Special Connection Homeschool

I will be participating in a 5 Days of...Blog Hop.  Instead of all of us writing on the same topic, we are each branching out and covering something different.  My posts will be on hands-on learning.  Here at Special Connection Homeschool most everything we learn is hands-on.  I think it is one of the best parts of homeschooling and especially essential if you have a child with special needs.  So if you would like to learn a little more about the hows and whys of hands-on learning, be sure to check back August 5 - 9 for my 5 Days of Hands-on Learning .

Gess is a great reader and loves going to the library but as she gets older I find it is getting more and more difficult to find quality fiction books for her to read.  Oh sure there are plenty of books on the shelf but way too many of them have questionable content or promote inappropriate behavior.  Since Gess has special needs she is overly sensitive if there is any fighting or serious conflict within the story.  She will start books and often not finish them because they "bother" her, especially if they have illustrations that demonstrate the emotions.  Because of this I am always excited when I am afforded the chance to review books such as Goldtown Adventures which are labeled as " Wholesome Books for Kids ." For the purpose of my review I received part two in the newly released Goldtown Adventures series Tunnel of Gold by Susan Marlow and Kregel Publications . This delightful book follows the story of Jem Coulter and his sister Ellie the children ...

You know chore charts are not just for children.  As I have been struggling trying to keep the house work up among all my summer activities, homeschooling projects, exercise, blogging, church activities and other every day life events I realized that I needed a hand.  Since Gess is getting older and taking on more responsibility I though it was a good time to put some order into her routine of helping.  Then Chelsie gave me a great idea that she uses.  By breaking up my weekly chores into daily tasks I don't have to give up an entire day to nothing but cleaning house! Taking her idea and breaking up the daily chores I came up with the following list.  There is one for each of us and an extra one that goes beyond the standard chores.  It's the stuff we do at least once a week to keep our house neat and clean.  What I love about it is that if something happens on that one day I had set aside to clean the house, it doesn't mean that my entire house get...

A couple of years ago I wrote Fostering Independence: Breakfast Cereal about one of the ways we enabled Gess to fix her own breakfast and it was by using the small boxes of cereal. Well, that worked for awhile but as Gess got older the small boxes were too small for her appetite.  They can also be expensive.  Another tool we have been using are the tupperware style containers that help you keep Cereal fresh.  These are neat because Gess is not always good at rolling the bag up.  We had a real issue with ants getting in our pantry and several times they were in our cereal because she either didn't close the bag well or so much cereal fell in the bottom of the box outside the bag that the ants still found it.  Getting these handy things not only helped with ants, it helped Gess do a better, neater job at fixing her own cereal. Now Gess makes less of a mess and more importantly we got rid of our ant problem! We are still working on milk spills....

I am happy to announce that my new Therapy page is done.  You will now find this label at the top of my blog which organizes my posts and other resources for behavioral, cognitive, life skills, motor skills, social skills, speech and general therapy. Many of the posts are simply activities we did as part of our therapy, they are not an entire therapy program.  There are also links to other therapy websites and resources. Therapy is an integral part of our school each day and I try to share with you some of the ways we incorporate it into not only school, but daily living. I would love to see the information on this page grow.  Please feel free to share with me other resources that you think should be included as well as suggestions on what else you would like for me to write about. 

We decided to homeschool our daughter before she was born but when we found out she had Down syndrome we weren't so sure if we would still be able to do that.  However, by the time Gess was ready for school we not only knew that we were capable of homeschooling, we were convinced it was the best choice for us. The hardest part of homeschooling a child with special needs was finding resources to use.  I was constantly on the internet searching for information and ideas about how to teach Gess.  There was one time I found a great resource on teaching children with Down syndrome to read.  A few months later I lost the link.  I went back to search for it but and after hours and hours with no results I finally gave up. That's when I decided I not only needed to organize my information better, I needed to share it with others. I figured if I had this much trouble finding information, maybe others did too. Special Connection Homeschool was sparked from that idea....

The other day Gess and I were in the car and we were talking about a friend who had a great accomplishment.  Gess started saying how she wanted to do that too.  She could not seem to be just happy for the other person.  She wanted to a chance to be a part of it too.  She always wants the attention that everyone else gets and she absolutely hates losing.  While it is good that she wants to try and experience new things, she has to come to the realization that she can't do everything and especially that she can't do everything well . I told her that while God created her to do special things, he didn't create her to do absolutely everything .  I then talked about the different gifts we were all given.  This particular person was given a very unique gift in sports.  They are excellent at it and have competed around the world.  No matter how hard Gess tries at some things she will never be able to be as good as everyone else. This is even mor...