Son's School Project - Cotton Harvesting

[jneilturner]

I homeschool my autistic 7-year old son. He does a regular curriculum, but he is very much a hands on learner so we go on lots of learning adventures.

He follows up some of these adventures by making videos about them. It helps reinforce what he learns, it helps him practice his communication and it let's others learn along with him.

Hopefully it also helps people understand more about kids with autism and what they are capable of doing.

One of our latest adventures was watching cotton get picked. Modern cotton harvesting is pretty incredible.

Please check out Please check out his video here. 

And if you would like to support him, check out and subscribe to his channel. 

He has over 30 videos and a lot of them are about agriculture.

Thanks!

[WCMO]

Nice video, good job young man!

[rickgthf]

So, how much does a cotton module weigh?  How many modules per acre? Is there any diagram available that shows just how the spindles grab the cotton and leave behind the calyx because that's got to be a net trick?

  Great video, really enjoyed it, thanks.

[jneilturner]

Module weight varies some based on conditions, but these were around 5,200 lbs.  That equates to about 3.5 finished cotton bales (just lint) weighing 500 lbs. each. The rest is seed weight and trash weight. 

Yields are usually described in bales per acre and as you can imagine, vary wildly...with todays varieties and irrigation, 4 bale per the acre is not too unusual and considered a great yield in most places.

I'd like to see close-up and slo-mo video of that doffer action, too! Maybe next year we will see if we can get a Go Pro in there.

Thanks for watching and the feedback!

You might be interested in my son's cotton ginning video that goes more into module weights and how it gets turned into a bale. https://youtu.be/FrOKU1b6g8Y 

[erniebitne11]

Oh, that's amazing! We've just subscribed! I've also got an 8-year-old autistic son, and I wonder how your son copes with school work. Now that they're back in school, Paul has a hard time communicating with his peers. We've been practicing some worksheets on worksheetsgo, and the teacher seems to be happy with his progress, but there's still room for improvement. So, any suggestions would help. And, back to the video, it's really good! Well done to both of you! We're waiting to watch the next episode, ha-ha!

[jneilturner]

Thanks for watching, subscribing and taking the time to send feedback.

Every kid is so different, I hesitate offering any advice. But I can share with you our experience. Alex doesn't like making mistakes (who does?), so most of his hesitancy was based out of fear of getting something wrong. We've been working really hard on how he reacts to making mistakes - modeling the behavior we want to see, asking him how we should handle the mistakes we make, and praising the effort not the result.

Of course, everyone has some subjects they really don't like or aren't good at. We try to space those out some and mix lots of fun activities in (fun active breaks). Alex even says now that he likes to stay calm and work on those non-preferred tasks first to get them done and have more time for other things.

I know some kids are very schedule oriented and it needs to be a routine and visual schedules can help. Those were a mixed bag with us, because if he saw something on the schedule for later in the day he didn't like, he would focus on that and be anxious.

Day to day it seems like slow progress, but anytime I look back over a year or more I am always amazed at how far we have come.

Best of luck and thanks for watching!