If you've been reading here very long, you've seen that my 7 year old (who'll be 8 in February) can't read. At all. You'll also know that we're working on it, with guidance from the experts who tell us that he has a laundry list of things standing between him and literacy. And you'll know that we see that list more like cones to drive around than a wall to scale; in other words, The Chemist and I don't really accept the possibility that The Adventurer might not ever learn to read. He will learn, and we'll help him on every step of the journey from here to literacy, however long it takes. Period.
This past weekend, we had a little, really big, victory in that arena and I just have to share it with you.
On Friday, The Adventurer asked for a book to be read to him over and over and over again. I read it to him once, and The Artist (his 12 yr old brother) read it to him two or three times, and The Adventurer laughed and giggled through every reading.
I noticed while I was reading, which happened to be the third reading of the day, that he was beginning to whisper the dialogue portions under his breath as I read them, anticipating the text just a bit.
Now, pretty much anyone who has ever read to a child, even one as young as three or four years old, knows that kids tend to memorize text when it is repetitive and predictable enough. Most children can, when being read a book like that, fill in the last word or two if the reader pauses and lets them. Think about Green Eggs & Ham --- everyone knows "I do not like them, Sam I Am!" comes at the end of just about every page. Even three and four year olds, once they've heard the book often enough, and they will gleefully say that phrase along with their parent, or instead of, if the parent stops and lets the child fill in the missing words. Nearly every parent on the planet knows this, has experienced it.
The Adventurer has never done that. Not once. In all his nearly eight years, he has never filled in a missing word, never completed the next line, never shouted out with glee "I do not like them, Sam I Am!" when I paused in reading Green Eggs & Ham to him. Never. Not with any book, even the ones that he has been read on a nearly daily basis.
To say that I was excited that he was now whispering the dialogue along with me......yea, that would be an understatement. I was pretty much giddy, but I tried not to show it and just kept reading. The Adventurer has the sort of personality that, if you cheer for him too soon over something he's still unsure of, he'll stop doing it. So, I kept a poker face (more or less) and just finished the story.
But that is not the end. What happened on Saturday is what really excited me.
We were in the car, heading out for dinner. The Adventurer piped up from the back seat that "if we had a fat cat, and a pet rat, and a mat, and a crazy broom, that would be a recipe for trouble!" and continued on to explain to his father, The Chemist, that he knows this because of the book from Friday; the back of the book clearly states that if you have a fat cat, a pet rat, a mat and a crazy broom, then you have a recipe for trouble.
I stifled a grin as I listened to him quote this, and then stifled a few laughs as he went on to explain that it really should be a fat and lazy cat, even though the book doesn't say lazy. And definitely it has to be a pet rat, not just an ordinary rat. And a crazy broom, not a normal broom. And then.....then he asked his dad, "Do you want to hear the book, Dad?"
When The Chemist answered, "Sure," The Adventurer went on to quote the story.
Not summarize. Not just a word here and there. The entire story, the repetitive dialogue of each character (a rat, a bat, a hat, a cat, and a witch). In order. Getting every line right, each time. Beginning to end, with voice inflection and everything, just the way it had been read to him the day before.
I did not stifle that grin, did not even try to. I did hold back the tears, just barely. I did not hold back the praise; confident that he was confident, I said as nonchalantly as I could that I was proud of him, that he did a great job remembering the story and telling it to Daddy. The Adventurer confessed he skipped a part (he did); I told him that was okay. He moved on to other topics of conversation, and I just kept smiling.
No, he's not reading yet. No, the fact he can memorize a story does not mean he'll be reading next week. But it does mean that the work we're doing is working. A skill that he simply couldn't do in the past, mastered. Progress. Hope. Proof that he can do this. And for that, I couldn't be happier.
Monday, January 28, 2013
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Benefits of Homeschooling
Mindy at Grateful for Grace is at it again, this time asking "If you had 5 minutes to sum up the benefits of homeschooling, what would you share?" Wow. Ummm........
As she didn't have a chance for deep thought before answering, I'm just going to dive in and say what comes to mind.
For me, the biggest benefit is that it allows us the freedom to set our own travel schedule. We are able to go with The Chemist on business trips; we are able to travel to the US regardless of school season; we are able to vacation in the off-season when prices are lower and people are fewer; we are able to be in charge of our own time rather than handing over those reigns to an institution. This is the single biggest thing that has kept us from using more structured options, and is the biggest factor in which on-line program we chose for our oldest son. Seriously.
I struggled with handing over the educational reigns when we first chose to use an on-line program; it was hard to resign as teacher and become only mom (at least to that son). I was not willing, none of us were, to also hand over control of our schedule. A school does not know our family enough to get to tell me (us) when we can vacation, when we can take a holiday, or that we can or cannot travel with The Chemist when he has long business trips. That flexibility is a benefit we hold tightly; no surprise that it's the first thing that springs to mind for me.
Other benefits.....the ability to meet each child exactly where he is. If we need to spend 18 months on Algebra, because I foolishly jumped from 7th grade math straight into Algebra (skipping over Pre-Algebra), we can.
If a child needs to move through more readers in a month than some of his siblings read in a year, we can do that, too. If one child needs for me to scribe for him (he dictates, I write) because of difficulties with handwriting, I can do that and I don't even need an outside expert to give me permission or authorize it for me.
If we need to stop and spend 6 months on multiplication facts before returning to regular math, we can. If, after that amount of drill, the child is ready to speed through the regular math, we can accelerate our pace and he can speed through.
If another child needs intense remediation to learn to read, we can do that, too (though we did in that case seek out expert help). Each child, each student, gets exactly what he needs, at exactly the right time and at the right pace. No one is forced to move too quickly, or too slowly, through the study material because there is not a class full of other students who are setting the pace.
There's more, of course. Family togetherness, though I think even non-homeschooling families can have that. Tailoring not only the pace, but the subject matter as well, to the needs of each student. For example, I can skip over books about giant tidal waves when I'm working with a child with major anxiety. Or I can read it to him, as an example of how people survived such an event, in hopes it encourages him. The key factor is, I get to decide, because I know my child best. And even now that some of mine are in on-line programs, with someone else dictating what they read, I can read alongside each one and help them navigate these sometimes muddy waters.
We can tailor not just the subject matter, but also the curriculum, the learning/teaching style. If one student needs a workbook approach, we can do that. If another needs a very hands-on, project based approach, we can do that. Never has that been more true than now with The Adventurer; he is using very few of the curriculum choices that worked for his older brothers, because he learns very differently than they did.
If the boys had all attended public school, The Adventurer would now be expected to learn in whatever manner his teacher used; she would not be able to adapt her teaching style to meet him where he is. As his mom & homeschool teacher, I can do what she cannot: I can, and have, adapt my teaching methods so that they are exactly the style through which he best learns.
These are the biggies for me, for my family. We remain in control of our schedule; we set the school pace to meet the needs of the student rather than force the student to meet the pace of the school; and we tailor the curriculum & subject matter to meet the learning styles, interest & other needs of the student rather than force a square peg into a round hole. I suppose all three of those fall under the heading of flexibility, in one way or another. What it means to me, though, is that we can give totally individualized, tailor-made tutoring for each individual student. At a fraction of what that would cost us if we were to outsource such a thing.
That's the benefit, for us. What about you? Which benefits make your list?
As she didn't have a chance for deep thought before answering, I'm just going to dive in and say what comes to mind.
For me, the biggest benefit is that it allows us the freedom to set our own travel schedule. We are able to go with The Chemist on business trips; we are able to travel to the US regardless of school season; we are able to vacation in the off-season when prices are lower and people are fewer; we are able to be in charge of our own time rather than handing over those reigns to an institution. This is the single biggest thing that has kept us from using more structured options, and is the biggest factor in which on-line program we chose for our oldest son. Seriously.
I struggled with handing over the educational reigns when we first chose to use an on-line program; it was hard to resign as teacher and become only mom (at least to that son). I was not willing, none of us were, to also hand over control of our schedule. A school does not know our family enough to get to tell me (us) when we can vacation, when we can take a holiday, or that we can or cannot travel with The Chemist when he has long business trips. That flexibility is a benefit we hold tightly; no surprise that it's the first thing that springs to mind for me.
Other benefits.....the ability to meet each child exactly where he is. If we need to spend 18 months on Algebra, because I foolishly jumped from 7th grade math straight into Algebra (skipping over Pre-Algebra), we can.
If a child needs to move through more readers in a month than some of his siblings read in a year, we can do that, too. If one child needs for me to scribe for him (he dictates, I write) because of difficulties with handwriting, I can do that and I don't even need an outside expert to give me permission or authorize it for me.
If we need to stop and spend 6 months on multiplication facts before returning to regular math, we can. If, after that amount of drill, the child is ready to speed through the regular math, we can accelerate our pace and he can speed through.
If another child needs intense remediation to learn to read, we can do that, too (though we did in that case seek out expert help). Each child, each student, gets exactly what he needs, at exactly the right time and at the right pace. No one is forced to move too quickly, or too slowly, through the study material because there is not a class full of other students who are setting the pace.
There's more, of course. Family togetherness, though I think even non-homeschooling families can have that. Tailoring not only the pace, but the subject matter as well, to the needs of each student. For example, I can skip over books about giant tidal waves when I'm working with a child with major anxiety. Or I can read it to him, as an example of how people survived such an event, in hopes it encourages him. The key factor is, I get to decide, because I know my child best. And even now that some of mine are in on-line programs, with someone else dictating what they read, I can read alongside each one and help them navigate these sometimes muddy waters.
We can tailor not just the subject matter, but also the curriculum, the learning/teaching style. If one student needs a workbook approach, we can do that. If another needs a very hands-on, project based approach, we can do that. Never has that been more true than now with The Adventurer; he is using very few of the curriculum choices that worked for his older brothers, because he learns very differently than they did.
If the boys had all attended public school, The Adventurer would now be expected to learn in whatever manner his teacher used; she would not be able to adapt her teaching style to meet him where he is. As his mom & homeschool teacher, I can do what she cannot: I can, and have, adapt my teaching methods so that they are exactly the style through which he best learns.
These are the biggies for me, for my family. We remain in control of our schedule; we set the school pace to meet the needs of the student rather than force the student to meet the pace of the school; and we tailor the curriculum & subject matter to meet the learning styles, interest & other needs of the student rather than force a square peg into a round hole. I suppose all three of those fall under the heading of flexibility, in one way or another. What it means to me, though, is that we can give totally individualized, tailor-made tutoring for each individual student. At a fraction of what that would cost us if we were to outsource such a thing.
That's the benefit, for us. What about you? Which benefits make your list?
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Home Again....Let the Decompression Begin
Mondays. I hate them. Especially Mondays that are the first day back after a break. The weekend break is bad enough, but add in returning from a week's vacation....yuck.
Yesterday was the worst Monday we've had in a very long time. The Adventurer was extremely not impressed to be back in a normal routine. Our week away, which was truly wonderful, really did something to his attitude. He gets very unsettled when we travel, and I suppose since it's been a long time since our last trip, it was worse this time. Either that or it's been long enough that I've forgotten; maybe it's always this bad.
He was quite out of sorts while on the trip, although only when I tried to inject structure into the non-structure environment of vacation. He was absolutely delightful in the down times, when nothing was expected of him but to have fun. And he was a delight this weekend, again, no expectations.
Then Monday morning came.
He is genetically predisposed to hate Mondays; you should see his father. Everyone at work knows, don't talk to The Chemist on a Monday before lunch. After lunch is probably okay, but not before. So it really shouldn't have surprised me, but it did. Like I said, it's been a long time since we've had such a rough morning.
Ironically, once it was time to do school, he was fine. Thank goodness. He started off cranky, though, and just got crankier. Right up to lunch time.
Normally, a cranky Adventurer means one of two things: tired, or hungry/low blood sugar. Yesterday, though, it wasn't either. He'd gone to bed early the night before, woke up at his normal time, ate breakfast.....and was still a screaming, kicking, fighting mess of a cranky boy. Hooray for Mondays.
The art of distraction brought a lull, and when he started back up I just picked him up and carried him to the hammock for a reset swing. He fought me all the way, but once I got him into the hammock and started swinging, the fight just melted away. Slowly, but it melted. See, one thing I hadn't mentioned yet is that he also has Sensory Processing Disorder.
In some ways he is a sensory avoider --- he detests loud noises, sticky, messy hands, and being touched on the head; in fact, fastest way to become his worst enemy? touch him on the head.
In other ways, he is a sensory seeker --- he likes to swing fast and high, be swaddled in blankets, and the bigger, scarier the movement, the better. I've found that a nice swing in the hammock, starting low & slow and building to fast & high, is a near miraculous reset button for him when he's stuck in a tantrum. Yesterday was no different, and I only wish I'd remembered earlier in the day. Once he had his swing time, he was fine.
Meanwhile, The Writer jumped right back into school; I am so proud of this boy's work ethic. He knows what he has to do, and he does it. Period. No argument, no fussing, no complaints, just diligent work until it's done. He escaped to his room to read during the loudest parts of the shouting, but he kept working and got everything done that he needed to do.
The Artist took a bit of warming up. He is the cutest work-avoider ever, because he asks, smile on his face, if he can skip math. Or English. Or science. Or school all together. The giant grin shows that he knows the answer will be no, and that he's accepted that, but he can't help asking just in case. Who knows, maybe one day I'll say yes. I love that he gets right down to work as soon as I say he really does have to; he asks to be let off, but accepts the answer graciously. Like I said, cutest work-avoider ever.
Once The Adventurer was nicely reset and after he ate lunch, we did his school. I did give him a light day to ease him back into working (and because I was exhausted after the difficult morning); a Scribbles page, I read his history and Bible to him (comprehension today was only so-so), and then we did math. He is finally getting those teens and higher numbers, without forgetting or mixing any up. Yay!
He is still struggling with the wording of "less than" and remembering what that means (as in, what's one less than 27?). He can easily go forward and add; he has a bit of trouble going backwards/subtracting. We were told to keep an eye out for dyscalculia (aka, math dyslexia, basically.....); I imagine this is a part of that, but hopefully he'll overcome it easier than the reading.
So far this morning, everyone is in a better mood. Here's hoping we had only a one day decompression and the rest of the week will go smoothly.
How was your Monday??
Yesterday was the worst Monday we've had in a very long time. The Adventurer was extremely not impressed to be back in a normal routine. Our week away, which was truly wonderful, really did something to his attitude. He gets very unsettled when we travel, and I suppose since it's been a long time since our last trip, it was worse this time. Either that or it's been long enough that I've forgotten; maybe it's always this bad.
