Rowan has a long running obsession with Cartoon Network and for almost a year now has involved the characters from his favorite shows in our lives. He has taken on the persona of Rigby, a racoon from regular show, and myself and the volunteers alternate between which characters we play. These characters come with us everywhere and we call them our team.

A few weeks ago he discovered a new show called Dexter’s Laboratory which features Dexter the science obsessed boy genius and his annoying sister Dee Dee. When he added Dexter and Dee Dee to the team this seemed the perfect time to revisit chemistry.

After setting up our own Dexter’s Lab (complete with science goggles and a NO Dee Dee Allowed poster) we began to experiment with super absorbent polymer’s.

Our first experiment involved making ‘instant snow‘ (by adding water to a super absorbent polymer) and once we had made it we covered the trampoline in it and pretended it was real (we don’t see a lot of snow in Texas). Whilst we bounced we talked about polymers.

Then it was time to learn about the scientific method – making hypotheses based on observations. To do this we placed our super absorbent polymers is water, milk and oil and hypothesized about what would happen to them. Rowan’s guess – they would grow bigger in the water than the milk and wouldn’t grow at all in the oil. And of course he was absolutely right.

And how did we celebrate?  By covering the trampoline with super absorbent polymers again and in Rowan’s words ‘making them dance.’

Rowan recently turned 11 which means that he is now in the fifth grade. According to the Texas State Curriculum (which we try and ensure he is as up-to-date with as possible whilst still following his interests and passions) fifth grade is the time when children should be starting to learn about geometric concepts such as angles, congruent shapes, parallel and perpendicular lines etc. Since the summer we have been racking our brains trying to figure out how to teach these abstract concepts to him in a way that is not only meaningful to him but also fun.

In Horse Boy Learning we always adhere to two key principles when teaching Rowan (or the other kids we work with) anything new.

The first of these is that we always mould what we want to teach a child to their interests and passions and not the other way around. For example we taught Rowan about the Kings & Queens of England through what kind of toilet they used and the Presidents of the United States through the types of pets that they had.

Secondly we always allow the child to move whilst they are learning – the technical term for which is kinetic learning. Children on the autism spectrum are often kinetic learners meaning they need to move in order to be able to receive and retain new information. It is not that they are not capable of sitting at a desk – they are – it is just that sitting at a desk takes up all of their brain power meaning that there is nothing left over for them to take in new information.

However, if their body is allowed to move then their brain is free to learn.

In Horse Boy Learning we have found that kinetic learners can be supported in two different ways. The first is to allow the child themselves to physically move during a lesson. We do this by teaching the children that we work with on the trampoline or whilst they are swimming, walking or running. The second is to place the child on a moving object, such as a horse, swing, rocking chair or even car. The rhythmic movement of the object stills their mind in a way that would not occur if they were asked to sit on a stationary object.

We therefore knew that the key to helping Rowan understand geometry lay in these principles of intrinsic motivation and kinetic learning.

About a month ago Rowan began to develop an interest in the roads and rivers of East Texas and requested to be driven over the Brazos River (his current favorite river) on a road called the 79/190 (his current favorite road) as many times as he could persuade us too. It didn’t take us long to realize that perhaps the key to geometry lay in this new obsession. As we drove him on the roads he loves we simply began to slip geometry related terms into our conversation. Comments such as ‘oh look the railroad tracks run parallel to the 79’ or ‘hey, now we are going to turn this corner at a 90 degree angle’ or even ‘the railroad bridge on the 79 is not congruent to the one on the 21’ peppered our conversation.

True to form it didn’t take long before Rowan was using these terms himself, asking for us to take him on the road that runs parallel to the railroad tracks or for us to spin him in a 360 degree circle.

By introducing these terms to him slowly in a pressure free way we allowed him to take on board and really understand the concepts at his own pace.

It has been over a year since Rowan first developed an interest in musical instruments when a very kind person donated their clarinet to the Horse Boy Foundation. True to form Rowan could soon name far more instruments than any of the rest of us and could tell you what musical family each instrument comes from to boot.

It didn’t take long for him to develop a particular fascination in the brass family and a desire to one day play in a marching band so recently we finally made the decision to get him his own trumpet and trombone and he will begin music lessons next week.

What we hadn’t anticipated was that not only would buying him these instruments provide an opportunity for him to learn to make music but that it would provide a whole host of other learning experiences as well.

Soon after getting the trumpet Rowan asked me to make him a book of ‘fun trumpet facts’ which he loves and has read over and over. This includes not only information about the history of trumpets and famous jazz musicians but also includes facts about the chemical properties of brass and what makes something an alloy.

Watch this space for updates on how his lessons go and when he is able to realize his dream of forming the Horse Boy Marching Band. Knowing Rowan I don’t think it will take long…

Once a week Rowan takes a trip to San Marcos, a small city located between Austin and San Antonio on the banks of the San Marcos River. He likes to go there because over the summer we discovered that there is a section of the river that has a safe but fast flowing current which spits you out in a little pool with ladders where you can climb out. From the minute we discovered this hidden gem Rowan was hooked, he is after all an adventurous 10 year old boy who has a particular love of swimming in the rivers and creeks of Texas.

