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Wednesday, January 17, 2007

The Burning Crusades Hatched in Australia.

World of Warcraft: the Burning Crusades was launched in Australia at midnight. Boy attended our local EB store and was the first in Cairns to receive his pre ordered expansion pack. Delighted he was. He didn’t get to bed until 3A.M and he only had a wee sleep in. He is now happily doing what kids do on the game – battling, leveling, learning and enjoying.

This morning he excitedly told me that he had made some friends. While waiting in line to receive his coveted game pack, he began chatting to other children. This stretching toward real time friendship pleased me. For a child with Aspergers he has spanned both the over stimulation of waiting in line for an hour and the difficulties in understanding how to make friends. Well done Boy. We are very proud of you.

Starving after his very late night, Boy still chatted merrily about Burning Crusades, his character, the job training he picked for his character and how to collect food. The topic of jobs and food led to some serious teachable moments that I just couldn’t let escape.

While cracking his four eggs to fry, Boy commented to me that he had a quad yolker. We tried to hatch as many words that started with quad as we could. If I had presented this as either an English or Math lesson, Boy would have disengaged and hidden for the rest of the day.

Once again, World of Warcraft has proven to be an acceptable medium through which Boy can learn. Using what I can, I am on a Burning Crusade to home school my child who cannot learn in a traditional classroom setting.

Thanks Burning Crusade. We’re supposed to be doing something around Australian animals to celebrate Australia Week but the prefix quad, sustainable food and employment choices has instead featured heavily in our home school this morning. I’m pretty happy with that!

2 comments:

Elisheva Hannah Levin said...

G'day, Megan!

What a step forward the "making friends in line" was! When my N. was little he could not abide lines--the noise and crowd fo people would make him terribly anxious and lead to the inevitable melt-down. Now he is better, although we bring things to do in line when we are waiting for something important like a new Harry Potter book. I used to have to avoid any lines with him, though.
What a happy day you have had!

Megan Bayliss said...

Thanks Elisheva.

It really was amazing that he stood there for so long AND reached out to other kids. AMAZING and a long time coming.

We LOVE the Harry Potter books too. I had to read them all first though so that I could get the character's voices and characteristics right. What a shock though when we saw the first movie and my intonations were nothing like those on the screen!!!!

I keep telling Boy that when I grow up I'm going to marry either Hagrid or Hermoine. Boy rolls his eyes and says, "You're already grown up Mum." How wrong he is!

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