And you're wondering, why don't she write?...

As so many others that have started blogs, life swept me away. So what have we been doing? We are still homeschooling part time. Things are going very well this year.

I thought I would share our Christmas countdown

Day 1 - put up christmas tree

Day 2 - Decorate Christmas tree

Day 3 - Watch how the grinch stole christmas

Day 4 - Make Christmas cards for grandparents

Day 5 - pick out toys to give away

Day 6 - Write a letter to santa

Day 7 - Weave threads and ribbon on pine cones (thanks to little acor

n learning for the idea)

Day 8 - pick out books to give away

Day 9 - Mail out Christmas cards to grandparents & Santa Surprise!

(will post more pictures soon)

Taking a break

I haven't posted anything in a couple of weeks due to a few issues. Before we get back on track, we are spending the next two weeks doing a new program called Audiblox. This program is suppose to help children learning disabilities. In addition to adding some vitamin supplements, I am hoping that ds's dyspraxia will ease up. Wish us luck.

Another Round of Language Arts Block

I'm just trying to get back into the swing of things. I'm a little worn out with all of the Easter planning. I didn't have to cook dinner and I'm still tired. Ds was even having problems with going back into learning.

So this week in our LA Block, we concentrated on F I and N. I usually try to create a story about animals/things that start with the selected letters, but this week I was able to find a wonderful Eskimo story about the Fox Woman. I included a necklace in the story to cover N.

We usually work with playdough for our hand warm-ups before writing, but this week we used bendaroos to outline a coloring page of a fox. Ds was really receptive to it and it lasted 3 days.

A couple of books we enjoyed this week are:

Fox by Kate Banks

The Circus is Coming by Hilary Knights

monumental milestones

Those with SID children can agree that what most consider small milestones, we consider to be monumental milestones. MY ds always seemed to be slightly disconnected from his body; one side not quite communicating well with the other. We have been working occasionally on getting enough coordination to skip. I am not sure at what age a kid should be able to skip, but I know ds is at his own pace (he's 7 now). His right side dominates so getting his left side to do the same has always been a challenge. So to my surprise, today, totally self initiated, I witnessed my ds skip around my living room. With wood floors, I heard that he was skipping before I saw it. The best part was that he knew he had accomplished something that was hard for him; he had the biggest smile on his face. You know that smile. The one that says "Yes! I did it!" And this was all before I said anything. Of course there were a couple of victory laps around the sofa before he stopped.

For those wondering how we did it, we started of using stomping rhythmically, then we moved to knee ups in place, the last step was to skip slowly. It feels funny but it worked!

Now on to jumping rope....

Form Drawing with Element Influece

This week's form drawing is strongly influenced by last week's water study. I knew that this is what would speak to ds so I went with it. Here is a great photo of what inspired us all week long. Our weekly poem was Sea Creatures by Julia Redstone. It worked well with movement and we continued with various sea creature walks. I even got ds to pretend he was scooting across a rope on a sailboat.

Here is a sample of our daily playdough work.

Of course when there is water, we must have water color painting. See, "mess"!

We also got our next level of Right Start Math (level B) which we started up again this week. I love this program.

Some books that we used are Starfish by Edith Thacher Hurd and Do Pirates Take Baths? by Kathy Tucker.

Element study

For our first element week, we studied water. We started off with what floats and sinks. Ds really loved the hands on "experiments" and field trips this week.

Here is one of our art projects this week which worked well in celebrating St Patrick's day. I tortured ds the previous week by not telling him why we were painting eggshells. He was pleasantly surprised when he could finally handle the eggs. We first looked at rainbows online just to

make sure we got the right order. Then we went cracking on our own rainbow. Ds had fun at first, but then his sticky fingers really started to bother him by the time we got to yellow.

Great books we used this week:

The Snowflake; A water cycle story by Neil Waldman and The Old Woman & the Wave by Shelley Jackson. Both books have wonderful artwork and really know how to grab the reader and drag them in. The illustrations alone are inspiring. Below are a few examples of how the first inspired us:

Of course being that we are studying water, we indulged ourself in water color painting. I first wrote the months and drew on the wc paper with a white crayon. Then ds had a good time painting trying to figure out what hidden words and images would appear. We still have a few more to do to have all twelve.

