Special Connection Homeschool

Sorry I have not blogged recently but we have been really busy. Gess got a part in the local Community College's Production of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson. As a homeschooler I am really excited about Gess having an opportunity to be in a play. She did not get a speaking role as she was a bit shy around all the other children during the auditions. However, she is still in many other scenes. Her role is a church kid who sings in the angel choir. I have been very impressed at how good she does in the 4 scenes that she is on stage for, particularly after sitting through the many scenes she is not in. She is sitting fairly still, or at least as still as some of the other kids are. Gess gets to be really animated in a few scenes where she cheers for a bunch of rowdy kids or has to run out of the church screaming "fire!" She really gets into those scenes! There are some times where a few people around her have to help her out, such as making her...

Fostering independence is a bit tricky with a child with special needs. You can tell that Gess really desires to have the same independence that her peers have. Our current focus has been on giving her more unsupervised outside play time. Since we have a fenced in back yard that has a lock out of her reach, we are able to do this without too much fear of her wandering off. I must admit I am still constantly peeking out to be sure that she is OK, but it's the most independent she has been and she truly loves it. Our main concern with giving Gess the freedom is that she learn to use it responsibly. Gess had finally quit trying to wander outside without permission until we introduced letting her play outside alone. Now she was again trying to leave the house without telling us. However, this time she was not trying to simply "wander" off, she was just trying to do what we sometimes gave her permission to. So to address this we reviewed safety rules for playing outsid...

I am loving the Real Science 4 Kids curriculum we have chosen. Right now we are in the Pre-Level 1 Chemistry book. We divide each lesson into two or more weeks depending on the amount of material and how quickly Gess is grasping it. The first week we read through the workbook and on the second week we do the lab work. Gess really loves when we get to the experiments. This study was on chemical reactions. Our lab work for chemical reactions has us labeling 4 cups and placing lemon juice, vinegar, milk and water mixed with baking soda in them. Gess had to first describe what was in each cup (she didn't see me prepare them). She did pretty good but she thought the lemon juice was apple juice and of course the baking soda water was just plain water. Then we started mixing them. She discovered what happened when we mixed the following: 1. Lemon juice to vinegar 2. Lemon juice to milk 3. Lemon juice to baking soda 4. Vinegar with milk 5. Vinegar with baking soda 6. Milk ...

I can't believe my last post was way back on October 2nd! I really try to do one post a week, but this month has been crazy. I hope to get back on track now. One thing this month has brought us was Gess' birthday celebration. She certainly couldn't wait to be 9! Gess knows she is "growing up" and constantly tells me how she can't wait until she is 18 and passes the test so she can drive. Man, they sure want to skip all the good times don't they? One day Gess kept frantically pointing to her leg. I asked her what was the matter. She said "My leg! My leg is growing, it's growing into 9!" Yes, my literal little girl figured her leg was literally growing "up" on the one day that is her birthday! You just gotta love moments like that! But to help her slow down on the "growing up" thing and settle down to enjoy the moments until then I figured I would share the neatest gift Gesserine got for her birthday. It was gi...

As we are getting into addition, an important concept we are trying to master is counting on from one number to the next. In the book Teaching Math to People with Down Syndrome they offer some ways to help teach the concept. They suggest playing games with dice and count on from the first dice to add the second. You can count money starting with a $5 or $10 dollar bill. They also suggested laying out a number line that goes to 20 and throwing out random playing cards (with the face cards removed and using aces as ones) and counting up to 20 from whatever card is thrown. Another idea that my husband came up with involved an abacus I had purchased but have yet to use. While this game does not use it in the manner in which it was intended, it is a great visual tool to help Gess count on and she has found it more interesting then just throwing out one random card to count from. First we took the playing cards that already had the face cards removed and used aces as ones. I then...

Last year I posted about the Creative Writing Journa l we kept throughout the year. In it Gess would write down something that she learned that day. I started with the sentence "Today in school I learned about..." and she would write down one subject or topic and draw a picture about it. By the end of the year she was writing the entire sentence. Our goal for the journal was to not to simply work on writing skills, though it is helpful for that, but to help Gess answer the question "What did you do today?" In order for her to answer that, she had to think about what we had done. Since her memory retention was limited she almost always just said the last subject we studied unless I cued her to remember another subject (which I often did.) So this year, her speech therapist and I came up with an idea that we hope will help Gess retain the information throughout her day. To challenge Gess a bit we decided that this year we would have Gess choose two things that ...

