Special Connection Homeschool

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 ...

Gesserine has recently discovered certain bodily functions. It is always so funny to hear a child discover these things. Well, for this particular one Gess would be sitting there and suddenly say "It stinks in my private parts!" This really cracked us up, but it also needed to be addressed before she decided to announce this information in public! I have been trying to explain to her that passing gas is something we all do, and that it is perfectly normal, however it's not something we have to tell everyone about. I have recently become a fan of the Doctor Oz show and she loves watching it with me. I thought of writing to him to see if he could address this topic when it occurred to me, he may have already done so. Sure enough, he had a segment titled " Why We All Pass Gas ." Gesserine and I watched this and when we were done she went into the kitchen and got some foods from his video, handed them to me and said "gas." Yep, certain foods can ...

Unfortunately the poster contest has been suspended again. This time it had nothing to do with counting errors or problems on their end. No, this time it was due to the malicious behavior of people who think ridiculing persons with special needs is a fun thing to do. There are sites on the internet now that have stolen the posters from the gallery and have modified them to mock the very point we were trying to make. My heart breaks. Not only for our loved ones who are being attacked, but for people in this world who can find no joy or honor in their own life without having to first tear someone else down. Man honors intelligence as a god. That is why he mocks those whose brain functions differently from their own. They believe that different can not be good, or else they can not be "better." They take all their supposed intellect and measure it with a mere number, forgetting that the to be wise one must take the knowledge he has learned and put it to good use. Inste...

The National Down Syndrome Congress is having a poster contest for their " We're More Alike Than Different " campaign. We have entered Gesserine in the contest with a picture I had taken for this blog. ( Poster Submission #133 )We chose this picture, not just because it is cute, but because we feel it really speaks to the heart of the message. Do you know that people are actually amazed that Gesserine is able to read? These people are not mean spirited or bigoted, they simply do not know anything about Down Syndrome. I can't stand in judgment on them for that. I was clueless as to what it was before Gesserine was born myself. Now I know that while a diagnosis of Down Syndrome does mean that a child will have some difficulty and struggles in life, the diagnosis itself is NOT enough to tell us what those struggles will be. Some children with DS will struggle to read, others, like Gess, will excel at it. Some will struggle with physical skills, while others wil...

The poster contest has had some issues with poster's numbers changing that they can not resolve. The restarted the contest and I blogged about it here. Thanks so much everyone! Gesserine in DS Awareness Poster Contest