Special Connection Homeschool

I have to take a moment to congratulate my son Timothy for graduation from Fort Hays State University!  I also have to add additional kudos for being accepted into grad school at Kansas State University to earn his masters degree in Drama Therapy.  I am so very proud of Tim having sacrificed and worked so hard to get there.  He is a first generation graduate.  I have an Associates of Art degree, but not a four year degree.  My parents didn't even have that.  It is wonderful to see each generation get just a bit further.  Here are some pictures from the graduation event. Way to go Tim!! We are so proud of you son! I love you more than words can say!!

Since I just shared about how I have used Motivated Moms to help me keep my house in order and also recently blogged about how Gesserine does not get allowance for doing her chores, I thought today I would share some tips on how we motivate Gess to actually get her chores done. First of all we started training her at an early age that she was expected to clean up her own mess.  Singing songs can sometimes make it seem like play.  "Now it's time to clean up, clean up, clean up. Now its time to clean up and put away our toys." Or "Gesserine is a helper. Gesserine is a helper.  Gesserine puts away her toys. Gesserine is a helper." As Gess has gotten older, she has gotten more responsibility and we have had to come up with new ways to motivate her to do her chores.  While we can't always make chores fun, we can help to make them a positive experience.  Below are a few of the ways we do that. 1. Have a great attitude .  If you hate chores, so will your k...

Our schedules are extremely busy, between work, school, family, support groups and church we have several responsibilities to meet each week.  By the end of the day we are beat.  It seems like we never really have the time to do some of the things we enjoy as a family.  My husband and I like to unwind by sitting down and watching a movie together and Gess likes playing games.  Lately it seems that I never have time for any of those things, so we came up with a solution. For awhile my husband and I were watching television shows instead of movies, because they don't require as much time.  However, we find it difficult to find quality programming that we both enjoy.  So instead we decided that we would watch as much of the movie as we could before shutting it off and falling asleep.  The next evening we would watch some more.  We ended up watching the entire Lord of the Rings series (including The Hobbit) that way.  It works really well....

I will not always just share free ebooks but that's what I am really into right now so here is another FREE on Kindle post.  Remember, on Kindle they are not always FREE for long so be sure to grab them quickly. Educational Great for Presidents Day and Black History Month Children's Books   Home/Family/Cooking

A couple of weeks ago my niece got married and asked my daughter to be her flower girl.  I know that my daughter is a bit older than your average flower girl, but my niece didn't care.  She wanted Gess!  As it turns out the ring bearer, who also doubled as a groomsman, was my nephew (brother of the bride) who is an adult who has autism.  Having them both in the wedding made that occasion all the more special.  Robin, the bride, is an incredible statement to family who knows, cares and understands about the needs of others and the acceptance of all. This experience was really great for Gess.  She asks lots of questions about getting married.  She was a flower girl before (when she was four) and has been to other weddings when she was younger, but this is the first one she has been to since she really understood what was going on.  Being a part of the wedding party made it all the more special for her and she did an amazing job. I didn't actuall...

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...

Did you happen to see the Transit of Venus last night?  "A transit of Venus occurs when Venus passes directly between the sun and earth.  This alignment is rare, coming in pairs that are eight years apart but separated by over a century.  The most recent transit of Venus was a thrilling sight in 2004.  After the June 2012 transit of Venus (the last one in your lifetime), the next such alignment occurs in 2117."  When my husband found out this was happening he searched it online and found this really cool website called SLOOH which hosts live feeds of telescopes around the globe so that anyone can log in and see them.  They even offer memberships which allows you to do some of your own space exploration with these telescopes.  Well last night SLOOH hosted a live event where people gathered over the net and watched the telescopes as Venus took it's course past the sun.  Now, it did take about 6 hours to complete it's transit.  The ...

Yes, this blog has been dedicated to homeschooling my daughter who has Down syndrome.  She does have two brothers though who are older, one is 25 and one is 27.  No, I did not homeschool her brothers.  I thought about it often through the years but we never did it.  Anyway, I thought I would introduce you to Gess' brothers starting with Tim.  After high school graduation he tried his hands at a few things before finally deciding to go to college. Tim had actually moved out of the house when he was 18 but this last year of college he came back home so he could spend more time on school and less time working (though he still continued to work part time).  We were so glad to have him back home and having a college student in the house made Gess interested in going to college too.  In fact one morning as Tim was getting ready to head out the door with his healthy breakfast of a cookie and diet soda, I noticed Gess had grabbed her backpack and a cookie to...