It's almost author chat time!

I am SUPER DUPER excited that we get to have an author chat (via Skype) with Howard Binkow tomorrow morning! He wrote the Howard B. Wigglebottom books that I made activities for earlier this year. He contacted me about a month ago and asked if he could Skype with my class and of course I said yes.

My kids are so excited about it that they are voluntarily coming to school a half hour early! We normally start at 8:25, but the kids are coming at 7:55 for our 8:00 Skype time. I promised them that when the rest of the kids have to go into their classes, we'll get to go play outside since they are missing their playtime before school. This made them feel extra special.


We chose his book Howard B. Wigglebottom Learns to Listen as the basis for our questions. It was a bit of a struggle to get my kids to create questions at first. If you aren't familiar with autism...It's actually really hard for them to generate questions spontaneously. It took the prompt of "questions usually start with who, what, when, where, why or how" because at first the kids said "You're books are really cool!" and I had to explain that that's a compliment, not a question. Then later in the day, Genius Boy came to school and I handed him a marker and told him to think of a couple more, so his are the last 4 on the list. He came up with really good ones all on his own.

1. Why did you make Howard a bunny?
2. Why doesn't he listen?
3. Why does the character have the same name as you?
4. How many books have you written?
5. Will there be more Howard B. Wigglebottom books?
6. Did you illustrate the books?
7. How did you write the books?
8. How long did it take you to write the books?
9. When did you start writing the books?

Oh I forgot to mention something... IT'S CRAZY HAIR DAY TOMORROW! So who knows what kind of crazy my kids will look like tomorrow! I sent Howard a message warning him my kids would look silly before we answer the Skype call looking like crazy people!

Oh, and I have a shadow student visiting my class tomorrow to see if he will be joining our school next year. So he'll probably think we're crazy too. I know nothing about this kid so I told the parents to bring him after the chat is over...just in case. He looks fabulous on paper but...sometimes shadow days = Lisa runs out the door to catch them!

Last but certainly not least... Don't forget to enter my GIGANTIC bloggy birthday giveaway! You only have 1 more day to enter! There are 5 Rafflecopters and 27 prizes! You can enter on my Facebook page for part of it or on by clicking the image below to get to the full list of prizes and raffles.