He was quite out of sorts while on the trip, although only when I tried to inject structure into the non-structure environment of vacation. He was absolutely delightful in the down times, when nothing was expected of him but to have fun. And he was a delight this weekend, again, no expectations.
Then Monday morning came.
He is genetically predisposed to hate Mondays; you should see his father. Everyone at work knows, don't talk to The Chemist on a Monday before lunch. After lunch is probably okay, but not before. So it really shouldn't have surprised me, but it did. Like I said, it's been a long time since we've had such a rough morning.
Ironically, once it was time to do school, he was fine. Thank goodness. He started off cranky, though, and just got crankier. Right up to lunch time.
Normally, a cranky Adventurer means one of two things: tired, or hungry/low blood sugar. Yesterday, though, it wasn't either. He'd gone to bed early the night before, woke up at his normal time, ate breakfast.....and was still a screaming, kicking, fighting mess of a cranky boy. Hooray for Mondays.
The art of distraction brought a lull, and when he started back up I just picked him up and carried him to the hammock for a reset swing. He fought me all the way, but once I got him into the hammock and started swinging, the fight just melted away. Slowly, but it melted. See, one thing I hadn't mentioned yet is that he also has Sensory Processing Disorder.
In some ways he is a sensory avoider --- he detests loud noises, sticky, messy hands, and being touched on the head; in fact, fastest way to become his worst enemy? touch him on the head.
In other ways, he is a sensory seeker --- he likes to swing fast and high, be swaddled in blankets, and the bigger, scarier the movement, the better. I've found that a nice swing in the hammock, starting low & slow and building to fast & high, is a near miraculous reset button for him when he's stuck in a tantrum. Yesterday was no different, and I only wish I'd remembered earlier in the day. Once he had his swing time, he was fine.
Meanwhile, The Writer jumped right back into school; I am so proud of this boy's work ethic. He knows what he has to do, and he does it. Period. No argument, no fussing, no complaints, just diligent work until it's done. He escaped to his room to read during the loudest parts of the shouting, but he kept working and got everything done that he needed to do.
The Artist took a bit of warming up. He is the cutest work-avoider ever, because he asks, smile on his face, if he can skip math. Or English. Or science. Or school all together. The giant grin shows that he knows the answer will be no, and that he's accepted that, but he can't help asking just in case. Who knows, maybe one day I'll say yes. I love that he gets right down to work as soon as I say he really does have to; he asks to be let off, but accepts the answer graciously. Like I said, cutest work-avoider ever.
Once The Adventurer was nicely reset and after he ate lunch, we did his school. I did give him a light day to ease him back into working (and because I was exhausted after the difficult morning); a Scribbles page, I read his history and Bible to him (comprehension today was only so-so), and then we did math. He is finally getting those teens and higher numbers, without forgetting or mixing any up. Yay!
He is still struggling with the wording of "less than" and remembering what that means (as in, what's one less than 27?). He can easily go forward and add; he has a bit of trouble going backwards/subtracting. We were told to keep an eye out for dyscalculia (aka, math dyslexia, basically.....); I imagine this is a part of that, but hopefully he'll overcome it easier than the reading.
So far this morning, everyone is in a better mood. Here's hoping we had only a one day decompression and the rest of the week will go smoothly.
How was your Monday??
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Homeschooling on the Road: Flexibility at its Finest
For my last post in the "Day in the Life..." Home School Link-Up party at Grateful for Grace, I thought I'd highlight the reality of the past week for us: Homeschooling on vacation. Or rather, on a business trip.
The Chemist has to travel for work; roughly 25% of his year is spent away from home on one business trip or another. Sometimes, that means he leaves early in the morning, flies to a nearby city to visit clients, then returns late that same night. Sometimes it means he goes for 2 to 3 days at a time, and sometimes, like this past week, it means he is gone for five days straight.
We can't always go with him, but when everything lines up just right, we love to tag along. As he doesn't usually have more than a few weeks' notice that he has a trip coming up, it is usually a last-minute type affair. Flexibility in action. This past week was no exception to that rule.
With only 2 week's notice, I scrambled over Christmas break to rearrange the 6 week lesson plans that I'd just completed, so that one week would then reflect "go on a trip with Dad" and thus lighter work loads. Lighter in the sense of less work than normal, and in the sense of "I'd rather not pack all those bulky, heavy textbooks..." as well.
Since we do have an outside deadline this year, due to using an on-line distance learning program, I couldn't just give the boys the week off altogether; they are closing in on crunch time and need to finish this last six weeks of material in time to request final exams, take said exams, submit, get them back graded, and still have time to retake the exams if needed (their program allows only the final exam to be retaken, and only once; I doubt we'll need to use the do-over option, but just in case, I want them to have time to exercise that right).
Plans rearranged, we packed up. Three laptops. Art supplies. A few textbooks. Notepads, paper, pencils, crayons. Coloring book and math workbooks. Assignment folders. Big plans to catch up on some time-intensive projects. Even that had to be flexed a bit as the week came together. Here's a typical day...
7:00 -- up & at 'em so we can all eat breakfast together before The Chemist goes to work for the day
8:00 -- breakfast in the hotel: cake, jello, scrambled eggs, bread, cheese, grilled sandwiches, fresh orange juice, chocolate milk, fresh fruit. No coffee, because the hotel coffee was horrid. Which is crazy, given where I live.
9:00 -- The Chemist goes to work for the day; I check email, link my already written blog-posts up, check Facebook, etc. while the boys either finish waking up, play, sleep a bit longer, whatever.
10:00 -- Okay, really; school. I direct The Writer to read & summarize the article over the Arizona Immigration Law and do that paper for Geography; I instruct The Artist to do his English assignments (I first make him daily pages to fill in so he can brainstorm for his short story assignment), and I sit down with The Adventurer for a nice, quiet math session. Except, no one told The Adventurer it was to be a nice, quiet session.
10:01 -- The Adventurer is beside himself with anger, frustration, and defiance. Learning challenges at their ugliest; taken out of his home routine, all the little signals he looks to that help him understand his surroundings are gone, so he is out of sorts (because, remember, everything coming in visually or auditorally is garbled). He thrives in routine; the predictability takes away the guess work and the effort he has to put forth to understand what we want him to do.
Also, he finds great comfort in his familiar surroundings, toys, games, etc. I bring as much as possible for him, but two under-bed sized boxes of Legos just do not pack well when traveling. He fights me, mightily, about having to do school. Full on, haven't seen this level of anger in a very long time, meltdown. Kicking, screaming, yelling meltdown. I stay calm (really), love him through it, and eventually we do a math page, a Scribbles page, and some sequencing cards. We are both exhausted at the end of it.
11:45 -- The Adventurer is still cranky, even though we've just finished his school work. He wants me to make The Artist play with him, but The Artist still lacks Science before his school day is over. The Writer has stared at the same article for the past hour & a half, unable to summarize it because in the confines of our hotel suite, he can't think over the screaming. I declare a break for lunch --- down to the beach. Go. Now.
11:48 -- we stop for ice cream or a snack and then sit on the beach for a few hours. One day was ice cream, another day snacks & drinks from a beach-side restaurant, another day we stayed in and watched a movie instead. Some days the fussing did not last quite so long, but we had to take this break every day. The Adventurer is instantly transformed once he's had a bite of food and is turned loose to play in the sand & the surf. I relax and enjoy the moment.
1:15 -- while The Artist & Adventurer play, The Writer sits with me in the shade of a tree, sipping fresh juice on the beach. He picks up a handful of sand, sifts it onto a white napkin, and comments on all the colors. Intrigued by the awe in his voice, I scoop up my own handful of sand, eager for this moment of precious connection with my oldest son. He's right; the sand is multi-colored; grains of red, pink, orange, yellow, tan, white, clear, gray & black, plus some that sparkle like diamonds when the sun hits them. Beautiful. Without looking closely like this, it just looks tan & black. I love that my son looks for ways to see beauty, and shares it with me when he finds it. Precious.
2:00 -- back to the room. The Adventurer has been a delight while we took our break; The Writer reads the next part of Romeo & Juliet and takes his on-line quiz for that section; he did very well with this, reading more than I thought he would and finishing the play & all quizzes. Now he just has to create a soundtrack for the play (using 20th century music, though from any part of the 20th century) and he'll be done with that unit. The Artist does his science, and The Adventurer fusses only a little while I set up a movie for him to watch; I sit with him for a bit, he settles in and watches Sponge Bob, and the next hour & a half is quiet. I read a free book I downloaded to my Kindle, once I've finished scheduling Geography for The Artist.
3:30 -- The Chemist is done for the day and home from work. The Artist & The Writer are done with school for the day. The Writer promises to try the Geography project tomorrow (he will finish it this weekend, as it just was impossible to get done). The Adventurer is all smiles, mostly, and makes it hard for The Chemist to believe just how grumpy he'd been earlier. We go back to the beach for the afternoon, where we all share a snack & drinks. *our hotel was literally across the street from the beach. Nothing fancy, just a beach town where everything is across from the beach...
6:30 -- up from the beach; showers, change into non-sandy clothes, walk to dinner.
9:30 -- home from dinner; brush teeth, put on a movie for the boys, in bed by 10:00 because we are all tired.
Far less school work got done than I had planned; The Artist did pretty well, though 2 papers are still not written. The Writer did well, considering the challenges. He did very well with R&J, never did write the sonnet he was supposed to write, tried the geography project, and I never even mentioned geometry or art to him, as we just did not have time. The Adventurer's outbursts in the morning meant I was not available to help; The Chemist's short days meant we did not have sufficient time for long days of school; our mandatory break in the middle likewise cut our time for school short.
But. We will just keep being flexible. Projects can be homework, done evenings & weekends. The boys understand and accept this, no problems. The time together was priceless; despite the very rocky mornings, I am very glad we went. I am grateful, again, for the flexibility we have to just get up & go when The Chemist asks us to tag along.
This side of flexibility (vs. the kind you need when kids are sick, life interrupts, etc.) is my favorite part of home education; we set the hours, days, and overall schedule. Love that. Absolutely love it.
The Chemist has to travel for work; roughly 25% of his year is spent away from home on one business trip or another. Sometimes, that means he leaves early in the morning, flies to a nearby city to visit clients, then returns late that same night. Sometimes it means he goes for 2 to 3 days at a time, and sometimes, like this past week, it means he is gone for five days straight.
We can't always go with him, but when everything lines up just right, we love to tag along. As he doesn't usually have more than a few weeks' notice that he has a trip coming up, it is usually a last-minute type affair. Flexibility in action. This past week was no exception to that rule.
With only 2 week's notice, I scrambled over Christmas break to rearrange the 6 week lesson plans that I'd just completed, so that one week would then reflect "go on a trip with Dad" and thus lighter work loads. Lighter in the sense of less work than normal, and in the sense of "I'd rather not pack all those bulky, heavy textbooks..." as well.
Since we do have an outside deadline this year, due to using an on-line distance learning program, I couldn't just give the boys the week off altogether; they are closing in on crunch time and need to finish this last six weeks of material in time to request final exams, take said exams, submit, get them back graded, and still have time to retake the exams if needed (their program allows only the final exam to be retaken, and only once; I doubt we'll need to use the do-over option, but just in case, I want them to have time to exercise that right).
Plans rearranged, we packed up. Three laptops. Art supplies. A few textbooks. Notepads, paper, pencils, crayons. Coloring book and math workbooks. Assignment folders. Big plans to catch up on some time-intensive projects. Even that had to be flexed a bit as the week came together. Here's a typical day...
7:00 -- up & at 'em so we can all eat breakfast together before The Chemist goes to work for the day
8:00 -- breakfast in the hotel: cake, jello, scrambled eggs, bread, cheese, grilled sandwiches, fresh orange juice, chocolate milk, fresh fruit. No coffee, because the hotel coffee was horrid. Which is crazy, given where I live.
9:00 -- The Chemist goes to work for the day; I check email, link my already written blog-posts up, check Facebook, etc. while the boys either finish waking up, play, sleep a bit longer, whatever.
10:00 -- Okay, really; school. I direct The Writer to read & summarize the article over the Arizona Immigration Law and do that paper for Geography; I instruct The Artist to do his English assignments (I first make him daily pages to fill in so he can brainstorm for his short story assignment), and I sit down with The Adventurer for a nice, quiet math session. Except, no one told The Adventurer it was to be a nice, quiet session.
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| The Artist, being goofy, looking at his assignment folder for the day |
10:01 -- The Adventurer is beside himself with anger, frustration, and defiance. Learning challenges at their ugliest; taken out of his home routine, all the little signals he looks to that help him understand his surroundings are gone, so he is out of sorts (because, remember, everything coming in visually or auditorally is garbled). He thrives in routine; the predictability takes away the guess work and the effort he has to put forth to understand what we want him to do.
Also, he finds great comfort in his familiar surroundings, toys, games, etc. I bring as much as possible for him, but two under-bed sized boxes of Legos just do not pack well when traveling. He fights me, mightily, about having to do school. Full on, haven't seen this level of anger in a very long time, meltdown. Kicking, screaming, yelling meltdown. I stay calm (really), love him through it, and eventually we do a math page, a Scribbles page, and some sequencing cards. We are both exhausted at the end of it.
11:45 -- The Adventurer is still cranky, even though we've just finished his school work. He wants me to make The Artist play with him, but The Artist still lacks Science before his school day is over. The Writer has stared at the same article for the past hour & a half, unable to summarize it because in the confines of our hotel suite, he can't think over the screaming. I declare a break for lunch --- down to the beach. Go. Now.
11:48 -- we stop for ice cream or a snack and then sit on the beach for a few hours. One day was ice cream, another day snacks & drinks from a beach-side restaurant, another day we stayed in and watched a movie instead. Some days the fussing did not last quite so long, but we had to take this break every day. The Adventurer is instantly transformed once he's had a bite of food and is turned loose to play in the sand & the surf. I relax and enjoy the moment.
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| The Artist & The Adventurer play in the sand & surf |
1:15 -- while The Artist & Adventurer play, The Writer sits with me in the shade of a tree, sipping fresh juice on the beach. He picks up a handful of sand, sifts it onto a white napkin, and comments on all the colors. Intrigued by the awe in his voice, I scoop up my own handful of sand, eager for this moment of precious connection with my oldest son. He's right; the sand is multi-colored; grains of red, pink, orange, yellow, tan, white, clear, gray & black, plus some that sparkle like diamonds when the sun hits them. Beautiful. Without looking closely like this, it just looks tan & black. I love that my son looks for ways to see beauty, and shares it with me when he finds it. Precious.
