often we try to live them. Pamela and I were learning about the seasons and why they occur. I had a feeling that the diagram in the book and written explanation might not be enough to make it clear. I labeled an apple with the letter N for north pole and S for south pole. Then I drew a line representing the equator and labeled that. I stuck a knife in it to represent the polar axis.

Then, we took a piece of cardboard and practiced drawing circles and ellipses with a piece of string. We drew an ellipse on a big piece of cardboard, and I made four marks to represent the four seasons. I did not label them because that is what we were going to discover! We darkened the room, removed the lampshade, and placed the lamp in the middle of the ellipse. The plan was to tilt the apple, move it around the lamp in an elliptical orbit, and mark the seasons.

We did something similar to illustrate night and day way back when I homeschooled Pamela and David. David caught on immediately to the idea that day was where the light shined and night was in the shadow. Pamela could not make the connection at all but, at least, she learned that the earth spins. Last year, we revisited the day and night demonstration, and it clicked for Pamela. I suspected she might be ready to grasp the connection between the earth's orbit and seasons.

Her background knowledge played a role in how I structured this. Pamela, a savant in calendars, knows many facts about the calendar. She taught this to herself by researching it on Google.

• A common year has 365 days.
• A leap year has 366 days.
• February 29 only occurs in a leap year.
• Spring begins around March 20 or 21.
• Summer begins around June 20 or 21.
• Fall begins around September 22 or 23.
• Spring begins around December 21 or 22.

Unlike most people I know, Pamela has an advantage: not only have we lived in Alaska where days are really long in the summer and nights are really long in the winter, we have visited family in two countries near the equator (El Salvador and Guatemala). We have also stayed in South America for nearly a month. In 2006, we left Carolina on a hot summer day before the equinox and arrived in Santiago, Chile on a chilly winter day. Three weeks later, we said adios to the spring blossoms of Chile and hello to the cooling fall temperatures of Carolina. Pamela saw for herself seasonal oddities that other children must be told. Life experiences have given her more facts.

• When it is summer in North America, it is winter in South America (and vice versa).
• When it is spring in North America, it is fall in South America (and vice versa).
• Days are longer in summer, and shorter in winter, especially when you live closer to one of the poles.
• Some countries never have snow (the ones near the equator).

Since she understood why we experience day and night last year, I had hope the seasons would make sense to her. First, we tried the day/night demonstration to tie into her prior understanding and she had no trouble pointing out to me which part of the apple had day and night. Then, I tilted the apple and began moving it along an elliptical orbit. I stopped at the location for summer in North America, and Pamela could easily see how the sun was shining very constantly on the North Pole while the South Pole was stayed in darkness. Because of her previous experience, she saw right away how it had to be summer in the northern hemisphere and winter in the southern. We marked that on the elliptical cardboard. We continued working through the seasons, and the next day Pamela copied the diagram from her book into her science journal.
After she drew her diagram, we spent the week reading about the seasons and their connection to the motion of the earth. We drove back to Carolina and read another chapter on the northern lights the following week. We studied the seasons three weeks ago and have not reviewed any of the material. I did not drill her on facts because that is not part of a Mason paradigm. The video is a short clip of what she narrated about the chapter on seasons. While the transcript does not look like much, you have to watch the video and see how she uses her hands to illustrate the orbit of the earth and demonstrate her clear understanding.

The earth was spinning from year. Days—about 365 and 366 days leap year and common year. Around Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter.