I was the co-chair for my elementary school Fundraising Committee last year and also served on my preschool’s fundraising committee a few years ago. For both schools, the auction is the single biggest fundraising event and must bring in a princely sum in order for the PTO budgets to function. This is what I learned to make an school auction successful:
Thank you to Dad developer Kyle Tomson of Mobile Education Store, for letting me repost his great article on apps for high functioning autistic children who benefit from the language aspects of these apps. Kyle has a daughter, Caitlin, who is very high functioning on the autism spectrum so this topic is very near and dear to his heart, so much so that he just went and developed them himself!
I found it so interesting the wide range of interests and levels of newly minted 6th graders. They are reading everything from adult literature to fantasy adventure to Karl Sagan non-fiction. I guess it goes to show you that the middle school kid is everywhere on the spectrum from adult-like to still child-like.
The iPad is turning out to be a great communication tool for autistic children. At West Prairie South Elementary School, the iPad was introduced to help non verbal children communicate at the suggestion of their superintendent. The full article by Lainie Steelman is here. Here are some key paragraphs:
Sorry, moms and dads, but it’s your job — not the schools’ — to find books to get your kids reading and to make sure they read them…and other great advice by author James Patterson on how to get your child to be a voracious reader.
This is from my oldest child’s Chinese teacher at school. These are the 40 most common Chinese characters. The chart shows the pronunciation, stroke order, and how the character is used in other, more complicated characters. Try drawing these with a calligraphy brush and a Chinese ink stone.
And what is really cool is that Riordan’s son Haley, now 16 years old, has written his own manuscript longer than his dad’s. Not bad for someone who hated to read so much that he hid under the table. The advice from Rick Riordan to get kids with ADHD to read is below.