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| The Writer & I sit in the shade |
2:00 -- back to the room. The Adventurer has been a delight while we took our break; The Writer reads the next part of Romeo & Juliet and takes his on-line quiz for that section; he did very well with this, reading more than I thought he would and finishing the play & all quizzes. Now he just has to create a soundtrack for the play (using 20th century music, though from any part of the 20th century) and he'll be done with that unit. The Artist does his science, and The Adventurer fusses only a little while I set up a movie for him to watch; I sit with him for a bit, he settles in and watches Sponge Bob, and the next hour & a half is quiet. I read a free book I downloaded to my Kindle, once I've finished scheduling Geography for The Artist.
3:30 -- The Chemist is done for the day and home from work. The Artist & The Writer are done with school for the day. The Writer promises to try the Geography project tomorrow (he will finish it this weekend, as it just was impossible to get done). The Adventurer is all smiles, mostly, and makes it hard for The Chemist to believe just how grumpy he'd been earlier. We go back to the beach for the afternoon, where we all share a snack & drinks. *our hotel was literally across the street from the beach. Nothing fancy, just a beach town where everything is across from the beach...
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| a crab we saw on the beach his big brothers (much bigger) become snacks later, but I did not take pics of those |
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| our hotel, seen from the beach. The white building with all the balconies. our room was on the side and did not face the beach directly. |
6:30 -- up from the beach; showers, change into non-sandy clothes, walk to dinner.
9:30 -- home from dinner; brush teeth, put on a movie for the boys, in bed by 10:00 because we are all tired.
Far less school work got done than I had planned; The Artist did pretty well, though 2 papers are still not written. The Writer did well, considering the challenges. He did very well with R&J, never did write the sonnet he was supposed to write, tried the geography project, and I never even mentioned geometry or art to him, as we just did not have time. The Adventurer's outbursts in the morning meant I was not available to help; The Chemist's short days meant we did not have sufficient time for long days of school; our mandatory break in the middle likewise cut our time for school short.
But. We will just keep being flexible. Projects can be homework, done evenings & weekends. The boys understand and accept this, no problems. The time together was priceless; despite the very rocky mornings, I am very glad we went. I am grateful, again, for the flexibility we have to just get up & go when The Chemist asks us to tag along.
This side of flexibility (vs. the kind you need when kids are sick, life interrupts, etc.) is my favorite part of home education; we set the hours, days, and overall schedule. Love that. Absolutely love it.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
The Plan, The Hope, The Road to Literacy
Yesterday I shared our journey to diagnosis; today, I will detail the plan that fuels my hope. As there is much work to be done, the plan is lengthy and detailed, so the post is long.
Once we had a diagnosis, names to put to all the things standing in the way of The Adventurer's ability to learn, we set out to find answers. Tools. Activities. A plan.
The Edu-Psych we used was an absolute gem in that regard; if any of my readers are in the Houston area and need an evaluation for their child, let me know, I will pass on her name and information. She was a treasure to us. She provided in her report not only a name for the problem, but also 13 pages of curriculum suggestions, adaptive technologies we should begin using, free activities I could do with The Adventurer at home, links to websites that have games and materials that can serve as therapeutic activities for him, and referrals for follow-up testing.
She also wrote out what accommodations he would need in a typical classroom setting, so that I would feel free to adapt and so that if we ever put him into a typical classroom, we will have the first step in place to getting him the help he needs. She gave us a plan, a plan that holds out hope. A plan that will lead to success.
It has taken me from September until now, early January, to turn all of her suggestions into a workable routine. I was, at first, very overwhelmed. There is a LOT that needs to be worked on. I laid all of that out in the last post, so I won't go over it again. Trust me when I say it has been a very daunting task, I have had many moments of panic and fear of failure. I have stared, weeping, into The Chemist's eyes and cried, "I can't do this" with a despair that made his heart ache as much as mine. Yet every time, he calmed me, reassured me, and directed me back to the materials, the curriculums, the activities that the Edu-Psych suggested and that we bought, and reminded me that yes, yes I can.
He's right. We have a name for what we're fighting. We have tools. Others have gone before and written curriculum and software and games that have been proven to work against this. We are not all alone, and we do have hope and a plan.
So, what is the plan? In a nutshell......
*he does a Scribbles page while I read Bible & History out-loud
*we do one activity from the Therapy Drawer
*I teach him the next math lesson in the book, and he does the assignment in the workbook
*we do another activity from the Therapy Drawer
*we do Handwriting Without Tears (HWT), cycling through the various hands-on activities
*he gets time for free play, usually with math manipulatives or handwriting manipulatives
*after this break, he does Computer School (aka, therapy software)
*and when he is done, he picks a fun game for a rewared
Now, what does all of that mean???
Scribbles Pages --- this is a directed coloring book. What that means is that each 2-page spread has a one-sentence instruction across the top. Today, for example, he had "Who is looking out of the windows? Draw them." Below that was a house and a barn, with three empty windows showing. He drew a stick-figure person in one, a cat in another (with a trip to my kitchen window to show that the cat was standing on the windowsill), and a skeleton in the third window. This works his following directions skills as well as fine motor skills, and helps him to transition from Not School Time to School Time. Mostly this is transition, so he can get his brain into school mode.
Math --- we use Singapore Math as his primary math, with Miquon sometimes thrown in, and LOTS of hands-on with math manipulatives. Counting bears, counting squares, linking cubes, gram/centimeter cubes, pattern blocks (with several sets of cards to use with them), Cuisenaire Rods, and Base 10 Unit Sticks (the little marked rods that show 1, 10, or 100). He is working through book 1B of Singapore right now, and Miquon Orange.
HWT --- he is doing a quick pass through the PreK book (reviewing each letter, learning the HWT way of making each letter, reviewing sounds letters make, etc.) before moving on to the K level book. I expect we will spend roughly 5 to 7 weeks going through the PreK book before going forward.
We follow a routine with this; Monday I show the Capital Letter Card for each letter we'll cover that week, and he uses the wooden pieces to make each one on the outline that is on the card. Tuesday he uses the mat to make the letters, only looking at the card if needed, then he traces some of the letters in the workbook. Wednesday he traces the remaining letters and uses play dough to make them (using the Roll-a-Dough kit). Thursday he draws each letter on a slate, with chalk, using the Wet-Dry-Try method as outlined in HWT. Friday we do the letter/picture matching that is on the back of each capital letter card and review what the lower case version looks like.
Computer School --- he is using a software called Earobics for help with his Auditory Processing and Phonemic Awareness; he will need to make serious progress in this before we begin the reading curriculums (yes, plural) that we will one day use to teach him to read. I will detail this in a later post, but basically it involves identifying rhyming sounds, are two sounds the same or different, does a spoken word contain a target sound, and learning to do all of those while background noise is masking the target sounds. The software auto-adjusts based on his proficiency.
Finally, what is in the Therapy Drawer?? I cycle through the activities in this drawer now; from September to December we did just these activities, 30 minutes a day of working on something from each category. That is while we were waiting on the curriculum to come in (mail takes a while from US to S. America). He likes rotating much better. Here's what we do, and what area each activity targets.
Random Access Naming -- I keep a variety of flashcards in the drawer, and we do 2 minute drills. I show a card to The Adventurer, he names the object on the card, I write down how many objects he named in a 2 minute time span. This speeds up how long it takes his eyes to see something, his brain to get the message, and then send the name to his mouth, and his mouth to verbalize the answer.
When we started, he got 12 to 15 objects in a 1 minute period. He now gets over 50 in 2 minutes. For variety & double-duty, I use First Thousand Words (by Usborne); I have him quickly name all the objects that are around the page, then we play hide & seek, finding each object in the picture. That works his visual scanning/visual processing speed, yet feels like one activity.
Digit-Span -- this is a fancy name for "how many letters, numbers, words, or combo thereof can you remember if said to you in a row?" I use number flashcards and games for this. When we started, I would just go through saying the digits of all the family birthdays. It was exhausting to think up numbers. Flashcards are much easier; I pull 4 to 6 random cards, show them & say them (hiding them once shown), and then he has to repeat back to me the numbers I said. He is supposed to do this backwards, too, but we've not worked up to that yet. This is to strengthen his working memory.
For variety, I use games such as "I'm going to Grandma's, and I'm taking a ......" where I say one object, he repeats the phrase & my object, then adds his own object; I repeat the whole thing back to him and add a 3rd object, and so forth & so on. I also double this up by changing where we are going; another activity we're to do is "name things in a given category" so I will say "I went to the beach and I saw...." and everything we name has to be beach related. I love activities that can be double-duty.
Sequencing -- I bought a set of cards for this. I lay out 3 or 4 cards, each depicting a scene from an ordered bit of action (ex: a child on home plate, bat at the ready; child hitting the ball; child running away from home plate; child safely on 1st base) and he has to put them in order. We do 3 to 5 sets of cards per session, depending on his tolerance that day. This strengthens the foundation for story comprehension, works his visual scanning, and helps him order material which will carry over into listening and ordering when he hears a story.
Worksheets -- I print worksheets from www.edHelper.com (a subscription website), Highlights Kids.com (free), No-Glamour Memory book on CD (purchased CD) and assorted other places. Worksheets I print are to work on following directions, matching, visual scanning (hidden pictures, for example), listening skills (for example, I read a series of clues and he has to circle the correct picture), etc. Matching can be picture matching, number matching, number to set of objects, letter to letter, uppercase to lowercase, etc.
Matching -- he's supposed to work on matching, for visual processing issues. Aside from the worksheets, we do ABC bingo, Eye Spy matching cards, Memory games, Go Fish (using assorted cards, sometimes numbers, sometimes letters, sometimes pictures), Jr. Yahtzee (Mario version), Dwarves & Dice game, Teddy Bear Match-Up, Uno, and Dominoes. Variety, variety, variety.
Storytelling -- I bought Rory Story Cubes for this. This is to work on one of his strengths, as well as strengthen story comprehension. I choose a few of the dice, roll them, and he has to make up a picture using at least 2 of the pictures shown on the dice. I don't make him use more than that, because he's just starting. Usually though he is able to incorporate everything; he is a dramatic and very creative story teller, as long as he's in a story telling mood.
Sometimes I record his stories, type them up, print them in large fonts, and we use them for story time later. Again, to help with comprehension, listening, etc. and also to practice "reading" or pre-reading -- by following along, he learns to track, turn the page when we get to the end, and since he knows the story he can start to more easily connect the written words to the things I'm saying; suddenly, the type on the page means something, and that helps him realize he can pay attention to text around him.
Following Directions -- This is to help with auditory processing as well as working memory, and we mainly play games. Lots and lots of games.Simon Says. Mother May I. "Where's Wario?" (I tell him where to hide a toy; he has to hide it). Scavenger hunts (oral clues). I also made up a game where he has to tell me true or false and repeat after me; I say a sentence about our kitchen (or whatever room we're in), he has to listen, tell if it's true, and repeat back to me what I said. If I say something silly, I then say the true version and he repeats that.
He likes when I say totally nutty stuff, like "my mom is the most beautiful mom in the world!" He laughs and laughs and says "that's false!" until I correct it and say "My mom is kind of pretty" at which point he says, "hmmm, yes, that is true." (of course I am talking about his mom, not mine) (yes, that's a true story)
Fine Motor Skills --- for this he plays with play dough, does lacing cards, bead stringing, and colors things that require detail coloring. The HWT helps with this, as does the Scribbles book and using a pencil grip to write. These activities also help improve his visual-motor coordination (aka, hand-eye coordination).
Perceptual Reasoning/Visual-Spatial Reasoning --- this is his biggest strength; he tested near the upper limits on this subtest. To help him stay challenged in this area and have time with one of his strengths, he has tangrams, pattern blocks, a geoboard with rubber bands and designs to copy, and various games that work with this (Rush Hour, and several other ThinkFun games). His fine motor & perceptual reasoning activities are just reserved for free time/game reward time and aside from the Scribbles page and HWT these are NOT scheduled parts of his school day. He enjoys the games/activities, so we use them as a reward and unstructured playtime instead.
Whew! Are you as tired as I am now??? Our day actually flows much better now that we're rotating the Therapy Drawer activities instead of doing several of each every day. The Earobics software drills a lot of the same things I was drilling before, the handwriting and Scribbles pages both work fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination (oh yeah; he's also supposed to work on his hand-eye coordination), listening to stories out loud helps his reading/listening comprehension better than anything else could, etc. Once we are fully through the Kindergarten book for HWT, I will start the multiple reading curriculums with him. For now, on the reading front, we've got an ABC chart going around the walls in his bedroom, and we are working on learning sight words and creating opportunities for environmental print.
No, this doesn't mean environmentally friendly, it means print that he sees in his day to day environment. Since all signs, restaurants, billboards, and generally all print that he sees in the world around him is not in English, we have to label things in our home and create a word wall for him so that he can really start associating print/text with objects, realizing that letters make words, and words stand for things. One of the pitfalls of living internationally, and not something we anticipated.
Moving to literacy is going to be a slow, long road; a marathon, not a sprint. But with this plan, I do have hope; hope we'll get there, hope he will read, hope he might one day not need me to scribe for him when he "writes" all of his stories; hope for his success. More than hope, I have confidence. He can do this, and I can teach him how.
Once we had a diagnosis, names to put to all the things standing in the way of The Adventurer's ability to learn, we set out to find answers. Tools. Activities. A plan.
The Edu-Psych we used was an absolute gem in that regard; if any of my readers are in the Houston area and need an evaluation for their child, let me know, I will pass on her name and information. She was a treasure to us. She provided in her report not only a name for the problem, but also 13 pages of curriculum suggestions, adaptive technologies we should begin using, free activities I could do with The Adventurer at home, links to websites that have games and materials that can serve as therapeutic activities for him, and referrals for follow-up testing.
She also wrote out what accommodations he would need in a typical classroom setting, so that I would feel free to adapt and so that if we ever put him into a typical classroom, we will have the first step in place to getting him the help he needs. She gave us a plan, a plan that holds out hope. A plan that will lead to success.
It has taken me from September until now, early January, to turn all of her suggestions into a workable routine. I was, at first, very overwhelmed. There is a LOT that needs to be worked on. I laid all of that out in the last post, so I won't go over it again. Trust me when I say it has been a very daunting task, I have had many moments of panic and fear of failure. I have stared, weeping, into The Chemist's eyes and cried, "I can't do this" with a despair that made his heart ache as much as mine. Yet every time, he calmed me, reassured me, and directed me back to the materials, the curriculums, the activities that the Edu-Psych suggested and that we bought, and reminded me that yes, yes I can.
He's right. We have a name for what we're fighting. We have tools. Others have gone before and written curriculum and software and games that have been proven to work against this. We are not all alone, and we do have hope and a plan.
So, what is the plan? In a nutshell......