With the warmer weather this week and a more relaxed topic to experience, we were outside a lot this week. We are lucky that we live close to many different bodies of water. First we visited our local falls. Despite the stinging wind, dc walked the riverewalk a pretty good ways. Then we went to the beach. The weather was definitely the best on this day. After walking a good way, ds wrote and read words in the sand. It was soooo beautiful and a great way to get vitamin D. I neglected to bring my camera, sorry.

I did manage to take a few pictures to one of our outings this past weekend. Here's one for the abuelos.

Week 2 Language Arts - All cracked up

We finished another week of LA with a central theme about eggs. Our maine story took place on the Misty Mountain where Denver Dog and Gabby Goose argued about nothing. In the middle of the argument, Gabby's Egg rolled out of the nest and down the mountain and landed in Randy Rabbit's hole. Of course the story I told to ds was a lot more entertaining and fun. He always enjoys animal sounds. Here are some of the photos:

This weeks we focused on m, d, g, e and r.

Here is ds's m and d words.

Of course an e drawing by ds.

I've read that a few people were having trouble teaching ds's to knit. I knew that with all of our issues that my ds would react the same way to me teaching him to knit. So I convince dh to teach him knots. I am hoping that once he has more confidence in his hands, ds will take to knitting easier. He learns 1/week and practices it on 4 different things/day (rubber bands, demin, string, ribbon, plastic just to name a few).

Our favorite books from this week are Silly Goose by Marni McGee and An Egg is Quiet by Dianna Aston. I am soo going to go broke from a book addiction.

We tried, but didn't work

One of things that we tried but eventually had to drop was Kumon. I love the philosophy and our center's teacher was wonderful with ds. BUT the work was too demanding, requiring a lot of attention nor matter how we divided it up. After a year we decided that the fighting wasn't worth it and discontinued it. I told dh that I could do something similar to Kumon that ds would enjoy more. So now we do "homework". In a simple composition book, I write down a few math problems and some type of language arts activity. He definitely approaches it more positively than he ever did Kumon, especially when the "homework" is more of a game than work. The book I love to use games from is Games for Learning by Peggy Kaye. Not only does it cover a wide range of issues to address by using games and but also tells you which grade you can use the game/activity for (K-3). I might revisit Kumon once ds is older.

Beautiful books; great for form drawing and language arts

I just wanted to share a few books that we read last week:

Ginkgo and Moon by Lisa Mertins

The Egg Tree by Katherine Mihous

Verdi by Janell Cannon

Best Little Wingman by Janet Allen

For LA the first 3 did really well when discussing trees for the letter T. I am so in love with Ginkgo and Moon that I want one for our own library. It would also be useful for seasonal discussions. The Egg Tree was perfect in preparing for Easter and Verdi did a great job of integrating S and T for our language arts section. Check them out of your library.

Language Arts Block

Grade 1

This is one of the two places I deviate from most waldorfinspired homeschooling and it's works for us. I am using The Reading Lesson with a waldorf twist. I chose TRL because it made sense to me. Instead of teaching the letters in alphabetical order, this programs teaches by the most common letters in the English language and sigh words along with each lesson. I also read the Write Road to Reading right before the holidays, which has some more methodology that would help with learning how to read through writing. I first mixed up the TRL with a waldorf twist. Looking back now, I should of went a little heavier on the Waldorf. We went through 12 out of the 20 lessons when I decided to back down from the old method of learning and started from the beginning of our new way. I also wished I did more block lessons and laid heavy into the form drawing. Having sensory integration disorder, my ds really needed the more holistic way of learning. My biggest issue was that I didn't feel comfortable with the waldorf curriculum that I initially purchased. Then when we hit the brick wall after the holidays I looked into the christopherus website and curriculum. Which lead me to look at other waldorf homeschool blogs and realized that what was given was more of a frame. With a little work, elbow and brain grease, we could have fun learning at home that really tends to ds's need.

