Special Connection Homeschool

BiblePlan.org I have been utilizing BiblePlan.org to read the bible in a year. I am actually following two separate plans, one to read the Old Testament and the other to read the New Testament. The daily readings are emailed to me and I read it right here on my computer first thing each morning. They offer a large variety of reading plans as well as bible versions. Lately Gess has been getting up while I have been reading and sometimes reads it with me. So as we enter the new year I thought I would have Gess read with me intentionally from now on. Beginning tomorrow I will have Gess join me with the New Testament readings. With this plan you simply read 1 chapter a day Monday - Friday and have no readings on the weekends. This will lead perfectly into our schooling each day. I have been searching for a large print bible for Gess as she still seems to read better with larger print. I have not found one that is suitable for our needs yet. Because of that I have found reading the ...

I really want to teach Gesserine that Christmas should be more about giving than receiving, so I always try to have her give to others. We started by participating in Operation Christmas Child which is something we have done for a few years now. All you do is choose whether you want to give to a boy or girl and decide what age age group you want to buy for. Then you fill a shoebox full of presents and goodies and Samaritan's Purse sends them around the world to children who are in need. It's really a great program and an awesome way to teach about giving. Gess enjoyed helping me pick out the gifts, I added some essentials and then together we packed our boxes. This year we chose to do both a boy and girl ages 5-9 since that is the age bracket Gess would be in. Next we tried to find things to do for our personal family and friends. This year we decided to make homemade Christmas cards. We found some Christmas coloring pages online for her to decorate them with. I fou...

We study each holiday as it rolls around and each day we do our calendar so that we know what the date is including the month and year. We have also studied the seasons and what each season brings such as summer is warm and sunny and winter has snow, etc. So as we start this next year I want to really focus on tying it all together. I started by making the following activity. I divided a large piece of paper into 4 sections and labeled them Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall. Then I printed up the name of each month and cut them out. I had Gess pick a month and try to place it in the correct block. She actually did pretty good and got at least half of them right. Of course, since this was her first time I helped her until we got them all right. We then added our weather symbols from our weather board so she could visually tie in the weather with the months that belong in each season. I wasn't really certain how to symbolize fall, but those were all we had left anyway. I don...

Gesserine was so anxious to put up our Christmas tree that she suggested we do it before Thanksgiving was even here. It was so cute, as I was sitting at my computer one afternoon she came up to me and said, "I have an idea, let's do Christmas!" I reminded her that we needed to Thanksgiving first and to that she replied "Oh, ok." Well, each day she kept asking for the tree, so the day after Thanksgiving she finally got her wish. I wrote a poem when my boys were younger that shares how each part of the tree is a reminder of the time when Christ was born. Here is how it goes: A Message From Your Christmas Tree As Christmas nears there is a lot to do, shopping, cooking and decorating too. With all this bustling it's easy to leave out, what Christmas time is really about. So this year when you put up your tree, tell someone the secret meaning of me. I'm an evergreen tree that you choose to use, like Jesus' love you will never lose. The lights on me th...

With Gess down with Strep throat and the holiday this week I thought this would be great time to share some pictures my husband took one day when he took Gess out to the garage with him. She loves to play while daddy works but this time she wanted to do what daddy was doing, so daddy let her do just that! Here is how I think it went down. "Daddy, I want to hammer too." Daddy says, "Ok, here is a hammer, a piece of wood and nail, have fun!" While she is enjoying herself, she looks up and says... "Daddy, I need more wood." Daddy, says "sure, come here and cut some." "Perfect! That's just what I needed!" That's probably not exactly how it happened, but either way you can see she had a great time! Working with dad sure is fun!

We are, of course, preparing for Thanksgiving by implementing it into our homeschool activities. Below are the things we did to study Thanksgiving this year. (For more Thanksgiving ideas visit my blog from last year titled " Thanksgiving .") Workbook: Gess learned about the founding of America in our Christian Light Education Social Studies Unit . In these lessons Gess learned all about the Pilgrims, why they came to America on the Mayflower and how the Indians helped them to learn how to plant corn among many other things. Books: To build on that we added additional activities. First we checked out books at the library. I really liked the books we checked out last year so we checked out the same ones again this year. We also got a Thanksgiving craft book that has several crafts that are fairly simple. It is called 175 Easy-To-Do Thanksgiving Crafts . Crafts: Pumpkin Pie Game The craft we chose from the book 175 Easy-To-Do Thanksgiving Crafts was the Pumpkin Pie Game...