*he does a Scribbles page while I read Bible & History out-loud
*we do one activity from the Therapy Drawer
*I teach him the next math lesson in the book, and he does the assignment in the workbook
*we do another activity from the Therapy Drawer
*we do Handwriting Without Tears (HWT), cycling through the various hands-on activities
*he gets time for free play, usually with math manipulatives or handwriting manipulatives
*after this break, he does Computer School (aka, therapy software)
*and when he is done, he picks a fun game for a rewared
 |
| The Adventurer does school (shown: Handwriting Without Tears) He works in the kitchen. Quiet, with no distractions. I sit to his side, so we can be face to face while I read & give instructions, so he can watch my mouth while I talk, which helps his brain receive what I'm saying. |
Now, what does all of that mean???
Scribbles Pages --- this is a directed coloring book. What that means is that each 2-page spread has a one-sentence instruction across the top. Today, for example, he had "Who is looking out of the windows? Draw them." Below that was a house and a barn, with three empty windows showing. He drew a stick-figure person in one, a cat in another (with a trip to my kitchen window to show that the cat was standing on the windowsill), and a skeleton in the third window. This works his following directions skills as well as fine motor skills, and helps him to transition from Not School Time to School Time. Mostly this is transition, so he can get his brain into school mode.
 |
| skeleton is bottom left window; cute, huh? |
Math --- we use Singapore Math as his primary math, with Miquon sometimes thrown in, and LOTS of hands-on with math manipulatives. Counting bears, counting squares, linking cubes, gram/centimeter cubes, pattern blocks (with several sets of cards to use with them), Cuisenaire Rods, and Base 10 Unit Sticks (the little marked rods that show 1, 10, or 100). He is working through book 1B of Singapore right now, and Miquon Orange.
 |
| math book open (Singapore 1B), and pencil with pencil grip the pencil grip helps correct the dysgraphia (difficulty writing) that he also has |
HWT --- he is doing a quick pass through the PreK book (reviewing each letter, learning the HWT way of making each letter, reviewing sounds letters make, etc.) before moving on to the K level book. I expect we will spend roughly 5 to 7 weeks going through the PreK book before going forward.
 |
| the Handwriting Without Tears drawer still labeled as Math; I need to switch that We had to put labels up on things so he would have text in his environment that is also in English |
We follow a routine with this; Monday I show the Capital Letter Card for each letter we'll cover that week, and he uses the wooden pieces to make each one on the outline that is on the card. Tuesday he uses the mat to make the letters, only looking at the card if needed, then he traces some of the letters in the workbook. Wednesday he traces the remaining letters and uses play dough to make them (using the Roll-a-Dough kit). Thursday he draws each letter on a slate, with chalk, using the Wet-Dry-Try method as outlined in HWT. Friday we do the letter/picture matching that is on the back of each capital letter card and review what the lower case version looks like.
Computer School --- he is using a software called Earobics for help with his Auditory Processing and Phonemic Awareness; he will need to make serious progress in this before we begin the reading curriculums (yes, plural) that we will one day use to teach him to read. I will detail this in a later post, but basically it involves identifying rhyming sounds, are two sounds the same or different, does a spoken word contain a target sound, and learning to do all of those while background noise is masking the target sounds. The software auto-adjusts based on his proficiency.
Finally, what is in the Therapy Drawer?? I cycle through the activities in this drawer now; from September to December we did just these activities, 30 minutes a day of working on something from each category. That is while we were waiting on the curriculum to come in (mail takes a while from US to S. America). He likes rotating much better. Here's what we do, and what area each activity targets.
 |
| the therapy drawer |
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| assorted games, manipulatives, fine motor practice, and miscellany that he uses for free play time or game reward time |
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| the books and play dough storage he uses play dough as a free play/game reward; he doesn't realize it is also helping the fine motor/hand strength issues. |
Random Access Naming -- I keep a variety of flashcards in the drawer, and we do 2 minute drills. I show a card to The Adventurer, he names the object on the card, I write down how many objects he named in a 2 minute time span. This speeds up how long it takes his eyes to see something, his brain to get the message, and then send the name to his mouth, and his mouth to verbalize the answer.
When we started, he got 12 to 15 objects in a 1 minute period. He now gets over 50 in 2 minutes. For variety & double-duty, I use First Thousand Words (by Usborne); I have him quickly name all the objects that are around the page, then we play hide & seek, finding each object in the picture. That works his visual scanning/visual processing speed, yet feels like one activity.
Digit-Span -- this is a fancy name for "how many letters, numbers, words, or combo thereof can you remember if said to you in a row?" I use number flashcards and games for this. When we started, I would just go through saying the digits of all the family birthdays. It was exhausting to think up numbers. Flashcards are much easier; I pull 4 to 6 random cards, show them & say them (hiding them once shown), and then he has to repeat back to me the numbers I said. He is supposed to do this backwards, too, but we've not worked up to that yet. This is to strengthen his working memory.
For variety, I use games such as "I'm going to Grandma's, and I'm taking a ......" where I say one object, he repeats the phrase & my object, then adds his own object; I repeat the whole thing back to him and add a 3rd object, and so forth & so on. I also double this up by changing where we are going; another activity we're to do is "name things in a given category" so I will say "I went to the beach and I saw...." and everything we name has to be beach related. I love activities that can be double-duty.
Sequencing -- I bought a set of cards for this. I lay out 3 or 4 cards, each depicting a scene from an ordered bit of action (ex: a child on home plate, bat at the ready; child hitting the ball; child running away from home plate; child safely on 1st base) and he has to put them in order. We do 3 to 5 sets of cards per session, depending on his tolerance that day. This strengthens the foundation for story comprehension, works his visual scanning, and helps him order material which will carry over into listening and ordering when he hears a story.
Worksheets -- I print worksheets from www.edHelper.com (a subscription website), Highlights Kids.com (free), No-Glamour Memory book on CD (purchased CD) and assorted other places. Worksheets I print are to work on following directions, matching, visual scanning (hidden pictures, for example), listening skills (for example, I read a series of clues and he has to circle the correct picture), etc. Matching can be picture matching, number matching, number to set of objects, letter to letter, uppercase to lowercase, etc.
Matching -- he's supposed to work on matching, for visual processing issues. Aside from the worksheets, we do ABC bingo, Eye Spy matching cards, Memory games, Go Fish (using assorted cards, sometimes numbers, sometimes letters, sometimes pictures), Jr. Yahtzee (Mario version), Dwarves & Dice game, Teddy Bear Match-Up, Uno, and Dominoes. Variety, variety, variety.
Storytelling -- I bought Rory Story Cubes for this. This is to work on one of his strengths, as well as strengthen story comprehension. I choose a few of the dice, roll them, and he has to make up a picture using at least 2 of the pictures shown on the dice. I don't make him use more than that, because he's just starting. Usually though he is able to incorporate everything; he is a dramatic and very creative story teller, as long as he's in a story telling mood.
Sometimes I record his stories, type them up, print them in large fonts, and we use them for story time later. Again, to help with comprehension, listening, etc. and also to practice "reading" or pre-reading -- by following along, he learns to track, turn the page when we get to the end, and since he knows the story he can start to more easily connect the written words to the things I'm saying; suddenly, the type on the page means something, and that helps him realize he can pay attention to text around him.
Following Directions -- This is to help with auditory processing as well as working memory, and we mainly play games. Lots and lots of games.Simon Says. Mother May I. "Where's Wario?" (I tell him where to hide a toy; he has to hide it). Scavenger hunts (oral clues). I also made up a game where he has to tell me true or false and repeat after me; I say a sentence about our kitchen (or whatever room we're in), he has to listen, tell if it's true, and repeat back to me what I said. If I say something silly, I then say the true version and he repeats that.
He likes when I say totally nutty stuff, like "my mom is the most beautiful mom in the world!" He laughs and laughs and says "that's false!" until I correct it and say "My mom is kind of pretty" at which point he says, "hmmm, yes, that is true." (of course I am talking about his mom, not mine) (yes, that's a true story)
Fine Motor Skills --- for this he plays with play dough, does lacing cards, bead stringing, and colors things that require detail coloring. The HWT helps with this, as does the Scribbles book and using a pencil grip to write. These activities also help improve his visual-motor coordination (aka, hand-eye coordination).
 |
| drawing with & without the pencil grip each pair shows one with, one without, the pencil grip center: stick figure (L is with, R is without) top center: cup of water (L is with, R is without) bottom center: Christmas tree (L is with, R is without) right: House (top is with, bottom is without) left: cat (top is with, bottom is without) using the pencil grip makes a visible difference |
Perceptual Reasoning/Visual-Spatial Reasoning --- this is his biggest strength; he tested near the upper limits on this subtest. To help him stay challenged in this area and have time with one of his strengths, he has tangrams, pattern blocks, a geoboard with rubber bands and designs to copy, and various games that work with this (Rush Hour, and several other ThinkFun games). His fine motor & perceptual reasoning activities are just reserved for free time/game reward time and aside from the Scribbles page and HWT these are NOT scheduled parts of his school day. He enjoys the games/activities, so we use them as a reward and unstructured playtime instead.
Whew! Are you as tired as I am now??? Our day actually flows much better now that we're rotating the Therapy Drawer activities instead of doing several of each every day. The Earobics software drills a lot of the same things I was drilling before, the handwriting and Scribbles pages both work fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination (oh yeah; he's also supposed to work on his hand-eye coordination), listening to stories out loud helps his reading/listening comprehension better than anything else could, etc. Once we are fully through the Kindergarten book for HWT, I will start the multiple reading curriculums with him. For now, on the reading front, we've got an ABC chart going around the walls in his bedroom, and we are working on learning sight words and creating opportunities for environmental print.
No, this doesn't mean environmentally friendly, it means print that he sees in his day to day environment. Since all signs, restaurants, billboards, and generally all print that he sees in the world around him is not in English, we have to label things in our home and create a word wall for him so that he can really start associating print/text with objects, realizing that letters make words, and words stand for things. One of the pitfalls of living internationally, and not something we anticipated.
Moving to literacy is going to be a slow, long road; a marathon, not a sprint. But with this plan, I do have hope; hope we'll get there, hope he will read, hope he might one day not need me to scribe for him when he "writes" all of his stories; hope for his success. More than hope, I have confidence. He can do this, and I can teach him how.
Monday, January 14, 2013
Relief, Sadness, and Hope: Our journey to diagnosing the learning delays of our youngest son
This is going to be the hardest post to write, as I delve into all of what is going on with The Adventurer, so please bear with me. It might get long. It might get ugly. But it will be honest; as honest as I can make it. This is our journey from letting The Adventurer take his own time learning, to seeking an evaluation, to finding out about, and dealing with, a diagnosis of dyslexia (and a little more).
My youngest son will turn 8 in just over a month, and yet he cannot read. He has not ever read a single word in his life. And if I believe the experts, we are working towards a chance that he will read, not a certainty that he will. I do not believe the experts; there is no doubt in my mind, as his mom, He Will Read. I refuse to believe otherwise, and I refuse to give up until he achieves fluent literacy. Period.
He has written words. He can write his name, at least the part that makes up his nickname, with relative ease and almost 100% consistency. Pretend his name is Richard (it's not) and we call him Rick (we don't); he can generally write the Rick part. Or pretend his name is Alexander, and we call him Alex. You get the idea. Most days, he writes it perfectly. Some days, even at almost eight years old, even though he's actually been writing his name for a few years now, he still gets a letter backwards. And he still forgets what that last letter is actually called. I look forward to the day when he remembers, when him not getting it is a distant memory.
He cannot spell. Yet. For one entire weekend, he could. At least the words dog, cat, mom, and dad. The Chemist created a game where one word was bad, one word was good, and The Adventurer had to spell the right word to avoid being tickled. The Adventurer thought this was hilarious and would spell the wrong word, on purpose, just to get The Chemist to chase him around pretend-threatening to tickle him.
Picture it --- The Adventurer chanting "d-o-g, d-o-g, d-o-g...." over and over again, as a taunt. The Chemist asking him "What? What did you spell???" and The Adventurer, giggling with glee, "I spelled dog!! ha ha ha ha ha!!" d-o-g, d-o-g...." Nearer and nearer would come The Chemist, hands out in that pre-tickle wiggle, "What??? what's the word???" and finally The Adventurer would squeal in delight, "C-A-T!! I said C-A-T daddy!!!!" "Cat, C-A-T!!!!!!" and that round of the game would be over for a while. Over and over again, for a whole weekend, they did this.
The following weekend, The Chemist started it up again. Except The Adventurer did not remember how to spell any of the words. They started over, but the game lost some of its fun as The Chemist felt frustrated that The Adventurer wasn't able to retain a simple word like dog, or cat, or even dad or mom; words he had been singing, chanting, spelling, and even writing just one week before. That was only about 6 months ago, and perhaps the main incident that spurred me to seek out evaluation and outside help for our boy.
Before you gasp in shock that it took me until he was seven & a half years old to get help, let me explain. No, let me sum up. He was premature, nine weeks early. He had services from Early Childhood Intervention (ECI) for the first year, every week. Then he dropped to once a month visits until, as he grew older but his speech did not progress, the weekly visits resumed. He remained in ECI Speech Therapy until he was two & a half, when we moved to S. America.
He sat up late; he crawled late; he walked late (though he was a climber well before a walker). He talked very late. He nursed for a very long time and made the switch to solid foods very, very slowly. We offered, he tasted, but solid food was not a nutrition-providing part of his diet for a very long time. We saw a nutritionist about it, who declared him healthy thanks to the nursing and said just keep doing what we were doing. He potty trained extra late. So, I thought for a long time that maybe he was just operating on his time table; maybe it wasn't that he couldn't get it, but that he wasn't ready. I paused, back tracked, resumed our lessons, again and again and again.
Not until the D-O-G/C-A-T game, the initial success and then the colossal failure a week later, did I admit that something was going on; the information we were feeding him, no matter what method we tried, was.not.staying. His brain, simply put, was not holding on to things.
As I write this I think of an analogy --- it was, and is, very much like severe reflux that keeps a child's body from retaining the nutrients of food fed. Something is wrong, the food does not stay down, the child fails to gain weight and grow. The parents are doing everything right, the child wants to eat, wants to grow, but something is medically wrong with his body so that it doesn't work. New methods and treatments have to be tried. It is not a failure on the part of the parents, nor a disobedience issue on the part of the child; it is a medical, biological, physiological issue.
In August of 2012, when The Adventurer was 7.5 years old, we sought help. We had an outside evaluation done, which lasted all day long. I told him it would be a little like Secret Agent testing, so that he would cooperate and understand there was no right, no wrong; with no fear of failure, he was happy to play along. He laughed and giggled and charmed the Educational Psychologist (Edu-Psych) into laughing as well, all through the day of evaluations.
