Book Week 2012 is here. School has once again gone with a theme… this year “Come as a Champion”. While I admit, my book week purist heart would like a straight ‘book character’ theme one of these years, it didn’t deter us from helping Mac find his perfect ‘champion character’.
In a nice stroke of serendipity the Paralympics are also on. This has created much discussion at school about what event Mac might be able to compete in when he’s old enough. The suggestion that maybe “sport isn’t his thing” hasn’t really been readily accepted… we’re still working on an acceptable answer. 😉
After throwing up a few options Mac settled on Kurt Fearnley. For our non-Aussie readers – Kurt is one of THE legends of wheelchair racing and fits the ‘champion’ requirement perfectly.
In another twist the kids have been studying ‘simple machines’ in Science. I offered Mac the opportunity of ‘bulking up his guns (arms)’ with a bit of “engineering” while sneakily providing some congruency to their recent learning… all in the guise of “dress ups”. Mac was hooked… we were sorted.
NB: check your volume settings – there is some ‘muzak’ that hopefully won’t blow your ears out.
When it came to the crunch I probably should have sat in on a couple of their classes as my fading knowledge of fulcrums and pivots started making my head hurt. Thankfully my Dad was a willing assistant… although his full mechanical spring action metal arm system was soon discarded when I was able to prove my much simpler method would actually suffice.
Mac took the iPhone on stage and one of his classmates pressed the right button in Proloquo2Go for him so he could announce who he was (just as the other kids do). It was nice to see the young kids at school get exposed to the idea of AAC and Mac’s method of speaking (it was pretty cute that he got extra applause after he spoke – we really do have a great group of kids at our school).
Here’s some extra pics of the ‘wheelchair racer dude’ in all his glory.
Inky Ed 