I really love the way the Phonetic and Spelling book is laid out in the Reading 1 - Bible Blessing Readers curriculum. It is set up in a way that encourages success, especially for children with special needs. We start with phonetic spelling. Each lesson has at least two vowel sets. For example it might be a short e and long e vowel set like the one you will see below. Because there are two sets in a lesson we make sure we do each set on different days. I do not want to confuse Gess by doing two rules at the same time. (Remember that some of these are review from Beginning Steps to Reading that we completed last year) I start by showing her the rule on the chalkboard and then share examples of how they are used in words. When we are ready for her to spell on her own we go to her workbook and have her write the vowel set at the top of the page. (The book has a "basket" of apples at the top of each row to write them in). This of course sets up the work in a way that ...

We finally started on Reading 1 - Bible Blessing Readers which is the curriculum that follows the Beginning Steps to Reading that I previously blogged about. (You have to write Eastern Mennonite Publications for a catalog they do not have a website)As I have stated before, this curriculum was meant to be done all in one year. Beginning Steps to Reading is used for the first semester and Reading 1 for the second. Since my daughter has Down Syndrome I have slowed this material down tremendously and am using each one of them for an entire year. I used Beginning Steps for Kindergarten and am using Reading 1 as 1st grade. (While Gess would be in the 2nd grade based upon her age, socially and academically we are calling this her 1st grade year even though it is our 3rd year homeschooling.) I am really loving Reading 1 so far as it too progresses at a slower pace. It also still offers multiple choice answers to some questions which really gives children with special needs an op...

Gess is now 8 years old! I am so excited because this means she can finally get in a car without a booster seat! I am also glad because each year reminds me just how far we have come and just how blessed we truly are. I knew nothing about Down Syndrome when Gess was born. We have been through open heart surgery, feeding issues and Gtube placement surgery, ear tubes, vision problems and constant patching, reflux issues, various therapies like OT, PT and Speech. With all of that I can only say that our lives are the better for it all. Regardless of the trials and hardships we have faced, the blessing that Gess has brought to our lives and the lessons we have learned about prejudices, fear and the sanctity of all human life are more than worth any cost we could have paid. We actually do not see these things as hardships, merely challenges to overcome. And overcome them we do! Each new milestone, each new lesson learned, each new discovery made, brings an abundant joy that we wo...

Recently Parentalrights.org held a video contest for people who wanted to make videos promoting parental rights. Here is their winner in the adult category. I try not to get too political on this blog, but I do not believe protecting the rights of parents should be political. I do fear there are real threats to my ability, not only to homeschool my children, but to simply raise my children according to my own belief system. If you too feel that parental rights are at stake I encourage you to visit parentalrights.org and support the parental rights amendment. Together we can keep the government from interfering with the most basic of relationships, the foundation of every society, the family.

Gess was down with a cold a couple of weeks ago and we used that time to discuss some things about germs and what happens when you are sick. We talked about the importance of proper hand-washing, covering your mouth when you cough and your nose when you sneeze. She does these things most of the time, but we really stressed why it was important. To support what we were discussing, I went online to look for a video that taught about germs. I found one at kidshealth.org . At Kidshealth.org they have a whole series called " How the Body Work s ." This covers many areas such as the Heart & Circulatory System, Brain and Nervous System, Bones & Skeletal System, Digestive System, and many others. Gess and I watched the one on the Immune System . It taught her how a cold virus tries to attack the system and what the body is doing inside to fight it off. She has watched it several times now and really likes it. It is pretty detailed so younger children may not really g...

A few years ago I set Gess to memorizing her address and phone number. I started by teaching her what city she lived in. I found a state map of Kansas and had her locate our city on the map. Eventually she could point to that general vicinity, even when the city was not marked on the map. After she learned the name and location of her city, I had her start memorizing her address. The reason I wanted her to understand her city first is that we travel out of the city quite often (mostly for doctor's appointments). While she is improving now that she is older, when she was younger she was quite the wanderer. If she got lost and someone asked her what her address was, I wanted her to be able to clearly tell them where she was from. Whether or not they could understand what she said was another issue but practicing this quite often really helped her articulation to improve. After she knew what her city was called and where she lived I had her memorize these two sentences (one at ...