Over the last year Gess has started expressing fear over things like heights, the dark and things at the doctor's office. Along with that she has also displayed some really defiant behavior. It is not the simple fear or behavioral issues that I became concerned about, every child goes through those. In her case, she would become so upset or distraught that she would simply become unreasonable and it just seemed like there was no way to talk her down. It was like she would just shut down and the episode would then spin out of control. Since this was all new behavior for her I was striving for a way to deal with it. Typically if Gess started to disobey we could simply provide her with options and she would usually choose the option that would make her obey. Option 1 (raising first index finger) would be to obey and option 2 (raising my next finger) would be whatever the proper punishment for not obeying would entail. It even got the point where I didn't have to explain ...

Well, Gess had her surgery which went really well. She had a rough first week home as her throat got infected but after some stronger antibiotics we are finally healing up. She is doing much better now so we started school on Monday August 30. We had a really great first day of school and I think I will like all the choices I have made for this year. Today I will share what we are doing for Social Studies. I have really struggled to find a curriculum that works well for Gess in this area. Gess should probably be in the 3rd grade, however for social skills and interaction in group activities we generally keep her one grade behind that. With that said, we are still mostly in grade 1 materials. So when I grabbed a new Social Studies Curriculum I decided to stay back at level 1. One reason is that I really want books that Gess can read by herself, not ones that I have to read to her. While her vocabulary is really advanced and she can read the words in 2nd grade materials, she strugg...

We had a great therapy session last week and I have many new ideas to try again this year. One of my main concerns is tackling the concept of "why." It seems to be one that is hard to grasp for many kids with Down Syndrome, at least at this age, so we are trying to come up with games and activities to help teach it. While I am sharing what we have learned, I encourage you to comment and share things that have worked for you too. I love getting new and fresh ideas! Last year I shared the " Sorting Activity: Why is it Different? " This was a great start in learning to focus in on why something was different and to learn to speak in the negative, "it is different because it is not ______." Another activity to expand on this concept are activity sheets about what does not belong. I found some to use at Schoolexpress.com . I do not even print them out, we just discuss them together on the computer. Share this picture and have the child tell you w...

Gess had her checkup with the ENT and the Ophthalmologist last week. Gess had a really rough winter and allergy season this spring and the doctor believes she needs to have her tonsils and adenoids removed. Her adenoids are large and they do believe that does affect her sinus issues. They say that her tonsils coming out will actually help with her restlessness at night as well as other breathing issues. Gess also has a small hole in her ear they are going to try to patch while they have her asleep. She will have to stay one night in the hospital and come home the next day. She will have to take it easy for one week after-wards (no school that first week) and no sports activities for at least two weeks (so no gymnasitcs for awhile). My original plan was to start school the third week of August, however, that is the week she will have the surgery so we will just put off school for another week or two. I don't want to start for only one or two weeks then stop for one or two we...

I have been looking for a good Science curriculum for Gess and we found Real Science 4 Kids last year at the Homeschool convention. My husband and I were really drawn to it. My only concern was paying the approximately $80 for it when I am not certain if she would be able to keep up with the material. It looks like it is presented in such a way as to make learning it easy and fun, but is it adaptable to a child with special needs? Not being certain we decided to wait and continued with the curriculum I had for one more year. Well, as I was researching what to use this year, I had a pleasant surprise. Gravitas Pubilcations now offers the Real Science 4 Kids in downloadable ebook format . Not only that, but they package it to where you can purchase 1 chapter at a time! I am so excited because now we can test the materials and see if it will be successful for Gess without having to pay a lot of money up front. Of course, if we really love it I will probably be more willing to p...

Gess went to her first overnight camp this year. It was a lot of fun. I went as her sponsor and got to stay in the cabin with her and accompanied her to all of her activities. She did really well fitting in with her peers, but there are still some areas in which she lacks the independence to do on her own. Over all though, I think she had a great experience. This was only a one night camp, which was a perfect way to start. After registering and getting settled in our cabin we began our day at camp by meeting at the flagpole. Each day they stand silently as they raise the American and Christian flags. Once they are up they say the pledge of allegiance to the American flag, the Christian flag and the Holy Bible. Then we were off to the tabernacle for our first service. Our speaker was a man who starts Spanish speaking churches in our area and also travels the world sharing the gospel using a soccer ball. The ball was made of various colors which makes it appealing to the childre...

