Special Connection Homeschool

Gess had to make a castle for her Bridgeway Academy final class project and I wanted to share more about the process she went through in designing her castle. We began our class reading the Magic Treehouse The Knight at Dawn .  I don't know why we haven't read more of these books but it was really great.  It also did help to stir Gess' interest in the middle ages. As we began to talk about castle design we had Gess read more about castles.  Here are a few books that she chose. This last one If You Lived in the Days of the Knights actually had a really great page that showed a castle and labeled many of the different parts of the castle you might find.  I wish I had taken a picture of it when I had the book at home, but it was really helpful in showing Gess what features would be good to have in her castle. Since using Minecraft was an option Gess was really eager to get started.  Minecraft is a great game, if you haven't tried it, you sho...

Recently I shared with you how much Gess has been enjoying board games and today I get to tell you about a new one we have been playing.  The Presidential Game is a neat way to not only have some family fun, it's a way to learn about how our election process works.  The Presidential Game is a strategy game where you play in teams of two.  You have Repulicans which are the red team and Democrats which are the blue team.  The object of the game is to win the election by securing 270 electoral votes.  Before the game begins you agree on how many weeks are left before election day.  There can be as many as 30 weeks which means each team gets 30 turns.  They say this takes about an hour of game time.  We usually went with half that choosing 15 weeks.  During each turn the team decides if they want to go campaigning or fundraising.  The amount of votes they receive in each state from those efforts is determined by the roll of the dic...

Games are a fun way to get our hands-on learning and there are many ways to implement them into your educational program.   One thing you can do is find games that are meant to be educational but I am not usually willing to drop my money on those as they can be rather pricey.  So what I do is either use what games we have or make up my own.  If necessary I change the rules or add my own twist to help my daughter who has special needs. For instance Yahtzee was a good way to learn adding, especially when we were learning our doubles math facts . Gess does great if she uses the large print Yahtzee score card from BoardGameGeek . To help with money we made up a game called Can I Buy That ? War is an easy but excellent way to teach greater than and less than.  Gess was really slow when she first started playing but now she is pretty quick to grab her cards when she wins! Crazy 8 is another good game.  It took Gess awhile to figure ou...

Squidoo has Free Printable Board Game Templates .  They have a variety to choose from.  You can get boards that look like Monopoly, Checkers and others as well as ones that aren't geared towards any specific game.  These are a great way to make up your own version of these games with easier rules for younger kids or children with special needs.  Of course you can also make up your own game to go with them.  There are many great things you can do with them.  Click on the template below to download some.  Have fun!

We have this very old Bible Trivia game that my husband's mom gave us when we first got married.  She didn't give it to us brand new, it was used, but she knew my husband and I enjoyed playing.  When my boys were younger and before Gess ever entered the scene we used to play it quite a bit.  We had a system for dealing with the tough Old Testament questions.  "When in doubt, answer David!"  It's not that David is often the answer, that just seemed to be what the boys would say if they didn't know the answer.  It soon became our replacement for "I don't know."  It was always funny when it paid off and we got it right!  Well, Gess really loves to sit down and play games in the evening.  One night my husband was saying how it would be nice to be able to play that old Bible Trivia game with her.  I immediately got up, went to one of our closets and pulled out the box and said "you mean this old thing?"  He was glad we still had it....

Gess has always enjoyed playing board or card games with us but it has just been the past year or two where she has really  been able to do it somewhat independently.  We started with Yahtzee , Operation and Sorry .  She loves Sorry and that one is even helpful in making her a gracious loser because we really emphasize the sorry part.  We make a big deal out of it in a really fun sort of way so she doesn't get mad when she gets sent back.  She is also getting better at cards since she is learning how to hold them in her hand. Later I will be posting some of the games we are playing and how we are incorporating them into learning and therapy.  However since we are sort of taking a break from school this week I thought I would share one that she played with daddy last week.  It's called Heroes Incorporated .  My husband won it at a Board Game convention and never really played it.  They did have to adapt some of the rules to make it more fa...

Gess is a really good reader but she does struggle a little with spelling and comprehension so I am continually looking for ways to improve those areas to strengthen her overall reading ability.  Recently we got to meet Samson, a cute little dog that Gess got to play some really fun reading games with.   Samson's Classroom is an online reading program for grades K-5 that focuses on three areas of reading; sight words, spelling and comprehension. Each section of  Samson's Classroom  works independently of each other and each has their own motivation and reward system.  The sight words category is really fun because you work along with Samson to earn your "black belt" in reading. There are 28 sight word lists and every time you master a list you get a star.  For every 4 stars you get a new belt.  Once you have completed all 28 lists you have earned your black belt!  Here are the belts by progression. The great part is that  Samso...