A Merry Parade

Last week, we held our annual Christmas parade. It's a merry even that the clients love doing every year. This leads up to our Christmas party just before we go on break. Each classroom chooses a theme and costume, and the clients help make their outfit each year! Check out all the fun we had!

Hailey and Daniel gearing up before the parade. 

Emily and Randy the goofy snowman. 

Jason's full of Joy! 

Mayra and Shawn the Rasta Red Nosed Reindeer.

The leader of the pack this year, Sofia and Patty head up the parade. 

And they're off! 

"Everybody's worth melting for.." we'd agree with how cute Snowman Steven is! 

Santa even made an appearance to hand out candy canes to the clients! 

Jimmy's got some Christmas Spirit! 

Tony's all smiles!

Room three became Christmas trees! 

Room six was Santa himself!

Field Trip FUNdraising: How You Can Help Us Help Others

How often do you like to go out and do things? Whether it's going to the movies with friends, dinner with family, we all love going and doing things. Well, so do our clients. Each week we have six different locations we go to for each of our classrooms. It varies from the Dollar Store, the grocery store, getting a soda at McDonalds, cooking, or doing arts and crafts.

We do these field trips to help our clients be accustomed to being out in the public with other people they don't know, and help them work on their social skills. It helps them out, and gives them a chance to do things they otherwise wouldn't. Each week, it costs about $50.00 total for all of us to go and do these trips. It's not much, but by the end of the year, it runs close to nearly $3,000. That takes up a good amount of our budget by the time everything is all said and done. 

How does that matter to you? Well, we're asking for donations to help us help our clients. At the end of the year, people are looking for places to donate to help with their taxes, and we understand that. We're a nonprofit organization, and anything you donate to us is tax deductible. We're asking that you donate to us, so we can keep doing this field trips frequently. Anything will help us, and we're hoping to raise the $3,000 by the end of this year. You could donate a 'week' ($50.00), two weeks, a month, and so on. By donating, we'll also be thanking you with a sign each week donated and a photo on our Facebook and blog. If you wish to donate, we accept credit cards via our paypal (the link is located to the right of this post), or you can send a check payable to Kern County Autism Center or KCAC, to the following:
14150 Sunset Blvd
Arvin, CA 93203

We thank you ahead of time, and hope you can help us raise the money to reach our goal! 

We've got christmas musical chairs going on today! Getting the clients up and moving with some fun games!

via Kern County Autism Center http://ift.tt/1wCQsMC

via Kern County Autism Center http://ift.tt/1pPbbvm

via Kern County Autism Center http://ift.tt/1vezpLl

December 02, 2014 at 12:26PM

Our residential facility is all decorated for Christmas! Our clients love this time of year!

http://ift.tt/1vPVd0J

December 01, 2014 at 09:19AM

It's another great Monday here at Kern County Autism Center. We're all spending a cool day outside before the rain comes tomorrow!

http://ift.tt/1vPVd0J

November 26, 2014 at 07:54AM

We're celebrating Thanksgiving a day early! It's going to be a fun party day today with the clients!

http://ift.tt/1vPVd0J

KCAC Receives Thousand Dollar Grant

Christine Williams, our human resources director with Wells Fargo. 

Earlier in the month, Kern County Autism Center received a grant from Wells Fargo's Community Connections Grant Program for our facility! We do not know who nominated us, however we are incredibly grateful for the nomination, and acceptance from Wells Fargo for their decision to donate to our program! This grant is going to help us a lot in the coming year to help keep up the facility, and make even more upgrades possible to our school.

Pickin' Apples: The Annual Field Trip to Tehachapi

Every year to kick off the fall season, we pack up the vans, and we head up to the mountains to go Apple picking. For our clients, it's a fun, easy field trip that's good for everyone. Also, we've been able to forge a relationship with the Knaus family at their farm to be able to come back with our loud and rambunctious group. 

We've arrived!

Christie, our Human Resources wonder woman with Jason and John.

Hailey and Daniel were most excited to get apples to bake an apple pie back home at Park Home!

Mayra with Shawn and Sou! 

One of the greatest things about the Central Valley is the scale of just how much agriculture grows here. Apples, Corn, Almonds, Grapes, Carrots, you name it, it grows here. Fun fact: Around Kern County, and the central valley, we feed most of the state with our food grown here!

Can't just pick apples, but with a few dollars, you can get a homemade apple turnover, too!

Uriel and Mayra enjoying the cool air, a good departure from the heat of the valley. 

Randy was beyond excited to show off his apple he picked.

This was another great year to travel up to the Knaus apple farm with our group. Everyone really does look forward to days like this, and we love seeing how excited they are to do even a simple thing like walking around and picking apples to take home. 

Fall Barbecue is Coming!

What are some of the best things about the fall season? Pumpkin spice lattes? Sweatshirts and cool weather? What about a good barbecue? Sure, that's usually reserved for summertime, but when a cool breeze is blowing through the air, a good barbecue is grilling, and you're surrounded by your friends and family, what could be better?

Which is why we're going to bring back a tradition we used to do! Alicia Andresen wanted to start raising more money for KCAC, so we all brainstormed, and decided to hold a fall barbecue on October 11th, at Noble Park in Bakersfield, starting at 4:00pm. For $15 ($8 for kids 12 and under), you'll receive a barbecue dinner with all the fixin's, courtesy of Poor Boys' BBQ. 

But it doesn't stop there, we'll have raffle prizes, a photo booth, and a DJ as well! Mark this down in your calendars, and come on out! Bring your friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers, and enjoy a fun night in the park, supporting Kern County Autism Center!

As a final note, we well be accepting cash, checks, and credit cards at the door, but if you wish to buy your tickets ahead of time to skip the line, then here's how to do that!

On the right hand side of this post, you'll see a paypal donation button. Clicking on that will direct you to our paypal account. From there, enter your donation price ($15 for adults, $8 for kids 12 and under), and then when you see the small blue "+" sign saying 'List of people attending barbecue', add your names to the list, and we'll add them to our list! Once you arrive to the barbecue that evening, come straight to the front of the line, we'll check your names off the list! Skip the line and enjoy your time! We hope to see you out there!