I received this today in my email and wanted to pass the information along to you all. Help Pass ABLE Act Take Action! Contact Your Representative HELP US PASS THE ABLE ACT IN THIS CONGRESS! Contact Your Representatives to Convene a Hearing and Vote on the ABLE Act Today As you know, the NDSC endorsed the Achieving a Better Life Experience Act (ABLE) of 2009 (S. 493/H.R. 1205). The ABLE Act will give individuals with disabilities and their families the ability to have a savings account which could fund a variety of essential expenses for the individual, including medical and dental care, education, community based supports, employment training, assistive technology, housing, and transportation. The funds from the account would accumulate interest tax-free. Another important aspect of this bill is that the funds in the Able Account will not count as assets of the individual with a disability when determining their eligibility for important and life-sustaining federal benefit programs...

Our school year ended rather well, it was just really busy and I have not had the time or the inclination to blog much lately. I have started to make exercise a part of my regular routine and I had to find time for it somewhere. It appears it was blogging and spending time on the internet that took the biggest hit, which is alright with me. I do intend to keep this blog up though, especially through the school year. As we ended this year we were pretty much on all the same activities I had already told you about so there was also not much to tell anyway. I will do an update soon though and let you know where she is in all her subjects. For now, here are our summer plans. We have entered Gess in the Summer Reading Program at the library as usual. Gess loves it and this time I am making her read harder books. She is into some early chapter books and I am really proud of her skills. She is finally using book marks to mark her place because the books are longer than her attention...

It was so exciting to get Gess on the Special Olympics team. I was not aware that they started this at such a young age. Children only need to be 8 years of age to join the Special Olympics. Around here though, they do most of the practices and organizing through the public school so I had to figure out how to get involved. I went to our state Special Olympics website and found the contact information for our area and sent out an email. I was contacted by phone and we worked out the details and Gess was on the team. Each child that participates does need to take a physical. Children with Down Syndrome also must have an Atlantoaxial Instability test to make sure there is no risk to their spinal cord through physical activity. They practiced during the school day at the High School. They were very accommodating and welcoming when we joined them there. We also practiced with Gess some on our own, mostly to make sure she understood how to stay in her own lane for the races. Since ...

Now that spring finally has arrived we are taking advantage of playing outdoors. Gess kept asking me to play "hitch" so I thought it was time to teach her the game, as well as the appropriate title, which is baseball. (Maybe she came up with hitch as a blend between hit and pitch, which is not a bad nickname at all!) Gass had played kick ball at AWANA a few times last year and she really had a hard time with the rules. So we took apart some old linoleum, made some bases and just worked on what to do after you hit the ball. We went over which base was first, second and third. Then when she would hit the ball (which she was pretty good at) we would have her run the bases. Now that she is getting that down we are trying to work on teaching her how to determine whether to stop or keep running. For now she is simply to follow the coach's orders. She is having fun, we just need to get a real game going sometime. Here she is learning the game and enjoying the outdoors.

Gess has been doing great reading through the New Testament with me this year. Together we have read the first three gospels and are now starting the book of John. It has been great to hear her read along and see how much she improved, not only in her reading skills, but in her understanding of what she reads. To help supplement that reading we got her the Read and See DVD Bible . The Read and See DVD Bible has 40 Bible stories with pictures in the book and they also read and show the pictures from the book on DVD. The text of the story is shown on the screen as they read it which is a great help for her reading skills. Then, after each story is a song that fits that theme. The words for the songs show up on the screen as well, so it is not only fun to sing, but also is another good way to practice reading. So that makes 40 stories and 40 songs on the DVD and Gess just loves them all. If we cover one of the stories during our reading or lesson time we will end by loading ...

The Kansas City Zoo had their first annual Homeschool Day yesterday. We went with another homeschooling family and really had a great time. It was well organized and I believe truly made learning fun for the kids. We started off with a joint assembly to welcome everyone. Then they explained how and why we classify animals. The rest of day was spent exploring 5 different classifications of animals; Invertebrates, Amphibians, Reptiles, Birds and Mammals. For each category you could choose to attend a presentation, craft, activity (game) or take a tour. Here is Gess in our opening assembly excited to start the day. For our first event we chose to play the Parachute game while learning about Invertebrates. They all got around their parachute and flung the balls around, but this time each of the balls had the name of an animal and they had to first get all the vertebrates out of the mix, then they would pick out certain groups of invertebrates like the bugs, the ones that live in ...