Special Connection Homeschool

This month our co-op visited the Fire Station where both firefighters and EMTs where there to take us on a tour of their facilities and vehicles to teach us some basic safety tips.  It was so much fun!  Gess had the honor the of being the one to try on the fireman's suit. Everyone also loves to sit in the drivers seat of the Fire Truck. Of course these things can also be noisy! Seeing all of these were cool but we learned some important things. Fire Safety Tips 1. Call 9-1-1 in case of an emergency 2. Stop, Drop, & Roll - This is the procedure you use when you or your clothes are on fire.      Stop running frantically fueling the flame.      Drop to the ground      Roll around to put out the flame. Don't forget to cover your eyes! 3. Crawl to leave a building on fire, don't walk. Smoke rises so be sure to stay down low. 4. Check doorways before passing through. First look to see if you see smoke ...

This was our first Passover celebration so I had a lot to study and learn. What I found out was that I also had a lot of work ahead of me. You see, the day after the passover is the week long Feast of Unleavened Bread. This requires you to eat unleavened bread for 7 days. However, since you also eat no leaven on the day of Passover you end up going eight days without leaven. Scripture says: Exodus 12:18 In the first month, from the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread until the twenty- first day of the month at evening. The Passover celebrates when God protected the first born of the Israelites from the angel of death which was the tenth plague against Egypt. The Feast of Unleavened Bread begins its celebration on the day they were led out of Egypt, the morning after the Passover. Since Jewish days begin when the sun goes down in the evening, it can get somewhat confusing, especially when it calculates out to eight days but the bible keeps s...

As most of you know by now, Gess has Down syndrome. She is a bright girl, can read very well, has great problem solving skills, has a great interest in science, and has a great love for learning. Our struggle is with math. She gets the concepts of what we are doing and with helps can do her basic problems. At age 13 she can now tell time, count money, measure ingredients, add and subtract with objects, but she struggles with memorized facts and therefore can't do problems in her head. Even with what she can do, math is still very difficult and therefore she doesn't like it. All during the school day she never complained, until it was time for math. "It's too hard" she would fret and for a child with special needs that is the truth. It's not hard the way we think of hard. Her mind simply doesn't work that way. Gess is not the type of kid who will complain and whine over every little thing, but math, for Gess, is extremely hard. The memorization thing ...

This year as we are studying the Biblical Holidays which of course included the Passover. I really wish I could have kept up with blogging about it while we were celebrating it but there was so much to prepare and do that I just didn't have the time. I still want to share what we did and how we did it so next year I can pull these posts back out for both your sake and mine! The Passover Week celebration had many elements. Each Friday I will post a specific blog for each one.  As they are completed the links below will work. For now just know they are coming. Check back every Friday for the next six weeks to learn more! 1. The Preparation - (Coming April 24) This required work a few weeks ahead of time. It basically was the task of removing unleavened bread from your home and what we learned in the process of the cleansing. 2.  Passover Crafts & Activities - (Coming Soon) We did two crafts, some fun pages, and watched some videos to help our daughter be a ...

Oh my, I am having trouble blogging lately! It's not because I have nothing to write about, I actually have so many things that I want to share. It's just been a time issue. So please be gracious and understand. If I cant get myself back on track, I will be sharing about the Life of Fred math curriculum we are using, our Passover celebration, what unleavened recipes we used for our week without leaven, our field trip to the Fire Department and EMS, and more!  Please don't give up on me yet. Give me another week or so. I have so much going right now. I will make a commitment to write this week, so hopefully by next week I will back on schedule!!

I noticed that Gess was looking over her glasses a lot so I felt it was time to get them checked out. Her appointment went well and we found out the problem was not that they were getting too loose, as I had thought, but that her strong eye had actually improved and therefore it was easier for her to look over, rather than through her glasses!  Her other eye basically stayed the same, but its the weaker eye. Now that Gess is 13 she is really starting to develop her own tastes so looking for glasses was a lot of fun. She looked at the shelf and suddenly discovered a pair of pink glasses and grabbed them hastily off the shelf. We laughed, but they were plastic and its hard to get a good fit for her sometimes, but these did look like they might work. We still had her try other pairs to which she stuck out her tongue at a few of them. Nope, she wasn't liking our picks at all!  She clung to her pink glasses and the optometrist agreed that we could get them to fit well, so we went...