Autism Night

The Children's Museum of Stevens Point holds autism night on the first Monday of every month. A young mom was there with her four-year-old son, Austin. He was a very happy little boy with enough energy to run a marathon. When Austin was born he appeared to be a normal healthy little boy, but when he turned two his development hit a standstill and almost everything he learned dissappeared. With the help of specialists he is learning to talk again, although is speech is limited. Being the mom of a child with autism is without a doubt a full-time job. Austin eat's anything. He will literally eat his clothing. He also has a problem with running away. He's a master escape artist (they live on 40 acres of land with alot of water). He also has no concept of pain. She hasn't taken him to a grocery store in over 3 months. The last time she took him to a grocery store, he cracked his head open. His whole body is almost insensitive, except for his head. His mom has a hard time brushing his teeth and he's already had to have surgery to remove some of his teeth because of decay that led to his gums. Something that is unique to his form of Autism is that he does "edging". He has rituals that he does to calm himself down in exciting situations. When new people walk past him he swings his arms in excitement and hops up and down in order to take-in new information. He also lines up his hot-wheel cars. He lines them up every time in a specific order. If he turns his head for a second, after he lined up the cars, his mom will move one just a slight bit. When he turns around and looks back at the cars, he is quick to realize it.

The other family that came in had a son named Logan. Logan was very passive, but he was very verbal. He even came over by us to talk and asked us a few questions. Logan, has a lower form of autism on the "spectrum" as his mom called it. His parents knew that Logan was autistic from when he was only a baby. He was always behind on development. Logan only goes to a school for kids with special needs for half a day. He hates loud noises. The Children's Museum has a train that the kids can play on and he was scared to even walk into that half of the building because he doesn't like the noise. He doesn't handle busy areas or stressful situations very well. The difference between the two boys shows the variations of autism.

Cellular Respiration Animation

With the two tests these last couple of weeks, our progress has moved pretty slowly. But now that we can get some real work done, I think we'll have something to show pretty soon. We finally decided exactly how we are going to begin and go about the animation. We will start with a broad shot of the entire cell, complete with organelles, and a basic definition of cellular respiration. Then we'll zoom in on each of the important components of respiration and give basic definitions of those. Then we'll go step by step through the process, being specific, yet simple enough for high school biology students to understand. Finally, we will quickly review the process one last time. We plan to leave the loop running with out our voices a few times as to allow the instructor some time to say things. My task as the art major, is to begin creating the image files we will use in the animation, starting with the overview of the cell. The others will be coming up with the simple steps and definitions. We hope that in a week or two, we can begin the recording process.

Humane society

This week I went to the humane society and voluteered for two hours. Vicki and I went straight to the dog kennels to walk and play with the dogs. However, it was raining so we couldn't take any of the dogs outside , so we just took them into a large room. First, we took a fun and loveing mixed puppy, and just played some catch with him. Then, we took a large Saint Bernard out because he looked like he needed some attention. He only had three legs but was still almost stronger than I was. When I took him out of his kennel, he started barking really lound at the dog in the end kennel. I could bairly get him away from the small dog at the end. I found out later the small dog just had surgery, so he wasn't acting himself and would bark at any dog that passed. After playing with these dogs, we descided to play with some of the cats and kittens in a small room with many cat toys. I was playing with them with a rope that they chased around the room. When it was almost time to leave, we took out another black puppy and took him into the room to play catch. I had a lot of fun and can't wait to go again next tuesday.