In September, we received the report from the Edu-Psych. We learned, to our great relief and our deep sadness, that something (actually, a lot of somethings) in The Adventurer's brain, the way his brain works, keeps him from learning. Relief that it was not our fault. Relief that it wasn't for lack of trying, it wasn't that I was a bad teacher, it wasn't that I wasn't spending enough time on trying to teach him. Relief that this thing had a name (or names) and therefore could be tackled, met head on, hopefully overcome. Sadness that there is, and ever will be, that word "hopefully" in there. We hope he will learn to read. We hope he will learn to overcome this. The Edu-Psych who evaluated him used words like "this will give him the best chance at learning to read...." as though there is also a chance that he won't. I struggle with that. I refuse to settle for "hopefully." My boy will learn to read. He will learn to cope with all he faces, he will succeed. Because we will not let him fail.
I would be lying if I said he will one day magically be cured and never have difficulties again; he will, if I am being honest, have to work harder at school and learning for the rest of his life. He will have to work harder at anything that involves listening, at all. For the rest of his life. Conversations. Following directions. Sifting through background noise to hear, really hear, the things in the foreground that he's supposed to pay attention to. Learning to tune out the background noise without also shutting out the foreground noise. And then learning to make sense of what he hears. But that does not mean he won't succeed in life; I have every hope and belief that he will. He will succeed.
No, that is not all due to the dyslexia. What I have just described is due to one of the other problems, perhaps the most significant: a suspected Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD, or just APD). His is compounded by the dyslexia as well. Regular CAPD is referred to as "when the brain can't hear." It is very like a hearing problem, except it takes place in the brain rather than in the ears. The sound comes in, the ears send the signal, but the brain doesn't get it; the connection is bad. Add his particular type of dyslexia (dysphoneidetic, aka, both auditory & visual) on top of that and even the stuff that comes through, even the stuff that registers in his brain, is sometimes garbled. Overlay on top of all of that, he also suffers from similar issues with visual processing, though not to the same degree. And then throw in the visual side of his dyslexia, that what he sees ends up garbled as well.....and, well, the experts say that hopefully he will learn to read. Hopefully he will learn to overcome all of this. Hopefully. The experts do not know my boy the way I do; he is stubborn, determined, in ways they have not seen. He will learn to read. He will learn to live life to the fullest despite these challenges. Because one thing my boy does not do, ever, is give up. And one thing we will not do, as his parents, is let him (give up or fail).
That is the key here. We do have hope. We have a plan, and thanks to our Edu-Psych and a few helpful friends, I feel equipped to help my boy. Period.
More on that in the next post; you can click through now (post that has the plan) or wait and read it tomorrow when I link up with Grateful for Grace.
My youngest son will turn 8 in just over a month, and yet he cannot read. He has not ever read a single word in his life. And if I believe the experts, we are working towards a chance that he will read, not a certainty that he will. I do not believe the experts; there is no doubt in my mind, as his mom, He Will Read. I refuse to believe otherwise, and I refuse to give up until he achieves fluent literacy. Period.
He has written words. He can write his name, at least the part that makes up his nickname, with relative ease and almost 100% consistency. Pretend his name is Richard (it's not) and we call him Rick (we don't); he can generally write the Rick part. Or pretend his name is Alexander, and we call him Alex. You get the idea. Most days, he writes it perfectly. Some days, even at almost eight years old, even though he's actually been writing his name for a few years now, he still gets a letter backwards. And he still forgets what that last letter is actually called. I look forward to the day when he remembers, when him not getting it is a distant memory.
He cannot spell. Yet. For one entire weekend, he could. At least the words dog, cat, mom, and dad. The Chemist created a game where one word was bad, one word was good, and The Adventurer had to spell the right word to avoid being tickled. The Adventurer thought this was hilarious and would spell the wrong word, on purpose, just to get The Chemist to chase him around pretend-threatening to tickle him.
Picture it --- The Adventurer chanting "d-o-g, d-o-g, d-o-g...." over and over again, as a taunt. The Chemist asking him "What? What did you spell???" and The Adventurer, giggling with glee, "I spelled dog!! ha ha ha ha ha!!" d-o-g, d-o-g...." Nearer and nearer would come The Chemist, hands out in that pre-tickle wiggle, "What??? what's the word???" and finally The Adventurer would squeal in delight, "C-A-T!! I said C-A-T daddy!!!!" "Cat, C-A-T!!!!!!" and that round of the game would be over for a while. Over and over again, for a whole weekend, they did this.
The following weekend, The Chemist started it up again. Except The Adventurer did not remember how to spell any of the words. They started over, but the game lost some of its fun as The Chemist felt frustrated that The Adventurer wasn't able to retain a simple word like dog, or cat, or even dad or mom; words he had been singing, chanting, spelling, and even writing just one week before. That was only about 6 months ago, and perhaps the main incident that spurred me to seek out evaluation and outside help for our boy.
Before you gasp in shock that it took me until he was seven & a half years old to get help, let me explain. No, let me sum up. He was premature, nine weeks early. He had services from Early Childhood Intervention (ECI) for the first year, every week. Then he dropped to once a month visits until, as he grew older but his speech did not progress, the weekly visits resumed. He remained in ECI Speech Therapy until he was two & a half, when we moved to S. America.
He sat up late; he crawled late; he walked late (though he was a climber well before a walker). He talked very late. He nursed for a very long time and made the switch to solid foods very, very slowly. We offered, he tasted, but solid food was not a nutrition-providing part of his diet for a very long time. We saw a nutritionist about it, who declared him healthy thanks to the nursing and said just keep doing what we were doing. He potty trained extra late. So, I thought for a long time that maybe he was just operating on his time table; maybe it wasn't that he couldn't get it, but that he wasn't ready. I paused, back tracked, resumed our lessons, again and again and again.
Not until the D-O-G/C-A-T game, the initial success and then the colossal failure a week later, did I admit that something was going on; the information we were feeding him, no matter what method we tried, was.not.staying. His brain, simply put, was not holding on to things.
As I write this I think of an analogy --- it was, and is, very much like severe reflux that keeps a child's body from retaining the nutrients of food fed. Something is wrong, the food does not stay down, the child fails to gain weight and grow. The parents are doing everything right, the child wants to eat, wants to grow, but something is medically wrong with his body so that it doesn't work. New methods and treatments have to be tried. It is not a failure on the part of the parents, nor a disobedience issue on the part of the child; it is a medical, biological, physiological issue.
In August of 2012, when The Adventurer was 7.5 years old, we sought help. We had an outside evaluation done, which lasted all day long. I told him it would be a little like Secret Agent testing, so that he would cooperate and understand there was no right, no wrong; with no fear of failure, he was happy to play along. He laughed and giggled and charmed the Educational Psychologist (Edu-Psych) into laughing as well, all through the day of evaluations.
In September, we received the report from the Edu-Psych. We learned, to our great relief and our deep sadness, that something (actually, a lot of somethings) in The Adventurer's brain, the way his brain works, keeps him from learning. Relief that it was not our fault. Relief that it wasn't for lack of trying, it wasn't that I was a bad teacher, it wasn't that I wasn't spending enough time on trying to teach him. Relief that this thing had a name (or names) and therefore could be tackled, met head on, hopefully overcome. Sadness that there is, and ever will be, that word "hopefully" in there. We hope he will learn to read. We hope he will learn to overcome this. The Edu-Psych who evaluated him used words like "this will give him the best chance at learning to read...." as though there is also a chance that he won't. I struggle with that. I refuse to settle for "hopefully." My boy will learn to read. He will learn to cope with all he faces, he will succeed. Because we will not let him fail.
I would be lying if I said he will one day magically be cured and never have difficulties again; he will, if I am being honest, have to work harder at school and learning for the rest of his life. He will have to work harder at anything that involves listening, at all. For the rest of his life. Conversations. Following directions. Sifting through background noise to hear, really hear, the things in the foreground that he's supposed to pay attention to. Learning to tune out the background noise without also shutting out the foreground noise. And then learning to make sense of what he hears. But that does not mean he won't succeed in life; I have every hope and belief that he will. He will succeed.
No, that is not all due to the dyslexia. What I have just described is due to one of the other problems, perhaps the most significant: a suspected Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD, or just APD). His is compounded by the dyslexia as well. Regular CAPD is referred to as "when the brain can't hear." It is very like a hearing problem, except it takes place in the brain rather than in the ears. The sound comes in, the ears send the signal, but the brain doesn't get it; the connection is bad. Add his particular type of dyslexia (dysphoneidetic, aka, both auditory & visual) on top of that and even the stuff that comes through, even the stuff that registers in his brain, is sometimes garbled. Overlay on top of all of that, he also suffers from similar issues with visual processing, though not to the same degree. And then throw in the visual side of his dyslexia, that what he sees ends up garbled as well.....and, well, the experts say that hopefully he will learn to read. Hopefully he will learn to overcome all of this. Hopefully. The experts do not know my boy the way I do; he is stubborn, determined, in ways they have not seen. He will learn to read. He will learn to live life to the fullest despite these challenges. Because one thing my boy does not do, ever, is give up. And one thing we will not do, as his parents, is let him (give up or fail).
That is the key here. We do have hope. We have a plan, and thanks to our Edu-Psych and a few helpful friends, I feel equipped to help my boy. Period.
More on that in the next post; you can click through now (post that has the plan) or wait and read it tomorrow when I link up with Grateful for Grace.
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Quips & Quotes from The Adventurer (age 7)
I promise I really am going to talk about what it's like to decide you need to evaluate your not-yet-reading seven year old, and then the emotions of getting a dyslexia diagnosis, the therapies & remediation that were prescribed and how we're implementing those. First I want to share a glimpse at who he is, though, because he is so much more than his diagnosis. He is cute, and sweet, and funny, and smart, and creative, and....well, you'll see. Here are a few quotes & quips from The Adventurer from this past week of school. Enjoy!
While I was reading to him about Alexander the Great, who took his father's plan to invade Persia and then expanded it to the rest of the known world, The Adventurer had these questions:
"But, don't all people speak different languages? So, wouldn't that be a problem for him??"
(a page later we learned that Alexander taught Greek to all the people he conquered)
When we read of the library at Alexandria, and the scrolls contained therein:
"So, how do pirates find treasure maps anyway? And how are treasure maps made in the first place?"
(I answer that I do not know, and we can discuss it after school; he offers to explain what he knows based on a Tom & Jerry episode he watches fairly often; I decline and redirect him to listening to Alexander's adventurers.)
As we learn of Alexander's death after he had successfully conquered the world and was planning to return to Greece:
"So, will some random Greek guy be their king now, since the real king died?"
(we learn in the next paragraph that Alexander instructed his generals to fight it out; they did, and 4 winners split his kingdom into 4 parts, each choosing one section to rule; of those four, only Ptolemy I, who took Egypt, is really remembered in history)
As I read to him about Joseph and his brothers, and Joseph's journey from the bottom of a well to a throne in Egypt, he was full of commentary and questions on why the brothers would be so mean, and why Joseph would be so nice, and then wondering why Joseph would hide his silver cup to make it look like Benjamin stole it. Perhaps my favorite comment during this story: "What's so important about a dumb cup anyway? Didn't he have another one?"
As I read to him about Job, and the conversation between God and Satan about Job's loyalty: "Why would Satan do that? He must be pure evil." And later, "So, why couldn't he just be the next most powerful person after God? Wouldn't that have been okay?" (as I tried explaining who Satan is, why God doesn't like him, etc...)
As we do math, and I ask him questions, he most often replies with the answer and then, "Duh. Don't you have eyes, too??" As he also talks back to the computer in this manner, I have realized this is not so much about giving me attitude, rather, it's how he responds to pressure, stress, and frustration. We will work on more appropriate ways to respond to frustration, but as we've only recently moved from "don't hit; use your words" to this, I don't want to shift too soon to "okay, now make your words nice and kind at all times." We just spent ages on teaching him and training him to use his words to show he's frustrated; he is doing exactly what we asked, although not in the way we imagined. I'll take it, for now. As long as I just reply with "yes, but YOU have to answer the problem, because it is your math homework, not mine..." it all goes well.
As he does handwriting, once he's written the letters he then draws stick figures -- being the letter, holding up the letter, jumping over the letter, etc. I get running commentary, lots of giggles, etc. as he does this. I so enjoy watching him add his spark to everything he does.
As he does his coloring pages, he seeks out the most defiant way to comply with my instructions. For a page that said "color this car with pastel colors" he chose the darkest gray he could, proudly told me he was not going to use a pastel color, he was going to use a dark gray instead, and then colored it as light as possible so that it looked pastel. He was absolutely delighted that he could thus "trick" the page into believing he had followed the directions, even though really he used a dark color, not a pastel. I probably shouldn't, but I adore those moments. My boy is full of spunk, that's for sure. I love watching him use it.
Tomorrow: why we had him evaluated, and our reaction to his diagnosis; the day after, his therapies & day-to-day routine. If you or anyone you know has a child with any kind of learning challenge, not just dyslexia, please share this post and this series of posts.
While I was reading to him about Alexander the Great, who took his father's plan to invade Persia and then expanded it to the rest of the known world, The Adventurer had these questions:
"But, don't all people speak different languages? So, wouldn't that be a problem for him??"
(a page later we learned that Alexander taught Greek to all the people he conquered)
When we read of the library at Alexandria, and the scrolls contained therein:
"So, how do pirates find treasure maps anyway? And how are treasure maps made in the first place?"
(I answer that I do not know, and we can discuss it after school; he offers to explain what he knows based on a Tom & Jerry episode he watches fairly often; I decline and redirect him to listening to Alexander's adventurers.)
As we learn of Alexander's death after he had successfully conquered the world and was planning to return to Greece:
"So, will some random Greek guy be their king now, since the real king died?"
(we learn in the next paragraph that Alexander instructed his generals to fight it out; they did, and 4 winners split his kingdom into 4 parts, each choosing one section to rule; of those four, only Ptolemy I, who took Egypt, is really remembered in history)
As I read to him about Joseph and his brothers, and Joseph's journey from the bottom of a well to a throne in Egypt, he was full of commentary and questions on why the brothers would be so mean, and why Joseph would be so nice, and then wondering why Joseph would hide his silver cup to make it look like Benjamin stole it. Perhaps my favorite comment during this story: "What's so important about a dumb cup anyway? Didn't he have another one?"
As I read to him about Job, and the conversation between God and Satan about Job's loyalty: "Why would Satan do that? He must be pure evil." And later, "So, why couldn't he just be the next most powerful person after God? Wouldn't that have been okay?" (as I tried explaining who Satan is, why God doesn't like him, etc...)
