What is Max and Friends?
Max and Friends is a multimedia educational program for children with Autism and related developmental disorders.
Max and Friends combines the entertainment of a classic children’s television program with the rigor of an Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) approach to curriculum.
Max and Friends is fun, easy to use and, best of all, it will help children develop the critical skills that are the foundation for all learning.
The Story behind Max and Friends
Launch into Learning, LLC is an edutainment company committed to creating quality programs that both entertain and educate children.
Our team’s extensive experience in entertainment, media and education, brings together a focused program aimed at providing children with the best in educational therapy in an entertaining format appealing to many senses.
Our team includes television producers with over two decades of experience developing children’s programming and an educational specialist who has spent more than a decade developing programs to help children with developmental disabilities. Our advisor, Karen Mulcahy Walsh, has an undergraduate degree in special education and a graduate degree in elementary education as well as graduate certificates in School District Administration and Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). She also is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA). Through her work with school districts and as an independent consultant, she has developed home based programs that use family involvement to replicate ABA therapy in the home environment.
To the Parents
We have found that parent training and home participation has always been a key component of a successful educational program. It is obvious that students spend far more time at home with their parents where many teachable moments exist. The Max and Friends program distills much of what is included in an educational program into a system that can be used at home and act as a viable reinforcement.
The program includes a Parent Manual that helps educate parents in: How to use the program What to teach Teaching techniques Data gathering and analysis Follow up – generalization, maintenance and incidental teaching
To the Teachers
Max and Friends is a unique way of promoting quality educational progress for children with Autism in the most natural of settings. Autism statistics are increasing yearly at an alarming rate. With more and more students diagnosed with Autism, it is essential that they have quality programming for their unique educational needs.
Students with Autism can have a variety of deficits and “splinter” skills. This means that they may have deficits in one area but not another. Many of these splinter skills are in the area of communication, socialization and cognitive development. If you use the analogy of building a house, you cannot build a solid structure unless you have a solid foundation. If the foundation has gaps or cracks, they must be filled immediately or the building will tumble. Many of the splinter skills for children with Autism are the prerequisite skills for learning resulting in gaps in their educational foundation. Max and Friends helps fill some of these gaps.
