Special Connection Homeschool

When you think of homeschooling you often picture a fairly large family with a lot of activity, however that is not always the case.  There are some families in the homeschool community who, like mine, have only one child at home.  Gess actually has two older brothers, but they are much older and no longer live at the house.  The youngest of them graduated when she was only 4 years old.  So, while Gess is not an only child, she is the only one at home and incidentally is the only one I have ever homeschooled. Homeschooling only one child has its advantages and disadvantages.  I believe the advantages are obvious.  How often have you heard people in public school complaining about class size and teacher to student ratios?  That's because the smaller the class size the better the student performs.  Well, it's hard to top a one to one student to teacher ratio!  What student wouldn't have an advantage being the only one in the classroom?  ...

The Schoolhouse Review Crew has a Spotlight on the Crew segment where they have us crew mates share some of our experiences with you.  I am honored to be spotlighted this week.  I think it's a topic many of my readers might be interested in so I wanted to share it with you.  You can find my article article here: Homeschooling the Special Needs Child: Balancing Goals with Outcomes .

Having a daughter with Down syndrome has been a blessing and a joy.  It really has proven that children with Down syndrome are more alike other kids than they are different.  Each child has their own goals, dreams, desires, interests and talents and that includes children who have Down syndrome.  Gesserine's interests all seemed to be tied into science.  She loves studying anything about the weather and her dream is to one day be a storm chaser, but if that doesn't work out she will settle for being a meteorologist.  With this in mind you can see why we were thrilled to be able to review Weather on the Move from Homeschool Legacy . Homeschool Legacy  offers once-a-week unit studies in a variety of subjects that help make learning more intriguing and fun.  Once a week you get to ditch the text books, tests and other activities you had planned and instead do a unit study that hits all the main subjects while learning something really cool.  The...

Because I am the one who does all the teaching I am careful to make sure that dad is a part of our schooling process and knows what we are studying and doing.  There are certain areas, like science, where dad actually does some of the work with Gess but we also try to make sure that we make time to just have some fun together.  During the Olympics Gess watched some tennis and fell in love with it, so we got some rackets and started playing that for exercise as well as family fun. We were really enjoying that until a few weeks back when my husband fell while attempting to jump over the puddle and get the ball, so tennis has had to be put aside. Well this weekend I went off to a ladies retreat so daddy and Gess got to spend some real quality time together.  Since tennis was out (because of his leg) he found a good alternative.  Ping-Pong (aka table tennis)! They also played some Yahtzee. Then there was the science experiment they did together wh...

You know an awful lot about my daughter who has Down syndrome and have shared in some of her struggles and have watched many of her successes.  What I do not usually talk about is me and don't worry, I won't bore you with that now, but I do want to share this one thing.  A few years ago I finally reached my weight loss goal!  That's right, from my highest weight I lost a total of 63 pounds and I have now kept it off for about 3 years.  Even though I have managed to keep the weight off I still struggle with getting enough exercise.   Therefore, when I was afforded the opportunity to review Family Time Fitness I thought, "how perfect!"  Usually I have to find time before or after "school" for my workout, but not anymore.  Now my daughter and I are both getting the exercise we need while spending some quality time together as well.  What could be better!? Gesserine actually loves exercising way more than I do so we were both anxious get starte...

Yes, I am talking about the planets and specifically earth as it rotates on its axis and revolves around the sun.  I have used balls in my hands and had Gess watch videos to explain this, but then my curriculum used a technique that really just clinched it for Gess and I just had to share.  It's so simple I don't know why I never thought of this before.  Well actually yes I do.  I am not very creative.  That's the hardest part of teaching for me.  However, while I am not so great at thinking outside the box  I am very good at research and adapting methods once the idea has been started.  Joining the Schoolhouse Review Crew has also been helpful as I have found some excellent resources I might not have otherwise tried before and that's exactly where these helpful tools came from! You might remember the review I did for Christian Kids Explore Science: Earth & Space last April.  I told you how I jumped ahead in that book for the purpose ...

Gess had a check up at the hospital which we live over 2 hours away from.  Since we just started back to school and I needed some science field trips for my curriculum I thought we might as well find something fun to do while we were in the "big city."  I was actually amazed to find that Union Station had a Science City section and it was only about 5 minutes from where her appointment was.  Since Science City covered just about every aspect of science, I figured it would be the perfect place to go. As you are heading down the hall to get to the entrance they had a really fun display of the evolution of the roller coaster rides at Worlds of Fun.  Here is Gess checking out the one from the 80's. She has never been to a theme park, with some of her issues with loud noises, crowds and lines I have been afraid to spend the money only to find out she can't handle it.  Now that she is older I think she will do just fine so we may have to try that out next year. ...