Friday Freebie: Build and Grow

I have to tell you that I love Saturdays! The kids are out of school, my sweetie is usually not working, and sometimes (depending on the sport or dance schedule) we have a little time together. One of my favorite ways to use that free time is to hang out at our local home improvement stores and make a fun free wood project with my kids. 

 The first Saturday of the month is the kids’ class at Home Depot. You have to sign up several weeks before, and at our Home Depot they hang the sign up sheets near the returns desk. They usually recommend 3^rd – 5^th graders, but they have always let all my kids participate as long as I put their names on the list. So you show up on the day of the class. They give you a free apron, goggles (nobody actually wears these over their eyes, but they make a nice necklace!), and your kit. 

$2 at homedepot.com

You know those orange Home Depot project buckets? They tip those over and they become your table and chairs. They cover some with sheets of plywood and they set out hammers that are just right for the little ones. I’m a little too tall for the bucket chairs, so my legs always go to sleep but the kids don’t seem to mind. We usually take up a whole table by the time the grandkids show up and 2 kids/adult seems to be a good ratio for us. Just be careful which kids you offer to hold the nails for! When Scout was little she smashed my finger several times before I got smart and started putting her next to my sweetie. 

The wood pieces have predrilled holes for the nails and that makes them very kid-friendly.  The instructions are usually easy to follow with pictures of each step, but sometimes the kids don’t pay any attention and they end up nailing in a piece upside down or backwards or both. Then my sweetie spends the next ten minutes trying to pry those thin pieces of wood apart without breaking anything. I’ve taken to asking the assistants if there are any "tricks to this one" before we start. They usually laugh and admit where they screwed up their first kit attempt. 

 

In February we made these cute little heart shelves. The kits take about 20 minutes, although the time we made birdhouses we were there for over an hour! (Those darn slanted roof pieces were almost impossible to line up, but I don’t think the birds care if they live in a Dr. Suess house.) Since we couldn’t think of any reason we wanted to keep seven of these little shelves, we took them home and spray-painted them pink. My sweetie did the red accents on them and then we had the kids give them to their teachers for Valentine’s Day. The teachers loved them! They were unique and calorie-free. 

Lowe’s offers two classes each month on the first and third Saturdays. Their signups are all on-line at www.lowesbuildandgrow.com We attend nearly every class and Wendy, the cute girl in charge of handing out the kits, knows each of our kids by their first names! In February we made these Valentine’s Day music boxes with the heart-shaped top. My dancer girls were excited because the music boxes actually played Swan Lake! On the third week of February they offered these fun pull-back cars.  Their classes are pretty much the same as the Home Depot ones and when the kids are finished and show off their projects they are awarded a patch at Lowe’s and a pin at Home Depot.  

In December Lowe's offered three classes, one each Saturday and each class gave us a different piece of a train!  These pieces were designed to hook together.  So after the third and final class we gathered around the kitchen table and let the kids paint them.  Now they all have their own little Christmas trains.  All of these classes are free, but it is difficult to sign up right before the class. The night before we go to a class I usually get on-line and sign up for next month’s class. They do have a limited number of kits. Try one out and let us know what you think! Or leave us a comment if you have been to one. Our contest for March starts next week! Check back for more details.

Autism: Theraputic Threes

It was a dark and depressing time for me. Some days the only ray of sunshine in my life was my little Princess. The Dog Walker turned three in November. In January, I finally spoke with a neighbor about her six-year-old son. I knew that he had been in the district preschool for developmentally delayed children. She gave me the number for the district office and I made the call. They found an opening for us on Valentine’s Day. 

We checked in for our appointment and they called us back to a small play area. I lugged the baby under one arm and tugged at my son with the other hand. He didn’t like strange situations. The therapist joined us several minutes later. She tried to get him to play ball. He loves to play ball and since she seemed rather harmless, he tossed the ball to her. They played for about 10 minutes before the therapist asked him some questions. He just ignored her. Five minutes later he was labeled severely developmentally delayed. He had qualified for the district preschool program and he could start school on Monday. Our lives were about to change! 



We arrived at the preschool shortly before nine. Our boy had never been alone anywhere except the neighbor’s house. He didn’t like other children or strangers, he couldn’t follow simple instructions, and he liked to take off his clothes. Of course, we were worried. We finally found his classroom and nervously stepped through the open door. His teacher and another woman greeted us. She was the speech therapist, and they would team-teach his class. They were nice and I slowly began to relax. Our son was thrilled to play with their huge collection of toys and as he climbed into the upper part of the large castle playhouse, we made a quick exit. 

I spent a miserable morning waiting for my son to come home. At 11:47, a full-size, yellow district bus pulled up in front of my house. I ran across the lawn. I was certain that he would be dying to get off that bus and get back to his normal world. He wasn’t. He was the last child to be dropped off, and he was sound asleep. Tuesday morning was rough. He was tired, and getting him out of bed had never been easy. He cried in the shower, fought when I dressed him, and refused to eat his breakfast. I had to drag him onto the bus and buckle his seat belt. I was a nervous wreck until his bus arrived at 11:51, but he was sleeping again. 