So we started from square one using a mixture of all three methods:

This week we reviewed the following letters: c o s a t with trees being our center theme. H

ere are a few photos of our week:

So I started the week with the above chalk drawing with a story about an apple tree, a cat, a snake and an octopus. Not only did we cover each sound, I manage to squeeze a little morality into the story. After the story, we drew step by step the chalkboard picture into our MLB on Monday.

After morning prayer and movement, we have our playdough time. I only covered forming the letters one day this week. After that, he was very creative in forming words without being prompted.

Here is a sample of how we worked through the letters. Our drawing have the lower case letters in it. Ds picked out four words for each letter and we practiced writing them on the chalkboard before writing them in the MLB.

On our last day, we only had to cover one letter and then we went into dictation which was writing bits of the story from our main story of the week. Of course using a little humor made the writing exercise a much happier experience. Look at that smile!

One more thing to mention on a sensory note: for our writing we use broken pieces of chalk and crayons to do our writing. This is a Writing Without Tears inspiration. ds usually holds writing utensils with a death grip. The broken pieces forces him to hold them with a tripod grip.

Block 1 Form Drawing week 2

Grade 1

We had a very good week which goes to show good planning and flexibility goes a long way. I based our week on a rain theme thinking that the weather would help with the inspiration in our form drawing. All of our readings definitely worked with our straight and curve line form drawings. Here is what it looked like:

Even dd got into the chalkboard drawing and poem. Success for both kids.

Here's our movement with help of twister scramble. I love these dots.

Here are the forms we worked on in this section.

Playdough is a must in our daily life.

Does his proud smile prove that we are having a good time? This was his favorite.

This week's learning has definitely rejuvenated my faith in waldorf inspired homeschooling and realized that I strayed away from that. I can't wait until next week. I mean look at my ds's smile.

Lent and this week's lessons

For the first Sunday of Lent, our family discussed during dinner what it means and what we are giving up for Lent. I am giving up my beloved red wine, my dh is not going to purchase anything from itunes, and my ds is giving up burger king and crumpling paper. We really don't go there often but at 7 yo I guess this is the best I can get. Now I got to work on what we are going to give.
As for our schedule this week, I have grand plans:
Our theme is rain and form drawing.
I am armed with one really good poem, a lesson plan from Learn to Move Move to Learn book, and a few stories; Noah ark, Winnie the Pooh; piglet is completely surrounded by water, Horton hatches an egg, and Songs of El Coqui.
Our schedule will hopefully follow something like this:
Monday: play dough w/ therapeutic listening, LtM MtL lesson plan, snack, Right start math, lunch, walk, (dd nap), read out loud, library when dd wakes up, painting w/ tl.
Tuesday: simon says, poem, play dough w/ tl, form drawing, walk, snack, Right start math, lunch, OT, read out loud
Wednesday: recycling & trash out, poem, Play dough w/ tl, form drawing, snack, indoor movement/game, ds goes to school for 1/2 day, read out loud
Thursday: mercury's dance, poem, play dough w/ tl, form drawing, snack, free play, right start math, lunch, walk, dd nap, read out loud, bird feeder project w/ tl
Friday: ds all day @ school
Maybe this might just work out.

Sensory Stuff

So I am starting to work on ds's diet. He eats a lot of different foods but am working on seeing if gluten has an affect on him. I didn't realize how expensive a gluten free diet is. So after testing some products, I decided to try the enzyme powder to add to his juice since I know that taking pills would mean a crazy fight. We just started this digestive enzyme stuff so I'll post some results after a few weeks.
What else are we doing?
DS does the therapeutic listening 2 x's/day
works with playdough 1/2 hr
and many of our learning activities incorporate some sensory activity to help make transitions easier.

Great book for kids

In my search for good kid's books about Puerto Rico, I stumbled upon The Song of El Coqui and Other Tales of Puerto Rico. The 3 stories in it are great and the illustrations are beautiful.