As we do math, and I ask him questions, he most often replies with the answer and then, "Duh. Don't you have eyes, too??" As he also talks back to the computer in this manner, I have realized this is not so much about giving me attitude, rather, it's how he responds to pressure, stress, and frustration. We will work on more appropriate ways to respond to frustration, but as we've only recently moved from "don't hit; use your words" to this, I don't want to shift too soon to "okay, now make your words nice and kind at all times." We just spent ages on teaching him and training him to use his words to show he's frustrated; he is doing exactly what we asked, although not in the way we imagined. I'll take it, for now. As long as I just reply with "yes, but YOU have to answer the problem, because it is your math homework, not mine..." it all goes well.
 |
| Singapore Math 1B |
As he does his coloring pages, he seeks out the most defiant way to comply with my instructions. For a page that said "color this car with pastel colors" he chose the darkest gray he could, proudly told me he was not going to use a pastel color, he was going to use a dark gray instead, and then colored it as light as possible so that it looked pastel. He was absolutely delighted that he could thus "trick" the page into believing he had followed the directions, even though really he used a dark color, not a pastel. I probably shouldn't, but I adore those moments. My boy is full of spunk, that's for sure. I love watching him use it.
 |
| spunk in action: he was starting on the right side, running, jumping onto the couch and doing rolls across to the other side he asked for action photos; this is the best one, The Adventurer, mid roll. |
Tomorrow: why we had him evaluated, and our reaction to his diagnosis; the day after, his therapies & day-to-day routine. If you or anyone you know has a child with any kind of learning challenge, not just dyslexia, please share this post and this series of posts.
Saturday, January 12, 2013
The Artist (6th grade) Writes....
As promised, here is The Artist's hero paper; the assignment was to give 500 words about who is a hero to him, what characteristics or actions make that person a hero, and how do those actions benefit the student.
We started out with "My dad, because he's good at Resident Evil, is very nice, and makes great apple pie." and spent two hours turning that into almost 500 words. I just kept reading what he wrote, then asking follow up questions that would pull a bit more information from him, and he'd tell me the answers, then write them in sentence format in the paper. We just kept doing that until he reached the correct number of words.
This paper has not yet been graded by his teacher. UPDATE: As of Monday, Jan 15, it was graded. She gave him a 100 and wrote "You are very lucky to have such a loving dad." How sweet is that?! In case you are just joining this blog and this is your first post, he has an outside teacher for this class; grading and course requirements are identical to public schools in Texas.
My Dad, My Hero
My dad is a hero to me; when I grow up I want to be just like him. My dad is a fun-loving guy, who spends time with me doing things that he knows I like to do. I can always tell that my dad loves me because of the way he acts towards me.
One of the things I like about my dad is that he’s good at video games, and whenever he plays he lets me look up the walkthrough for him. When he plays I watch him to learn the best ways to get through the part of the game that he is playing. The game that my dad plays is Resident Evil (4); it is all about shooting bad guys and trying to stop the main bad guy. I need his help because it is a hard game for me, and it is kind of scary, but when my dad plays, it is less scary because my dad has got bigger and stronger guns on his file than I do on my file. Also, with my dad sitting next to me, I don’t get as worried because I know he will always protect me.
Another thing that I like about my dad is he is kind, and he is nice to me. And he helps me with my school work. Just the other day he helped me with my science by bringing the right things for it, such as a beaker, a scale, some magnets, and some rocks. Then, he did the experiment with me and made it more fun than if I would have done it by myself.
Probably my favorite thing is that my dad is a very good cook, and he makes delicious apple pies. And his apple pies are very good desserts! Also, sometimes my dad lets me help cook too. A long time ago, we (my whole family) made family soup! The most delicious food in the world, we all work together to choose ingredients, chop them up, and then, after the cooking, we all work together to eat it! Now “Family Soup” is one of our favorite meals to make!
Sometimes my dad lets me lead, and he helps me. One night, he helped me cook dinner! I decided to make a stir fry, but we forgot to take the meat out so it was frozen. Then my dad decided to marinate it so that it would thaw out faster, so we put it into a bowl with some seasonings and a secret ingredient: beer! It tasted good in the end and we had a great dinner.
When I grow up, I want to be just like my dad: very good at video games, a good cook, and very loving towards my children. I chose to write about my dad, one of my heroes, because I really like him.
I'm curious to see how he does on this one. It is not his best writing sample; he has some difficulty getting from a general topic to a fully developed paper. His summaries for class have been very good, as he is able to highlight the key points in what he's read, then put that information into his own words. He has turned in two so far; the first of those he received a 90, the second, a 100. I hope his essay is up to par; we'll see what his teacher thinks! I'll update or post follow-up when we receive his grade.
Tomorrow, a glimpse at quotable moments, good and bad, from The Adventurer's week, and then Monday I will begin the posts about his diagnosis, suggested course of therapy, how that plays out in real life, etc.
We started out with "My dad, because he's good at Resident Evil, is very nice, and makes great apple pie." and spent two hours turning that into almost 500 words. I just kept reading what he wrote, then asking follow up questions that would pull a bit more information from him, and he'd tell me the answers, then write them in sentence format in the paper. We just kept doing that until he reached the correct number of words.
This paper has not yet been graded by his teacher. UPDATE: As of Monday, Jan 15, it was graded. She gave him a 100 and wrote "You are very lucky to have such a loving dad." How sweet is that?! In case you are just joining this blog and this is your first post, he has an outside teacher for this class; grading and course requirements are identical to public schools in Texas.
My Dad, My Hero
My dad is a hero to me; when I grow up I want to be just like him. My dad is a fun-loving guy, who spends time with me doing things that he knows I like to do. I can always tell that my dad loves me because of the way he acts towards me.
One of the things I like about my dad is that he’s good at video games, and whenever he plays he lets me look up the walkthrough for him. When he plays I watch him to learn the best ways to get through the part of the game that he is playing. The game that my dad plays is Resident Evil (4); it is all about shooting bad guys and trying to stop the main bad guy. I need his help because it is a hard game for me, and it is kind of scary, but when my dad plays, it is less scary because my dad has got bigger and stronger guns on his file than I do on my file. Also, with my dad sitting next to me, I don’t get as worried because I know he will always protect me.
Another thing that I like about my dad is he is kind, and he is nice to me. And he helps me with my school work. Just the other day he helped me with my science by bringing the right things for it, such as a beaker, a scale, some magnets, and some rocks. Then, he did the experiment with me and made it more fun than if I would have done it by myself.
Probably my favorite thing is that my dad is a very good cook, and he makes delicious apple pies. And his apple pies are very good desserts! Also, sometimes my dad lets me help cook too. A long time ago, we (my whole family) made family soup! The most delicious food in the world, we all work together to choose ingredients, chop them up, and then, after the cooking, we all work together to eat it! Now “Family Soup” is one of our favorite meals to make!
Sometimes my dad lets me lead, and he helps me. One night, he helped me cook dinner! I decided to make a stir fry, but we forgot to take the meat out so it was frozen. Then my dad decided to marinate it so that it would thaw out faster, so we put it into a bowl with some seasonings and a secret ingredient: beer! It tasted good in the end and we had a great dinner.
When I grow up, I want to be just like my dad: very good at video games, a good cook, and very loving towards my children. I chose to write about my dad, one of my heroes, because I really like him.
I'm curious to see how he does on this one. It is not his best writing sample; he has some difficulty getting from a general topic to a fully developed paper. His summaries for class have been very good, as he is able to highlight the key points in what he's read, then put that information into his own words. He has turned in two so far; the first of those he received a 90, the second, a 100. I hope his essay is up to par; we'll see what his teacher thinks! I'll update or post follow-up when we receive his grade.
Tomorrow, a glimpse at quotable moments, good and bad, from The Adventurer's week, and then Monday I will begin the posts about his diagnosis, suggested course of therapy, how that plays out in real life, etc.
Friday, January 11, 2013
A Day in the Life.....of a Middle-School Boy
I'm writing this Thursday night, so will just talk about it as "today" even though by the time you read this, it will be yesterday, 'kay? 'Kay.
Today, The Artist. Newly-turned age 12, he is in his 2nd semester of 6th grade. He is enrolled in Science & English via the same TTUISD that we use for The Writer; Science is a print-based course, meaning they sent us a PDF of the course syllabus & assignments and we type his answers and email them back (or, if we were in the US, we would mail them in). English is on-line and is done the same way as The Writer's courses; reading assignments are posted, he reads in a textbook and completes quizzes and worksheets on-line, and submits written assignments by typing them, saving them, then uploading them to the website.
The Artist also does Teaching Textbooks Math 6 and reads assorted history books; he is supposed to be doing World Geography, but I have seriously let that slide. The therapy stuff for The Adventurer really threw me for a loop, and most of my planning time from September to now has been used up with sorting out what all of the Psychologist's suggestions mean. I have not had time to be in charge of directing The Artist through a research based geography course, so instead have been handing him biographies to read and historical fiction about different time periods and parts of the world; thank goodness for all the leftover Sonlight books!
I've decided to save The Adventurer's routine for next week, so today, just a quick look at a day in the life of a middle school boy. Today his day involved a LOT of computer time. The boys rediscovered Civilization III last night, so he's been playing it basically every time he can convince me to let him on the computer. As I was fighting a sore throat and general blah feeling, and it was raining so outside activity was a definite no-go, he got let on the computer a lot.
Between Civ III sessions, though, he attempted to do research for a paper on volcanoes (for English, not Science) and despite 45 minutes of faithful effort, could not find the answers he needed. I decided I did not have enough brain power to direct his research, so told him I'd help him later. That no due date thing is a blessing. Or a curse. Whichever.
Instead of working on the paper, then, he had to write a 500 word essay on a hero in his life. I typed up the questions that his teacher wanted him to answer and left space between each so he could fill in a chart and organize his thoughts. Then I spent two hours helping him develop his thoughts into well-written, well-developed paragraphs. We managed to get from "My hero is my dad. He is good at Resident Evil, is very nice, and makes great apple pie" to a fairly good essay, though we did stop at 479 words because I just could not see how on earth to add those last 21 words to what we had. And after two hours, I was ready to quit. I uploaded the file, clicked submit, and crossed my fingers. Here's hoping the teacher likes it.
Aside from that, The Artist had one math lesson and read half a chapter of Science. Or, as he puts it, "two entire sections....." He did learn a lot about types of energy, though, and spent the rest of the afternoon telling me what types of energy exist in all the objects in our house. And which civilization he was going to conquer next. But I don't think that was from Science.
Oh, and he read. A lot. As he is never without a book (or his kindle), I forget to count that as school. He reads while he eats breakfast, reads while he eats lunch, reads between school assignments, reads out in the hammock in the afternoons, reads at night after going to bed......he is always reading. Right now he's reading through the original Boxcar Children series, as a 12-book set was recently free for Kindle. Right now he's advising his older brother on the best strategy for Civilization III......
Over the weekend (you don't have to stop by, but I'd love it if you do) I'll post up The Artist's essay, and hopefully his grade, so you can see what an average 6th grade boy writes and how it gets graded by an average school teacher; I will also share some quips and quotes from The Adventurer's past week just to give you a glimpse of who he is before I really get into his therapy needs. Monday (and probably a lot of next week) will be all about how a veteran home school mom can be totally caught off guard by something like a dyslexia diagnosis, what all therapies were suggested, what all we're doing, and how that fits into our day. In a country where every aspect of his therapy and remediation rests solely on me, because there simply are no options available to us in English otherwise.
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| The Artist, sipping some hot tea, and reading. Of course. |
The Artist also does Teaching Textbooks Math 6 and reads assorted history books; he is supposed to be doing World Geography, but I have seriously let that slide. The therapy stuff for The Adventurer really threw me for a loop, and most of my planning time from September to now has been used up with sorting out what all of the Psychologist's suggestions mean. I have not had time to be in charge of directing The Artist through a research based geography course, so instead have been handing him biographies to read and historical fiction about different time periods and parts of the world; thank goodness for all the leftover Sonlight books!
I've decided to save The Adventurer's routine for next week, so today, just a quick look at a day in the life of a middle school boy. Today his day involved a LOT of computer time. The boys rediscovered Civilization III last night, so he's been playing it basically every time he can convince me to let him on the computer. As I was fighting a sore throat and general blah feeling, and it was raining so outside activity was a definite no-go, he got let on the computer a lot.
Between Civ III sessions, though, he attempted to do research for a paper on volcanoes (for English, not Science) and despite 45 minutes of faithful effort, could not find the answers he needed. I decided I did not have enough brain power to direct his research, so told him I'd help him later. That no due date thing is a blessing. Or a curse. Whichever.
Instead of working on the paper, then, he had to write a 500 word essay on a hero in his life. I typed up the questions that his teacher wanted him to answer and left space between each so he could fill in a chart and organize his thoughts. Then I spent two hours helping him develop his thoughts into well-written, well-developed paragraphs. We managed to get from "My hero is my dad. He is good at Resident Evil, is very nice, and makes great apple pie" to a fairly good essay, though we did stop at 479 words because I just could not see how on earth to add those last 21 words to what we had. And after two hours, I was ready to quit. I uploaded the file, clicked submit, and crossed my fingers. Here's hoping the teacher likes it.
Aside from that, The Artist had one math lesson and read half a chapter of Science. Or, as he puts it, "two entire sections....." He did learn a lot about types of energy, though, and spent the rest of the afternoon telling me what types of energy exist in all the objects in our house. And which civilization he was going to conquer next. But I don't think that was from Science.
Oh, and he read. A lot. As he is never without a book (or his kindle), I forget to count that as school. He reads while he eats breakfast, reads while he eats lunch, reads between school assignments, reads out in the hammock in the afternoons, reads at night after going to bed......he is always reading. Right now he's reading through the original Boxcar Children series, as a 12-book set was recently free for Kindle. Right now he's advising his older brother on the best strategy for Civilization III......
Over the weekend (you don't have to stop by, but I'd love it if you do) I'll post up The Artist's essay, and hopefully his grade, so you can see what an average 6th grade boy writes and how it gets graded by an average school teacher; I will also share some quips and quotes from The Adventurer's past week just to give you a glimpse of who he is before I really get into his therapy needs. Monday (and probably a lot of next week) will be all about how a veteran home school mom can be totally caught off guard by something like a dyslexia diagnosis, what all therapies were suggested, what all we're doing, and how that fits into our day. In a country where every aspect of his therapy and remediation rests solely on me, because there simply are no options available to us in English otherwise.
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
So, how does that on-line high school stuff work, anyway?
As I've mentioned, this year we enrolled The Writer in an on-line high school program. We chose TTUISD because it offers a certain flexibility that not all programs offer. This flexibility is both the best and the worst thing about the program. Best in that he has no due dates for anything, so we are free to take off when & why we want, no questions asked. The Chemist travels for work pretty often, and we sometimes go with him, so this was a big deal to us -- not to have our lives disrupted and heavily altered by having to follow a traditional school schedule.