In May, I met with his teachers. I had seen many positive changes in his behavior and in his speech. I bluntly asked them when he would be completely normal, and they were hopeful that he could be mainstreamed at Kindergarten. We had no idea then that he would never be completely normal. 

Jump to part 4.

Autism: Terrifying Twos

Several months later, my sweetie finally convinced me to call a highly-respected local children’s hospital that offered speech therapy. It was May and summer was approaching. As we drove the several miles to his appointment, I looked at my growing son. He was no longer a toddler. At two and a half, he was big for his age. His body was sturdy, athletic, and already tan from his habit of undressing as soon as he got through the back door. Thank goodness, he usually left his diaper on. His blond hair was tousled and too long. He didn’t understand the need to have it cut and I didn’t have the energy to pin him down while someone cut it for him. 

I was six months pregnant and feeling rather sick at the prospects of making this drive once a week. My son was diagnosed as developmentally impaired and his scores were in the severe range. Then a therapist led us to the sound booth. My son refused to enter this closet-sized room without me. We sat on the single chair between what looked like two large stereo speakers. We could see the therapist through the sound-proof glass. She was busy with switches and knobs. My sweet little son looked around and then squirmed in my arms. He didn’t want to be there either. 

Suddenly, very softly, we heard his name through the speakers. He turned toward the speaker on the right. A little black and white cow sat in a glass box on top of the speaker. Then we heard his name through the left speaker. He turned his head toward the brown and white cow that was perched on the left speaker. After several more tries at different tones, he successfully found the right cow with his eyes each time. Then the little brown and white cow suddenly let out a loud "MOOOO!" and started pumping its tail. My son screamed and jumped from my lap. I gathered his quivering little body and he hung on tight. We stepped from the booth and the therapist said, "About 50% of the kids like the cow. I don’t know, maybe we shouldn’t do it." "Yuh think!"  

After 7 weeks of therapy, the birth of my baby, and no improvement in my son’s condition, I removed him from the clinic. He had grown during the last five months, but his ability to speak and communicate had not changed. My Princess was only 10 days old and I was desperately tired and discouraged.

Jump to part 3.

Autism: Wonderful Ones

I have people ask me all the time how we first found out the Dog Walker was autistic. I must confess that my life was crazy busy at the time (maybe even busier than it is now). I was working two jobs, 40 hours a week at home as a technical writer, and part-time in the evenings, teaching writing classes at a local college a couple of days a week. At his 12-month checkup, our little Dog Walker was a healthy, happy baby. He could walk, eat most solids, empty a cupboard, unroll a roll of toilet paper, and jabber "Mama," "Dada," and "ball." His motor skills were right on track for a 1-year-old. He loved music, Barney, and ice cream. He had his regular immunizations with no side effects and he’d survived the love and attention of three older sisters and one older brother. 

By the time he was 18 months old, he was running and playing. He loved balls, cars, and stuffed animals. He thought his grandpa was the greatest and the Dog Walker appeared to have an aptitude for music. He loved the piano and he played the keys softly and beautifully, not like other toddlers. He had progressed normally except that his 3-word vocabulary had increased to only 5 words. He had added the words "no" and "mine." It was 1995, and as a mother of five, I was convinced that he was fine; he was simply developing his language skills a bit more slowly than my first four children. I had plenty of evidence that children develop at different rates. 

My sweetie and I had both been late bloomers when it came to speech. I didn’t say anything but "Mama" and "Dada" until I was nearly two years old. Then one day I spouted sentences, beginning with, "May I have a piece of cake?" I was convinced that my little Dog Walker was just like me. By the time he was two years old, he had progressed in every way except language. He was extremely athletic; he could catch and throw better than his 4-year-old sister. He still loved TV, and he could mimic words from Barney and Winnie the Pooh although they didn’t quite sound like they should. When I took him for his 2-year-old checkup, the pediatrician suggested that I have him tested by a speech therapist. 

I was devastated! He seemed to be making progress. I had increased his TV watching, hoping that the mimicking would help. I had turned a blind eye to the fact that he couldn’t understand simple instructions and he didn’t know any of his siblings’ names. He was unable to dress himself (he hated clothes anyway) and he showed absolutely no interest in potty training. He was extremely independent. If he wanted a drink of milk, he would bring me a cup and a gallon of milk. If he wanted his lunch, he would bring me the bologna and a plate. He just helped himself to whatever he wanted or needed. 

He and I also had a system of hand signals that I mostly understood. If he wanted his shoes off, he would grab my hands and place them on his shoes. If he wanted something that he couldn’t reach from a chair, he would lead me to the item and point until I got it down for him. Sometimes he and I would both become frustrated with our lack of communication and he could throw an amazing tantrum. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to believe that we were facing something much more serious. Come back tomorrow click the link below and I’ll tell you what we did next.

Jump to part 2.