Light Bulb Moments

Definition- A moment of sudden inspiration, revelation, or recognition; from the cartoon image of a light bulb lighting up above a character's head when he or she has an idea. 

What does this mean to a homeschooling mama of a child with special needs? It is indescribable.

If I were to tell most of my homeschool mom friends about this they just would not understand. My son is 14 and he is finally "getting" telling time. Yes, this is a skill normally learned in early primary grades, and he has had it almost learned for many years. He does understand that time is passing but he just has never been accurate with an analog clock. It just seems with many skills he gets to a certain point and there is no pushing it beyond that point. That is the point where I have learned to step back, reevaluate, and decide the next step. For us it is to work on a different skill. I have learned over the years this does not mean failure, but that for now it is time to back off.

BUT THIS WEEK...I think I actually saw the light bulb above his head!! The issue has been once the time is beyond the halfway mark that the small hand is pointing more to the next number...so he assumes it is the next number. (e.g. He would think 2:48 is instead 3:48) I remember being confused myself as a child with this. Somehow now I can tell him (and he understands) that you must always look at what the small hand was pointing at first going clockwise. That sounds like gibberish but however I must have explained it to him must have "clicked"!! 

Now if I could get him to add/subtract without using his fingers. He can carry and borrow...but this year I tried to make an effort to get him to not use his fingers using Xtramath.com which is like online flashcards. The results? He can use his fingers very fast to add. Hahaha! I think I need to come to peace with the fact he has to have the visual. (and has to verbalize it...much to his sister's annoyance)

With special needs learning it so much (at least for us!) three steps forward...two steps back. This can be frustrating at times but let me tell you what...when there is progress I feel like celebrating! It makes homeschooling challenging but so rewarding when you look back at how far your child has come. When we started he could not sit in a chair more than 10 minutes and pay attention and now he can for much longer! Also he wants to learn more and not just with the hundreds of somewhat random questions he asks but things beyond "is it living or non living" from his online science curriculum. He is now asking so many questions that even make us have to really think about the questions. I love to see the wheels turning in his head! 

January Blahs

It happens every year. I could probably go back to most of my blog posts in January and it is the same thing. January and part of February are months that I wish I could just become a bear and hibernate. Depression rears its ugly head when I am not able to get sunshine and get out and walk. I LOVE to walk. We have been going to the mall a few times a week to walk but somehow the fluorescent lighting has the opposite affect that the sunshine does for me.

Trying to keep things positive while homeschooling can be challenging too when you have children that thrive with being able to be outside exploring. As cold as it is currently where we live some snow to play in would be a welcome sight also as well as a fun potential weather lesson.*ducking*  I know that a lot of the country has been blasted with excessive snow but we have only been blasted with frigid temperatures where even the dog does not want to go outside.

This leaves me with contemplating ideas to lift my own spirit and everyone having to spend so much time inside. Here is a list I have come up with-

1. Try some new recipes. Here are some that I have made this week that we LOVED!

• Blender Muffins Recipe
• Artichoke Spinach Lasagna
• Spicy Black Bean Soup We didn't do the bread bowl but this was so good!

2. Read some good books. Right now I am multitasking and reading both-

• The Choice by Suzanne Woods Fisher
• Seekers of the Lost Boy by Taryn Hayes

3. We've dusted off the Wii as the kids and I haven't played it in a long time and we have been bowling. (oh and Z~girl is an amazing boxer with it) We even brought it over to the inlaws and grandma seems to really enjoy the bowling. Grandpa? He is healing from shoulder surgery on his rotator cuff that was totally destroyed from moving. 

4. Something I want to do is start an art journal and doodle daily. I LOVE to draw...but never do it anymore. If I ever start it is always so therapeutic for me. 

5. Also this year I bought a chronological Bible that I have been working my way through. Honestly I have not read the Bible all the way through since college and I thought this would be a neat way to do it. 

 

A question for any of my outdoorsy friends...How do you get through the gloomy months of winter with a smile on your face?

Tell me I'm not the only one!

Early this month I laid out the month for our homeschool daily work. Last fall I found a handy dandy way to keep track of attendance, lessons, and tests. One problem I am finding is that often we do not do gradable lessons and I do not do "tests". (well except for the ones Z~girl has at Time4Learning) How do I grade that? We work on learning goals until they are learned and for A~man that also includes LOTS of review on past goals. 

Oh, and planning activities for certain days? That totally went out the window. I would do better to write a list for the month of goals and plow through it as we get to it, without worrying that it was done on Wednesday morning and not Tuesday evening. This is no longer a kindergarten science curricululm we are talking about and I know in a couple short years I am going to really need to document Z~girl's eventual high school work if she wants to go to college. 

"Grades" are not essential to A~man's learning but still I like to document the skills he learns so I can build on them. With his developmental delays, to homeschool ADD/ADHD issues demands a whole different approach than his sister requires. 

When I start worrying about documenting things like grades I always feel like I am losing sight on what homeschooling truly means to our family. For us it is to allow both children to learn in a creative, open, and sometimes unstructured way as that is how both of them learn best. A~man needs a certain amount of routine, especially with meal times and special events, but I find the best learning days come on relaxed days when I'm not saying "we have to finish this now!"

I guess that is why we are definitely eclectic relaxed homeschoolers! It works for us.

                                        ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Last, but not least, are some pictures I took of the matchbox swaps we received in the mail. Both kids were absolutely tickled! Z~girl's was the artist Seurat who she loves and A~man's box contained an art museum of sorts with games and puzzles. It's truly amazing what learning you can fit into such small boxes!

Homeschool artist matchbox swap!

This was such a neat concept that when I heard about the group we just had to participate! Each month there is a new topic and you decorate a matchbox to that theme and include things into the box that go along with the topic. Then you mail it to another participant. This month was "Famous Artists" and we picked Vincent van Gogh.

