Did somebody say bacon?

Did I mention that I’ve gone Paleo?

Never heard of it? Well, clearly you don’t live in the Pacific Northwest! It’s all the rage here. Although my husband has been talking about it for over a year, I started at the beginning of the school year. I eat meat, veggies, fruits, some nuts, oils. And bacon. Because bacon deserves it’s own sentence. It helps that I bought 1/2 of a pig this summer to fuel my clean meat diet.

Why go Paleo? You can read all about the health benefits, the increased energy, the decrease of other health issues. I have one friend whose migraines disappeared when she went Paleo. Another friend says she has much more energy than before. Others claim it is just a much more eco-friendly way to live.

After changing my eating so much in the last 6 weeks, I really can’t claim any of these benefits. I can, however, claim some weight loss. It was a steady pound a week for the first four weeks. Since I was unable to fulfill my weight loss goal from the summer, I took it on with the start of the school year.

I haven’t been a perfect cavewoman. From day one, I decided that cavemen would totally drink Diet Coke if it had been available, so I’m still drinking that. I still have homemade pizza every Friday night. And I’m still enjoying an occasional Starbucks Latte. I knew that I had to make Paleo work for me.

One issue that I had early-on was breakfast. What to eat for breakfast? Flour, oats, dairy, and all grains are forbidden. Most people contributing on the Paleo forums say that they eat eggs for breakfast. Unfortunately, I hate eggs. Yuck. So I ended up with sausage. Yum.

Speaking of eggs….

I’ve spent years working on vocabulary, past tense, and 3 word utterances during circle time to use a sentence strip: “I ate (choose breakfast word from an array of pictures and insert here)”. Until recently, “I ate eggs” looked like this:

90% of my students in the Life Skills classroom have no clue that the “egg” above is an egg. I mean… really???

Thanks to the another teacher’s photos and my own photo manipulation, I now have photos of the most common breakfast items in the cafeteria. It will still be difficult for my students to not only remember what they ate, but also find the photo. However, a photograph of the actual food item makes the task less symbolic and more realistic (although 2-dimensional). Now they can start the sentence:

and then add one of the following pictures to the end of the sentence:

It also kind of grosses me out that this is what the kids are being offered every day.

Creating short sentences with word by word pictures is a great way to help increase language for minimally verbal children. Pictures are a great visual way to help build vocabulary and choices. Photographs are easier for many to understand than drawings or symbols (which are much less realistic). Explaining what they ate, the children can tell personal events from their day and work on interpersonal skills as well.

It’s a great daily language exercise. Try it!
 
However, I would suggest eating foods more appetizing than eggs. I mean, look at them! They’re almost green!