Special Connection Homeschool

Inspiring the American Dream is working to help instill the passion for living the American dream in our children and grand children.  Let's face it, the American dream is in jeopardy because our current generation either does not understand that they can achieve it, or does not have the drive and determination to try.  Whatever the reason, the result is the same, our future generations need to be inspired and encouraged to live the American dream.  That is exactly what Inspiring the American Dream hopes to do through their children's book that I was given to review; Abraham's Journey: A Celebration of the American Dream Abraham's Journey takes place during the Great Recession (which I suppose is the here and now).  It is Christmas time and Abraham finds out that because his parents have recently lost their jobs they will not be getting any presents at Christmas.  I have to say that I was immediately impressed that the book would start this way....

My son Tim is off at college and so his girlfriend Chelsie.  Chelsie took a semester off awhile back to be a nanny in Alaska.  It was quite the adventure and was a great experience for her.  Now that she is back in school she is continuing to earn extra money by being a nanny, or sitter, part time for a couple of families.  She is really great with the kids and has many wonderful ideas about how to raise and educate them and knowing that I homeschool Gess she often shares them with me.  She gets these ideas from various places, some are from the families she works for, some from school, some are from research and others are from her own creative mind. One time while we were visiting her on campus she shared something one of the families were doing with their kids.  I loved it and have recently began implementing it with Gess. One of the things we emphasize with Gess is that it is not obedience if you do not obey the first time.  There is no countin...

We got quite the snow storm this past week.  Our local weather man referred appropriately to it as thundersnow.  It was really weird for me to hear a thunderstorm and see snow falling instead of rain.  Of course we were in the area that got more of a thundersleet storm.  What snow we got was packed tightly beneath a solid sheet of ice.  There was about 21/2 to 3 inches of it but it was all solid ice. The thunderstorm apparently scared Gess.  My husband woke up to her standing over him with her safari adventure vest on.  When asked what she was doing she told him that she was wearing her armor because of the lightning.  The one thing that kept her courage up was the fact that it was snowing.  She really wanted to make a snow man, but because of the ice that never happened.  Poor kid.  She kept looking at the snow not understanding how come I said she wouldn't be able to make a snow man, so she went out to play and figured it out....

Super Duper Publications is an excellent site for educational and therapy resources.  My speech therapist uses some of their products and I have found them to be quite helpful myself.  Well, they do offer a few resources for FREE that I wanted to share with you. First are the FREE APPS .  While most of them are for the IPAD they do have a few for Android based tablets.  You have to scroll down to the second section to find the FREE ones.  The first section is new apps, the second lists the free ones. While they don't have very many apps for us Android users what I do use a lot are their FREE Worksheets.  In order to get those you have to be one of their Facebook friends .  Then each week on Facebook they will post a FREE Worksheet to be downloaded.  It's only up for a limited time so I can't link you to any specific page, but if you click on their image it will take you to their Facebook page.  Once you click like and start followin...

What to do about math?  That's a question I keep asking myself every year.  My daughter has Down syndrome and math is where she really struggles.  I have finally settled on letting her use manipulatives and sometimes even a calculator just so long as she is learning the concept.  It is so tedious though, to have to help her with each and every activity.  That is why I was excited to get the opportunity to review a math program from  A+ Tutorsoft, Inc. While it is not geared towards children with special needs, it has been helpful for me as the parent/teacher as well as Gess, who is the student. A+ Interactive Math is a multi-sensory interactive math program that uses audio, visuals and text with interactive lessons, step by step instructions and instant feedback for 1st - 6th grade, Pre-Algebra and Algebra 1.   They offer a Homeschool Premium Software Edition available to purchase on CD as well as a Homeschool Online Edition with subscriptions ...

When decorating our school room I really didn't put too much thought into what calendar I used.  I actually had a few calendars given to us, and one was very colorful and playful so I thought Gess would like it and put it next to her school desk. However as we were working on our English rules, specifically referring to capitalization, I realized this was not a good choice.  Gess had to write the date at the top of her paper and did not know how to spell February, so I told her to look at her calendar.  It was that very moment that I realized the calendar did not capitalize the first letter of the name of the month! While that looks all "cutesy" it is not very helpful in a school room, especially when the student has trouble remembering to capitalize certain words! I became even more frustrated when I tried to find another calender in my home to replace it with because they capitalized all the letters in the word.  I did not have one calendar in my home ...

OK so I learned that people were not commenting because they found Captcha annoying, which I understand.  It can be really hard to read and take several tries to get through, so I finally turned it off.  However, I wanted to explain a couple of reasons why I used both Capthcha and Comment Moderation at the same time.  Some people seem to think that one or the other is sufficient, but it's really not. Comment Moderation allows you to make sure that comments made are appropriate.  I was on a board once where a very sick post was made that churned my stomach.  I never want my readers to accidentally find such a comment on my site, so I moderate.  This is especially important when you have a child with special needs as the focus of your blog.  The world can be so unkind at times.  Please understand why you will never see your comment immediately. Captcha allows you to avoid spam.  If you turn it off your inbox fills up with so much spam it ...

We started the new year with a new bible curriculum from Classical Academic Press - God's Great Covenant, Old Testament 1: A Bible Course for Children .  You might recall that last year I reviewed God's Great Covenant NT 1 so I was already prepared to love this just as much.  I was, however, even more excited to get this one because Gess' Sunday School class is going through the Bible chronologically so this will give us an opportunity to really build upon some of the lessons she has been introduced to. For the purpose of our review we received the following:   God's Great Covenant OT 1 Texbook God's Great Covenant OT 1 Teacher's Edition God's Great Covenant OT 1 Audio Files (MP3 Format) God's Great Covenant OT 1 is a bible course for children starting at about a third grade level but I believe it would be good for students anywhere from third through sixth grade, depending on the child. It covers material from Genesis to Ruth inc...