But, worst, in that he has no due dates. The only due date is that each course expires 6 months after he enrolled, which means he must submit his final exam prior that date. That gives a lot of leeway, which we love, but it also means that it is far too easy to skip over harder projects and save them for later. If they have no due date, they can not be late; since they are never late, the only penalty he will suffer for this is that one day, it will be "later" and he'll have a stack of hard projects waiting for him.
Even with that, he's learning some excellent lessons in time management; already he had to work over Christmas break to catch up on some of those "saved for later" projects, and will have to work on a few of them over our upcoming trip with The Chemist, as well.
Beyond that, though, how does his course work? Well, his particular course has been described by others as a directed study course; he does not have any live on-line lectures, nor video lectures, at all. He has assigned reading, sometimes slide shows & videos (not of lectures), and assigned quizzes and worksheets that serve as measuring sticks to see how he's doing, as well as reinforcements to help him retain the information. He also has the aforementioned harder projects.
He is enrolled in 6 courses: Biology, Art, English, Health, World Geography, and Geometry; this is a full 9th grade schedule. Yesterday's schedule held the following:
Biology -- do workbook page 77 (20-odd questions over chapter 15)
Art -- do the self-evaluation questions about the prior Studio project
English -- take the quiz over Romeo & Juliet, Act II Quotes; read Act III in the modern text
Health -- do the chapter 22 vocabulary quiz
World Geography -- watch a video on Great Britain & the Industrial Revolution; do the accompanying quiz
Geometry -- do Chapter 3, section 7 (read section and complete assigned problems)
Now, this doesn't look like too much; that's because he spends Monday and Tuesday reading chapters, copying vocabulary, etc. and then usually has a lighter day on Wednesday, with Thursday & Friday holding more reading & vocabulary for the next chapter.
Now for the nitty gritty, how did that schedule play out....
10:00 -- wake up, eat breakfast, get dressed, etc.
10:30 -- start school; do Biology workbook page and Health quiz
11:30 -- tell Mom I'm ready for one of the hard subjects, either Geometry, Art or English; Mom prints the Self-Evaluation form for Art, I fill it out.
12:00 -- start Geometry with mom
1:15 -- take a break to eat lunch (left over homemade steak fingers)
1:45 -- get back to Geometry. This slope of the line stuff is so not fun.
3:00 -- we have worked through the section and done 3 of the 12 assigned problems. Mom has to do school with The Adventurer and The Artist, so she makes me take a break and do my other work. I hate Geometry.
3:15 -- do the Romeo & Juliet quiz.
4:00-ish -- take a break to play with the dogs; it is pouring down rain, so can't take them for a walk; play with the squeaky toy instead.
4:15 or 4:30 -- watch the Geography video and try the quiz. Doesn't make sense; ask Mom for help. Find in the chapter where it talks about this stuff; now it makes sense. Finish quiz.
5:30 -- done with the quiz. Find mom; time to finish Geometry. Work through the remaining 9 problems.
6:50 -- finally done. Copy the Geometry problems that were done in pencil into the electronic notepad (that requires an electronic pen) that I have to use so I can submit my work.
7:30 -- done tracing/copying the problems. Finally. No more school for the day. Except I either have to read Act III tonight, or tomorrow......
I feel for him, I really do. Geometry is kicking our behinds. Like I mentioned yesterday, I'm good at math; he's good at math; we are not good at math together. I am wide open to suggestions there. We will finish this semester and next using this same program, but next year is Algebra II and then Trigonometry or PreCalculus. I need, desperately, to find something that has someone else as the teacher. Any suggestions?
UPDATE: I'm a dork. Turns out, the textbook that TTUISD assigned for Geometry actually has, right there in the margins of every single section of every single chapter, notes to Go Online for help. I've ignored those until now. I just discovered that the publisher has linked video tutorials, practice (interactive) activities, homework help, and basically everything I've spent the last 2 days looking for in an outside source, free (if you own their textbooks). We will begin utilizing this wonderful resource first thing Monday; I look forward to stress-reduced Geometry from now on. Even if it took me three entire chapters (and 12 weeks) to pay attention and discover this.
As for the rest....time consuming; yes. Partly because he is a perfectionist and gives his absolute best, 100% of the time. Always. Most days do not take quite this long, but just as I had an easy day the day before, he had a hard day on this day. Luckily the other courses were light so that the 4 hours of geometry was not a huge hindrance.
The awesome, amazing, makes me so very proud thing is, he never complains. Even during the geometry marathon, he keeps a good attitude and if he does get frustrated, he gets up, walks the dogs, grabs a snack, whatever. He doesn't take it out on me or on his brothers, and he has not once complained about the work load, at all. In fact, he has admitted he likes the heavier load; he finally feels he's being stretched and challenged, and this has been so very good for him.
Outside accountability, someone else grading his papers and affirming what I've always said, that he's very smart, has been wonderful as well. It's one thing to hear Mom say what a good writer you are; it's another thing to consistently earn grades of 100 on every writing assignment and project you turn in.
Will an on-line program like this be the right fit for every kid? No, of course not. But it has definitely been a perfect fit for The Writer. Except maybe the Geometry......
But, worst, in that he has no due dates. The only due date is that each course expires 6 months after he enrolled, which means he must submit his final exam prior that date. That gives a lot of leeway, which we love, but it also means that it is far too easy to skip over harder projects and save them for later. If they have no due date, they can not be late; since they are never late, the only penalty he will suffer for this is that one day, it will be "later" and he'll have a stack of hard projects waiting for him.
Even with that, he's learning some excellent lessons in time management; already he had to work over Christmas break to catch up on some of those "saved for later" projects, and will have to work on a few of them over our upcoming trip with The Chemist, as well.
Beyond that, though, how does his course work? Well, his particular course has been described by others as a directed study course; he does not have any live on-line lectures, nor video lectures, at all. He has assigned reading, sometimes slide shows & videos (not of lectures), and assigned quizzes and worksheets that serve as measuring sticks to see how he's doing, as well as reinforcements to help him retain the information. He also has the aforementioned harder projects.
 |
| The Writer, working on a Geography quiz the blue folder (open) in front has his weekly assignments, separated by day |
He is enrolled in 6 courses: Biology, Art, English, Health, World Geography, and Geometry; this is a full 9th grade schedule. Yesterday's schedule held the following:
Biology -- do workbook page 77 (20-odd questions over chapter 15)
Art -- do the self-evaluation questions about the prior Studio project
English -- take the quiz over Romeo & Juliet, Act II Quotes; read Act III in the modern text
Health -- do the chapter 22 vocabulary quiz
World Geography -- watch a video on Great Britain & the Industrial Revolution; do the accompanying quiz
Geometry -- do Chapter 3, section 7 (read section and complete assigned problems)
Now, this doesn't look like too much; that's because he spends Monday and Tuesday reading chapters, copying vocabulary, etc. and then usually has a lighter day on Wednesday, with Thursday & Friday holding more reading & vocabulary for the next chapter.
Now for the nitty gritty, how did that schedule play out....
10:00 -- wake up, eat breakfast, get dressed, etc.
10:30 -- start school; do Biology workbook page and Health quiz
11:30 -- tell Mom I'm ready for one of the hard subjects, either Geometry, Art or English; Mom prints the Self-Evaluation form for Art, I fill it out.
12:00 -- start Geometry with mom
1:15 -- take a break to eat lunch (left over homemade steak fingers)
1:45 -- get back to Geometry. This slope of the line stuff is so not fun.
3:00 -- we have worked through the section and done 3 of the 12 assigned problems. Mom has to do school with The Adventurer and The Artist, so she makes me take a break and do my other work. I hate Geometry.
3:15 -- do the Romeo & Juliet quiz.
4:00-ish -- take a break to play with the dogs; it is pouring down rain, so can't take them for a walk; play with the squeaky toy instead.
4:15 or 4:30 -- watch the Geography video and try the quiz. Doesn't make sense; ask Mom for help. Find in the chapter where it talks about this stuff; now it makes sense. Finish quiz.
5:30 -- done with the quiz. Find mom; time to finish Geometry. Work through the remaining 9 problems.
6:50 -- finally done. Copy the Geometry problems that were done in pencil into the electronic notepad (that requires an electronic pen) that I have to use so I can submit my work.
7:30 -- done tracing/copying the problems. Finally. No more school for the day. Except I either have to read Act III tonight, or tomorrow......
 |
| ...and working on Geometry, despite The Adventurer's toys all over the kitchen table... |
I feel for him, I really do. Geometry is kicking our behinds. Like I mentioned yesterday, I'm good at math; he's good at math; we are not good at math together. I am wide open to suggestions there. We will finish this semester and next using this same program, but next year is Algebra II and then Trigonometry or PreCalculus. I need, desperately, to find something that has someone else as the teacher. Any suggestions?
UPDATE: I'm a dork. Turns out, the textbook that TTUISD assigned for Geometry actually has, right there in the margins of every single section of every single chapter, notes to Go Online for help. I've ignored those until now. I just discovered that the publisher has linked video tutorials, practice (interactive) activities, homework help, and basically everything I've spent the last 2 days looking for in an outside source, free (if you own their textbooks). We will begin utilizing this wonderful resource first thing Monday; I look forward to stress-reduced Geometry from now on. Even if it took me three entire chapters (and 12 weeks) to pay attention and discover this.
As for the rest....time consuming; yes. Partly because he is a perfectionist and gives his absolute best, 100% of the time. Always. Most days do not take quite this long, but just as I had an easy day the day before, he had a hard day on this day. Luckily the other courses were light so that the 4 hours of geometry was not a huge hindrance.
The awesome, amazing, makes me so very proud thing is, he never complains. Even during the geometry marathon, he keeps a good attitude and if he does get frustrated, he gets up, walks the dogs, grabs a snack, whatever. He doesn't take it out on me or on his brothers, and he has not once complained about the work load, at all. In fact, he has admitted he likes the heavier load; he finally feels he's being stretched and challenged, and this has been so very good for him.
Outside accountability, someone else grading his papers and affirming what I've always said, that he's very smart, has been wonderful as well. It's one thing to hear Mom say what a good writer you are; it's another thing to consistently earn grades of 100 on every writing assignment and project you turn in.
Will an on-line program like this be the right fit for every kid? No, of course not. But it has definitely been a perfect fit for The Writer. Except maybe the Geometry......
What the Mom Does....
Yesterday I shared a Semester Check-Up; today I'd like to share what things look like from the Mom side of things.
With three boys -- one in high school, one in middle school/jr. high, and one in elementary school but with learning challenges -- my job is primarily to remain flexible.
Like any stay-at-home mom I have the obvious jobs of running the household; cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc. As a home school mom as well, I have the added job of educating my boys. Some days are easier than others, and honestly the last two days I've been blessed with rather easy days.
So how does that work, juggling household chores, supervising high school, supervising and helping with middle school, doing intense therapy/remedial school work with the youngest, and still have time for hobbies like reading and quilting? Yesterday looked something like this.....
I got up at the usual time, about 7, to spend a little time with The Chemist before he headed off to work. He gets up and lets the dogs out, I get up and feed them and start the coffee. Then we chat while he irons his shirt for the day (I do not iron. He is fine with this, because he is better at it than I am. Thank goodness.), have coffee together, and just enjoy a quiet half-hour when we can pretend to be just the same in love couple we've been since high school, and for that little moment, focus on each other as people instead of mom, dad, etc. Have to admit, it's my favorite half hour of the day, chatting over coffee with my husband.
By 7:45 or so, he's out the door, The Adventurer is up and asking for a movie, and I am able to start my morning routine. I settle The Adventurer on the couch for a movie while the older boys are still asleep, then I settle in to my computer chair, coffee in hand, and surf the 'net for a while. I check email, write any replies to things that have come in over night (time zones and all that...), check Facebook, browse a forum or two and read blogs, then stop by and update my own blogs. Usually I'm interrupted a time or two, and yesterday was no different -- once to fix cereal for The Adventurer, once to kill a wasp that had gotten in the house, once for water to cure his hiccups, and 2 or 3 times to quiet the dogs, busy barking at the gardener next door.
By 10:00, The Adventurer's movie is long over and his patience and ability to keep playing, ALONE, is long gone. As we're still recovering from too many late nights during Christmas break, I went and woke up the older boys (Monday they slept past 11!) and then headed to my sewing room to do some organizing. Quite a pile of scraps had accumulated there over the break, so I organized things, folded the larger pieces, tossed the odds & ends into my scrap bucket, found the next pattern I needed to start and cut the fabric for that, went through my blues, purples & aquas to select fabrics for the next next thing, etc. A few interruptions here, too, as I broke up an argument between The Artist and The Adventurer, opened the door now that the gardener was done both next door and had come and gone from our yard, too, and put more juice in the fridge so we'd have some cold in time for lunch.
While I was doing this, The Writer was started on school work and the other boys were playing together. I allow them play time in the mornings as they do not work well first thing; none of us is morning people, and all of us need time to come fully awake before doing things that take brain power, so until such time as school no longer fits in that time slot, they are allowed to wait and start after lunch.
For lunch yesterday I heated up frozen chicken patties. I really need to find a healthier alternative to these, but they are quick, easy, and everyone likes them; I cut mine up into a salad, but the boys eat them plain. They cook slowly which gives me time to sneak a chapter or three of whatever book I'm reading, too, and still not burn them, which is nice.
After lunch is when my day begins to get hectic. The Writer is almost 100% independent, so I just sort of keep tabs on what subject he's on and make sure he is, in fact, progressing through his day; The Artist requires a bit of direction and of course The Adventurer receives the lion's share of my time and attention as far as school goes.
So, after lunch I directed The Artist to do his English first, not his math. Reason being, we were in the midst of a thunder storm and power could go out at any moment; if it did, the internet would go down and may or may not come back up. Better to get the internet-dependent school over & done with first, while he still could, just in case. He balked a little at this change in routine (he prefers to do math first, as he enjoys it far less), but agreed and got started. In the little time that elapsed during this discussion, The Adventurer had fallen asleep on the couch. I took advantage of this unexpected free time to start the sewing project, but it was much interrupted.
That done, I went back to sewing. Until "Mom......I'm done...." Nope, son, sorry, you still have to do math. Yes, really. Yes, just the evens, now get going.
Back to sewing. Oh, except, then The Adventurer was awake, but very grumpy, so I went to take care of him.
