Lots of kids on the autistic spectrum have “special interests”. These are subjects that the children become, pretty much, obsessed over and they often acquire vast amounts of knowledge and detail on their specialist subject, be it vacuum cleaners, train time tables, Greek gods or cars. They seem to have the ability to hyper focus on these topics and have a near unlimited appetite for them. They possess so much knowledge about their special interest it appears to have a comforting and reassuring quality, they make our ASD kids feel safe within what they see as a largely chaotic and scary world. The MiniMan is no exception, his current special interests are racing (F1 in particular), Minecraft and Lego.
To me the realms of the special interest seems a fabulous starting point for teaching. Indeed, some years ago I read the book “Asperkids, An Insider’s Guide to Loving, Understanding and Teaching Children with Asperger Syndrome” and I remember Jennifer Cook O’Toole (the author and also an Aspie) passionately endorsing the untapped potential of the special interest. In light of our new Home Educating setup this title has leapt to the top of my list of books to reread!
So, armed with this notion and a selected first topic: The Stone Age, it was time to see what teaching advantages I could lever. Minecraft seemed the perfect place to start. For those of you not initiated into the world of Minecraft, a quick overview. It is a computer game that in its purely creative mode is essentially Lego on the computer. You generate a random basic world (“terrain”) and you have unlimited resources (“blocks”) e.g. stone, wood, glass, brick etc from which you can creative pretty much anything you like, from castles and houses to rollercoasters and redstone (read “electic”) circuits. The limit is your imagination, for some mind blowing creations see FyreUK on You Tube. In its survival mode, you have to source and craft all your resources to survive from the environment around you. A great introduction to survival mode is PaulSoaresJr on You Tube and his How to Survive and Thrive series. In both modes (creative and survival) you can opt to play in peaceful mode or have “mobs on” where you need to beat the babbies that spawn at night but that in return drop useful resources to help you. As you may be concluding, I am a big Minecraft fan and LOVE playing with the MiniMan in shared worlds.
Right, introduction over, now onto the practical application. After a bit of Stone Age research and preparation (for both us!) I suggested we make our own Stone Age world in Minecraft – much glee and excitement was met by this suggestion! First big win: willingness to engage and motivation in one easy step! A fabulous few hours were then spent creating a number of different styles of Stone Age house (cave, tepee style covered in skins and wooden structure with reed roof), a Neolithic Stone Age farm, Stonehenge, some Stone Age graves and the masterpiece that was our Museum of Stone Age. We decked ourselves out in Stone Age clothes and only used Stone Age tools!
Now I won’t lie, MiniMan finds following someone else’s agenda very difficult even within a special interest, so I cannot claim he built everything on these pictures. However, we did build together the houses, farm, graves and Stonehenge. I have to admit to building the structure of the museum, but it was his task to select and display the exhibits. After a slight tangent (which you’ll read about below) from which he returned happy to re-engage with my requests, he settled down to selecting and displaying the exhibits in the three sections of our museum: Stone Age Clothes, Food and Tools. He thoroughly enjoyed it, what a fabulous way to learn!
Whilst I was building the museum structure, MiniMan had taken his avatar off to create some “leisure activities” for his Stone Age villagers: a boat racing track (we never stray far from the racing special interest!) and a boat waterslide. I am not sure the latter would pass for authentic but, given the Stone Age people did have boats, I guess it is not inconceivable that they may have chosen to race them from time to time. MiniMan had also crafted a lovely button operated boat dispenser for the racers, powered by redstone (Minecraft’s electricity). Now I am not going to square this with any historian I know, but I am more than willing to applaud my son’s spontaneous foray into electrical circuits. The boat race station and waterslide remain a part of our Stone Age world on their own merits!
This nicely brings me to some of the great benefits of Home Education. It gives me the freedom to be creative and spontaneous, to go with the flow and interest, to applaud the merits of the tangent and to have the time to allow the creativity to flow. We built this world together, no easy task for an ASD kid. We had to plan and execute this project together and at the same time we were building up trust and a shared passion. I can’t think of any greater benefit than that.
P.S. if you are interested in Stonehenge and how it was built check out the Stonehenge building game on the English Heritage website.
Mini Man's Home Ed Adventures 