This was a collaborative zine, made as a Christmas gift for Riley’s kindergarten teacher. Initially, I had R try to complete one of those “What I Like About My Teacher” pages. Unfortunately, that didn’t really work for him, likely due to too much blank space for writing. His delayed fine motor skills meant that he struggles with his writing ability catching up to his thinking ability, which is understandably frustrating.

So sticking with play, I had him scribble sat at the craft table next to me. Very low pressure on having to do a specific task. We had a conversation about school: what he liked, what he didn’t…and he brought up Ms. Kristen. So I followed his lead and let him talk. What you have to know about Riley: when you get him talking, he gets talking. The phrase chatterbox comes to mind and on and on and on he goes. Finding that right moment is tricky, but once you’ve got him going, hearing what he thinks and has to say is completely rewarding.

When I mentioned to Riley about making a zine for Kristen, he asked if some of the scribbles he made could be included and of course I thought that was a great idea! So together, we picked out what each page would say and what image(s) would be on the page. I left the last page with pencil marks for him to trace his name and didn’t get a picture of where Riley traced his name with marker, but that’s okay.