The Adventurer has a pretty intense amount of school, most of it in the form of various therapies. Because these are therapies, they are not always easy and comfortable for him. Like a lot of kids, he gets frustrated when work is too hard, so starting with an already grumpy boy makes things difficult. I cannot complete his therapy and school work if he does not cooperate. Yesterday looked like it might be one of those days, but I opened his first activity, a directed coloring book, to a random page and got lucky. This coloring page asked him to "save the little fish" and showed a drawing of a small fish with a very angry looking shark nearby; his job was to draw something that would keep the little fish from being eaten. This appealed to his boyhood sense of being a hero, cheered him right up and we were able to have a pretty good session. Until....
"Mom, I don't understand this math problem...." came from the school room; I left The Adventurer playing with pick-up-sticks and went to check on The Artist. I drew him a visual of what it might look like to start with a 34 foot log and then break off first a 9 foot section, leaving behind a log of what length? and then cut off a 12 foot section from that, and with the drawing he was able to find the answers to how long the 3rd and final piece was. Whew. Back to The Adventurer.....
A few more interruptions due to dogs, The Artist looking for a book to read (after math, he really was done), The Writer asking could he take the dogs for their walk (and that is quite the ordeal, because our oldest dog is very particular about how she gets leashed up and such, or she won't go....), The Adventurer needed a snack and a drink, etc. Up and down, up and down, and finally we got through all the interruptions and all the school/therapy stuff we needed to do for the day.
By this time it was close to 4:30, and The Writer had not yet asked for help on Geometry. Hmmm. Oh, wait, he decided on Monday that he'd try reading the chapter alone, then come to me only if he needed help; okay. Done then with my Artist and Adventurer school duties, I washed up the dishes and then went back to sew some more. I was only working on one single 12" quilt square, and not even half way done due to all the school stuff; I was hopeful I'd be able to finish (I didn't). About this time, The Chemist called to say he was heading home (well, it was 5-ish by then..), The Writer came out to say he needed some help with Geometry, so I sat with him and went over that. I showed him an example of how to work each of the first four problems, made sure he understood what to do (he said he did), and sent him back to his room to do them, then I'd check them, read the 2nd half of the chapter and help with the last problems as needed.
With The hemist on the way home I figured I'd better do a little straightening up, just after I finished this one little part on the sewing project.......if you sew, you know what happened; I kept sewing, and just like that, The Chemist was home. Oops. It was also at this point that The Writer came out of his room, still not done with Geometry (folks, by now it was after 6 p.m.) and asked what he had to do today for Art and English. What??? He hadn't done either one yet??? (nope). -sigh-
I walked with him to his assignment folder, where everything for every day of the next six weeks is clearly laid out, day by day. I looked at what was listed for English, and what had and had not been checked off on Monday; discovered he had a quiz to do. Six o'clock in the evening is not a good time for him to try and work through a quiz analyzing quotes from Romeo & Juliet, and his Wednesday list was pretty brief, so I allowed him to shift the quiz to Wednesday, to be done along with the regular Wednesday stuff.
Flipped back to last week's art, where he'd stalled out; found the Art Criticism assignment, printed it for him, handed him the sheet of questions and the book and out he went to the back patio while I chatted with The Chemist about how our days went, allowed the younger boys some Nintendo time, did the straightening up I'd neglected while sewing, etc.
By 6:45 I found The Writer still sitting on the patio, one of four answers done. Sigh. I took the book from him and asked the questions out loud; he answered, I wrote. I "translated" some of the questions into plain English instead of Art-ese, which helped. Handed him back the book so he could "think about it in an emotional way" and answer the remaining questions about the emotional response to the drawing, then went inside to help The Chemist start dinner. At which point The Writer confessed to still not having finished Geometry, so he brought that into the kitchen, I walked him through the assignment and The Chemist cooked dinner.
That part would have been comical if not so frustrating. The Writer had 12 problems to do, so I worked an odd problem as an example (his were all evens) and had him follow along, then had him do the even that corresponded. In between, The Chemist was asking advice on how to do the mashed potatoes, I was doing more dishes, The Writer kept getting tripped up (slope intercept and such, y'all; not fun). This half hour/forty-five minutes was probably my least favorite of the day -- I am not the best multi-tasker, so Geometry, dishes and dinner prep all at once was just a smidge overwhelming for me. The main problem being the Geometry.
I understand math and am relatively good at it; The Writer understands math and is pretty talented at it. We do not, however, learn math the same way, so the way I teach math is not the way he best learns math. This is why I keep trying to outsource it. His on-line program though does not have live lectures (or even recorded ones), so I am still teaching Geometry, even though someone else is grading it. We are thinking that next year, we need to find something with an actual outside teacher for math, for The Writer's sake and mine.
Finally at 8:00 we were done cooking, done Geometry'ing, and could sit down, eat dinner, watch a little TV, do a little more sewing, and just enjoy the evening. Whew! Notice that yesterday did not include any laundry or deep cleaning; I should have done a load of laundry but did not, and we do our deep cleaning on Fridays, period. The other days I only sweep as needed and do things like dishes and clean up spills.
Come back tomorrow for a look at what The Writer's day looks like, a freshman in high school using an on-line program. Friday will be The Artist's day & The Adventurer's day (I'll combine those, as neither of them takes a full day), and next week I'll share what it's like to take school on the road when Dad has a business trip.
With three boys -- one in high school, one in middle school/jr. high, and one in elementary school but with learning challenges -- my job is primarily to remain flexible.
Like any stay-at-home mom I have the obvious jobs of running the household; cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc. As a home school mom as well, I have the added job of educating my boys. Some days are easier than others, and honestly the last two days I've been blessed with rather easy days.
So how does that work, juggling household chores, supervising high school, supervising and helping with middle school, doing intense therapy/remedial school work with the youngest, and still have time for hobbies like reading and quilting? Yesterday looked something like this.....
I got up at the usual time, about 7, to spend a little time with The Chemist before he headed off to work. He gets up and lets the dogs out, I get up and feed them and start the coffee. Then we chat while he irons his shirt for the day (I do not iron. He is fine with this, because he is better at it than I am. Thank goodness.), have coffee together, and just enjoy a quiet half-hour when we can pretend to be just the same in love couple we've been since high school, and for that little moment, focus on each other as people instead of mom, dad, etc. Have to admit, it's my favorite half hour of the day, chatting over coffee with my husband.
By 7:45 or so, he's out the door, The Adventurer is up and asking for a movie, and I am able to start my morning routine. I settle The Adventurer on the couch for a movie while the older boys are still asleep, then I settle in to my computer chair, coffee in hand, and surf the 'net for a while. I check email, write any replies to things that have come in over night (time zones and all that...), check Facebook, browse a forum or two and read blogs, then stop by and update my own blogs. Usually I'm interrupted a time or two, and yesterday was no different -- once to fix cereal for The Adventurer, once to kill a wasp that had gotten in the house, once for water to cure his hiccups, and 2 or 3 times to quiet the dogs, busy barking at the gardener next door.
By 10:00, The Adventurer's movie is long over and his patience and ability to keep playing, ALONE, is long gone. As we're still recovering from too many late nights during Christmas break, I went and woke up the older boys (Monday they slept past 11!) and then headed to my sewing room to do some organizing. Quite a pile of scraps had accumulated there over the break, so I organized things, folded the larger pieces, tossed the odds & ends into my scrap bucket, found the next pattern I needed to start and cut the fabric for that, went through my blues, purples & aquas to select fabrics for the next next thing, etc. A few interruptions here, too, as I broke up an argument between The Artist and The Adventurer, opened the door now that the gardener was done both next door and had come and gone from our yard, too, and put more juice in the fridge so we'd have some cold in time for lunch.
While I was doing this, The Writer was started on school work and the other boys were playing together. I allow them play time in the mornings as they do not work well first thing; none of us is morning people, and all of us need time to come fully awake before doing things that take brain power, so until such time as school no longer fits in that time slot, they are allowed to wait and start after lunch.
For lunch yesterday I heated up frozen chicken patties. I really need to find a healthier alternative to these, but they are quick, easy, and everyone likes them; I cut mine up into a salad, but the boys eat them plain. They cook slowly which gives me time to sneak a chapter or three of whatever book I'm reading, too, and still not burn them, which is nice.
After lunch is when my day begins to get hectic. The Writer is almost 100% independent, so I just sort of keep tabs on what subject he's on and make sure he is, in fact, progressing through his day; The Artist requires a bit of direction and of course The Adventurer receives the lion's share of my time and attention as far as school goes.
So, after lunch I directed The Artist to do his English first, not his math. Reason being, we were in the midst of a thunder storm and power could go out at any moment; if it did, the internet would go down and may or may not come back up. Better to get the internet-dependent school over & done with first, while he still could, just in case. He balked a little at this change in routine (he prefers to do math first, as he enjoys it far less), but agreed and got started. In the little time that elapsed during this discussion, The Adventurer had fallen asleep on the couch. I took advantage of this unexpected free time to start the sewing project, but it was much interrupted.
"Mom, I need your help answering these questions. You might have to read the story first."And we tackled the questions, me explaining both how to pronounce hyperbole (no, it's not hyper-bowl) and what they are; him finding examples on the given pages and then writing a short paragraph on why authors of tall tales use them.
"What's the story?"
"Pecos Bill."
"Oh, no, I've read it before; let's look at the questions....."
"You mean it's an old story...?"
(did he just imply I'm old???) "Yep; been around even longer than me....."
That done, I went back to sewing. Until "Mom......I'm done...." Nope, son, sorry, you still have to do math. Yes, really. Yes, just the evens, now get going.
Back to sewing. Oh, except, then The Adventurer was awake, but very grumpy, so I went to take care of him.
The Adventurer has a pretty intense amount of school, most of it in the form of various therapies. Because these are therapies, they are not always easy and comfortable for him. Like a lot of kids, he gets frustrated when work is too hard, so starting with an already grumpy boy makes things difficult. I cannot complete his therapy and school work if he does not cooperate. Yesterday looked like it might be one of those days, but I opened his first activity, a directed coloring book, to a random page and got lucky. This coloring page asked him to "save the little fish" and showed a drawing of a small fish with a very angry looking shark nearby; his job was to draw something that would keep the little fish from being eaten. This appealed to his boyhood sense of being a hero, cheered him right up and we were able to have a pretty good session. Until....
"Mom, I don't understand this math problem...." came from the school room; I left The Adventurer playing with pick-up-sticks and went to check on The Artist. I drew him a visual of what it might look like to start with a 34 foot log and then break off first a 9 foot section, leaving behind a log of what length? and then cut off a 12 foot section from that, and with the drawing he was able to find the answers to how long the 3rd and final piece was. Whew. Back to The Adventurer.....
A few more interruptions due to dogs, The Artist looking for a book to read (after math, he really was done), The Writer asking could he take the dogs for their walk (and that is quite the ordeal, because our oldest dog is very particular about how she gets leashed up and such, or she won't go....), The Adventurer needed a snack and a drink, etc. Up and down, up and down, and finally we got through all the interruptions and all the school/therapy stuff we needed to do for the day.
By this time it was close to 4:30, and The Writer had not yet asked for help on Geometry. Hmmm. Oh, wait, he decided on Monday that he'd try reading the chapter alone, then come to me only if he needed help; okay. Done then with my Artist and Adventurer school duties, I washed up the dishes and then went back to sew some more. I was only working on one single 12" quilt square, and not even half way done due to all the school stuff; I was hopeful I'd be able to finish (I didn't). About this time, The Chemist called to say he was heading home (well, it was 5-ish by then..), The Writer came out to say he needed some help with Geometry, so I sat with him and went over that. I showed him an example of how to work each of the first four problems, made sure he understood what to do (he said he did), and sent him back to his room to do them, then I'd check them, read the 2nd half of the chapter and help with the last problems as needed.
With The hemist on the way home I figured I'd better do a little straightening up, just after I finished this one little part on the sewing project.......if you sew, you know what happened; I kept sewing, and just like that, The Chemist was home. Oops. It was also at this point that The Writer came out of his room, still not done with Geometry (folks, by now it was after 6 p.m.) and asked what he had to do today for Art and English. What??? He hadn't done either one yet??? (nope). -sigh-
I walked with him to his assignment folder, where everything for every day of the next six weeks is clearly laid out, day by day. I looked at what was listed for English, and what had and had not been checked off on Monday; discovered he had a quiz to do. Six o'clock in the evening is not a good time for him to try and work through a quiz analyzing quotes from Romeo & Juliet, and his Wednesday list was pretty brief, so I allowed him to shift the quiz to Wednesday, to be done along with the regular Wednesday stuff.
Flipped back to last week's art, where he'd stalled out; found the Art Criticism assignment, printed it for him, handed him the sheet of questions and the book and out he went to the back patio while I chatted with The Chemist about how our days went, allowed the younger boys some Nintendo time, did the straightening up I'd neglected while sewing, etc.
By 6:45 I found The Writer still sitting on the patio, one of four answers done. Sigh. I took the book from him and asked the questions out loud; he answered, I wrote. I "translated" some of the questions into plain English instead of Art-ese, which helped. Handed him back the book so he could "think about it in an emotional way" and answer the remaining questions about the emotional response to the drawing, then went inside to help The Chemist start dinner. At which point The Writer confessed to still not having finished Geometry, so he brought that into the kitchen, I walked him through the assignment and The Chemist cooked dinner.
That part would have been comical if not so frustrating. The Writer had 12 problems to do, so I worked an odd problem as an example (his were all evens) and had him follow along, then had him do the even that corresponded. In between, The Chemist was asking advice on how to do the mashed potatoes, I was doing more dishes, The Writer kept getting tripped up (slope intercept and such, y'all; not fun). This half hour/forty-five minutes was probably my least favorite of the day -- I am not the best multi-tasker, so Geometry, dishes and dinner prep all at once was just a smidge overwhelming for me. The main problem being the Geometry.
I understand math and am relatively good at it; The Writer understands math and is pretty talented at it. We do not, however, learn math the same way, so the way I teach math is not the way he best learns math. This is why I keep trying to outsource it. His on-line program though does not have live lectures (or even recorded ones), so I am still teaching Geometry, even though someone else is grading it. We are thinking that next year, we need to find something with an actual outside teacher for math, for The Writer's sake and mine.
Finally at 8:00 we were done cooking, done Geometry'ing, and could sit down, eat dinner, watch a little TV, do a little more sewing, and just enjoy the evening. Whew! Notice that yesterday did not include any laundry or deep cleaning; I should have done a load of laundry but did not, and we do our deep cleaning on Fridays, period. The other days I only sweep as needed and do things like dishes and clean up spills.
Come back tomorrow for a look at what The Writer's day looks like, a freshman in high school using an on-line program. Friday will be The Artist's day & The Adventurer's day (I'll combine those, as neither of them takes a full day), and next week I'll share what it's like to take school on the road when Dad has a business trip.
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