Of course it wasn’t long before we discovered that this particular section of the San Marcos River was not only fun but had great potential for learning.

Why? Because the rhythmic movement of the river and the sensory value of being in water/nature placed Rowan in the state to receive and retain information.

We quickly covered topics such as what makes a river flow and the history of San Marcos (which is thought to be the oldest continuously inhabited site in the Northern Hemisphere) before moving onto much more complex entities such as force, velocity and acceleration.

As always we introduced these relatively abstract ideas as part of a game involving, in this case, a group of cartoon characters called the fireside girls. Any of you who were reading this blog last year will probably remember the fireside girls as a group of girls from the cartoon Phineas and Ferb who Rowan used to be besotted with and who used to feature a lot in our daily lives and who we grieved over the loss when Rowan decided he no longer needed them and it was time for them to return to their homes.

Well this summer they returned but with a new twist, we no longer like them and are constantly trying to avoid and get away from them. Rowan often refers to them as pesky.

On this particular day the fireside girls were chasing us down the river and Rowan asked how we could get away from them. We suggested that rather than just floating with the current we start to swim because the force of our muscles coupled with the force of the current would accelerate us away from the fireside girls in no time (as they were lazy and would be relying just on the force of the current). Rowan soon picked up and went with the idea and words such as force and acceleration soon populated our conversation. Over the weeks we gradually added in new information involving the effect that other factors such as weight can have on acceleration and speed.

Crucially we never asked Rowan to participate in these conversations and instead allowed him to do it in his own time. We also never attempted to put pressure on him by testing his knowledge and grasp of the subject knowing from past experience that this has a tendency to make him shut down.

Instead we simply trusted that when Rowan was ready he would demonstrate to us, in his own way, his understanding of the topic.

And true to form the moment came earlier this week when I happened to mention to Rowan that I was finding it harder to swim against the current than last week and I wasn’t sure why. Rowan pondered this for a bit and then replied that perhaps it was because I was wearing shoes this week and the shoes were making me heavier and that heavier objects require more force to accelerate than lighter ones.

I don’t think there are many of us who didn’t play with play dough when we were kids. The combination of color and texture and the limitless possibilities on offer makes the salty dough irresistible to children of all ages. But I wonder how many of us realized the potential for learning that lies within this simple childhood play thing.

Play dough has also been an integral part of Rowan’s learning for some time now, helping him understand everything from fractions to division to decimals. He loves the color and feel of the dough and it often much more motivated to learn when we incorporate it into our lessons. However, this summer he took his love of playdough to the next level when we invented the playdough play.

As many regular readers of this blog are probably aware Rowan’s passion this summer has been learning about history and his particular focus has been the Ancient Greeks and Romans. Every day for the past week we have spent some time each morning fashioning Greeks, Romans or Visigoths out of play dough and then using them to reenact moments from history that we have been learning about. Never was a playdough moment so poignant as when a purple Julius Cesar was killed by a blue Brutus.

Keeping with an artistic theme Rowan, who loves to puzzle, decided we should also make our own ‘Horrible History’ puzzles again depicting the Greeks and Romans. So far we have created a Roman communal toilet puzzle and a puzzle depicting when the Visigoths sacked Rome.

Who knows what we will decide to create tomorrow…but whatever it is it will be chosen by Rowan – because if he is intrinsically motivated to learn something he will end up knowing it in far more detail than if we force or bribe him into learning about what we decide.

About a month ago I went with Rowan to see the film Tornado Alley which was showing at our local IMAX theatre. He was enthralled and afterwards whilst we were swimming at the nearby YMCA decided to turn me into a Jennyado.

I quickly realized that once again he had given me a brilliant way to teach him about weather and natural disasters.  Over the next few weeks I went from being a Jenunderstorm (that can throw lightning bolts from her finger tips) to a Jenaimi to a Jenquake. During this time Rowan learnt a huge amount of information about weather systems and what causes these kinds of natural disasters to occur.

So why does this work so much better than if I had tried to teach him inside at a desk?

Because children with autism, and I’m sure most neuro-typical children, learn best when they are intrinsically motivated by what they are learning. In addition if a child is allowed to move whilst being asked to take in information they are much more likely to receive and retain it than if they are required to sit at a desk. Rowan was intrinsically motivated to play this game, he always finds it funny to be chased and tickled. In addition as the game involved me chasing him he was moving the whole time. And most importantly he was laughing and having fun. If you teach through humor then a whole new world of possibilities opens up to you and you are generally left with a child much more eager to learn.

It is very easy to incorporate facts that you want the child to know into a game that they enjoy. For example to turn into a Jennyado I need warm, moist air from the gulf of Mexico to tickle my toes and cold, dry air from Canada to tickle my nose.  Likewise in order to throw lightning bolts from my fingertips I need frozen raindrops to collide and produce bolts of electricity.Before I knew it this information had sunk in and Rowan was telling me to watch out because warm moist air from the Gulf of Mexico was heading my way.

Next week we are moving on to hurricanes and I strongly suspect that I will become a Jenicane in no time. Watch this space…