The kids included an ear that they had made out of clay (heehee) a sunflower, jokes, and a write up about the famous artist. I had some confusion (should have read the directions better!) about what size of matchbox. So uhhhh we ended up a little big even though now I realize typically they use the small matchboxes. I was relieved to hear from the mom leading it that she sometimes used big boxes too. 

They had fun trying to recreate classics from a Vincent van Gogh coloring book we had. A~man chose The Bedroom and also a self portrait after he had cut his ear off. 

Z~girl chose a different self portrait and also Starry Night to decorate her box. (which is one of my favorites)

They had an absolute blast painting and decorating the boxes!

I will have to do a follow up post of the boxes that they received. Z~girl already got hers and was happy to discover that it was done about one of her favorite artists from some art games she has done. Also she ended up exchanging hers with one of her local homeschool friends which was pretty cool. Her friend did an amazing job but I will share those pictures after A~man receives his box. 

I'm totally treasuring activities like these... hoping they will keep enjoying learning like this for awhile. Before I know it Z~girl will be doing SAT games. I am so not ready for that chapter of homeschooling!

January Begins!

We have been schooling very lightly the last couple of weeks and I had big plans at the end of last week to plan our goals for the kids for January. In walks a very nasty cold halting any type of progress. Thankfully it only lasted 4 miserable days which I am thankful for as sometimes in the winter they last weeks for me. Also so far no one else has gotten it.

But...after feeling icky off and on the last month or more with this and that I have decided to do a fast for the next few weeks that my friend Amber over at Adventures in Mindful Living told me about. (check out her blog for awesomely healthy recipes!) It's called a Daniel fast and it is predominantly Bible based (the book of Daniel ;) but the food part specifies no meat, dairy, sugar (except for fruit), artificial ingredients and only drinking water. Basically vegetables, fruits, grains, legumes, etc. I like all the foods but....my struggle physically will be with the no coffee and no cheese. My two weaknesses. I'm not sure if I will blog much about it as it is a little more personal but I am hopeful about making some spiritual and physical changes.

Tomorrow will be a teacher work day so I can plan out the next month for their school goals. Z~girl's main ones...are getting a jump on her math and also getting her writing homework help. She has such a great imagination but has a difficult time putting it down on paper. (or the screen) She is a major perfectionist and struggles with not wanting to ever make a mistake. Hopefully in between planning though we can make a ginger bread house that didn't manage to get made, (did I ever mention the pumpkin we carved a month late this year?)but I guess better late than never. I also found some fun 2 player games that I think both kids would enjoy doing together.

 

What word would you choose for 2014?

This is a blog post I wrote today...well actually yesterday, haha, for work that I thought I would share in my personal blog also.

Here it is the last day of 2013 and as cliché as it sounds I do not know where the year went. It seems like days are often long but the year flies by! This is also the time of year when many people think about New Year’s resolutions and things that they would like to change. There are changes I would like to make but sometimes it seems like “New Year’s Resolutions” can set a person up to fail if the goals are too complex. Something that I saw online this week seemed like a good alternative to that, and could also apply to the upcoming homeschool year.

I read where some people pick a word for the upcoming year. Then they use that word as a theme for the next year. I think I may do this for our home school, although I admit, I haven’t picked just one word yet.

Here are some possibilities I have come up with for my family-

Create

Simplify

Serve

Listen

Grace

Adventure

When I do pick that word I am hoping to include it in our home school journey and make it the theme for the year. The trick for me will be picking just one! I’m leaning toward adventure. This next year I would love to do more traveling and road-schooling and making fun learning memories for my children as this summer I will officially have two teenagers. Before I know it they will be adults and I would love to fill some of their memories with more hands on learning, discovering new places. I would also like to start back letterboxing, which is something our family used to do often years ago.

If you were to choose a word as a theme for your 2014 homeschooling year what word would you choose and why?

Sometimes you just have to laugh....seriously.

It was a wonderful Christmas week but it was incredibly stressful for the A~man, which consequently made it very stressful for all of us. No matter how calm we try to keep things there is a huge build up of excitement this time of year. Then it seems to nosedive afterwards because all of festivities are now over. The presents are all opened and it's now time to go back to our regular diet...as we do not normally eat a lot of treats.

This results in a lot of meltdowns and crying. A lot of obsessing throughout each day about "what's next?" Time to get back in the routine that not every week will there be something exciting going on. I do try and schedule fun activities weekly, but many days even though we are schooling lightly right now, involve staying at home playing games, watching videos and playing educational games.

Today he about wore us completely out. Hubby, Z~girl AND I. He would overhear a conversation we were having, or hear someone talking on the phone, and instantly think we were going somewhere or someone was coming to our house. (grandparents) If we were to tell him when we were seeing them next he would talk about it constantly (not exaggerating) until we saw them. It completely makes my head spin with the constant questions.

But then something will happen, it always does with him, that completely lands us in hysterics. A couple of hours ago I was reading some work emails and discovered two new emails that said they were sent from my iPod. I do not have an iPod. A~man has one and he had just gone to bed. I'm still trying to figure out how he did it but somehow he had made two recordings of himself whistling a tune and sent it to my email account. It was hilarious! Yet....we do not want him unsupervised on the internet and we thought we had the settings to where he couldn't go online. I do not even know how he figured it out by himself!

I also had a bit of a flashback to his night of calling friends years ago and wondered if he may have emailed the sound file to people in my address book...but no...it only went to me. (thankfully as it was sent to my work email address) We did look at his iPod to try our best to make sure it doesn't happen again. Internet safety for kids is very important to us. There is too much junk out there I do not want them to see.

Well, I am hoping for a much calmer week!