This and That

Well, homeschool has been going pretty well since we started using Switched On Schoolhouse for my son.  He still needs a lot of help to stay on task, but having everything laid out for us makes that easier.  I am able to point to what is due that day and he knows there is an end in sight, he won't be doing homeschool forever if he stays on task.  I only wish I could be home with him more.  If I was able to work with him more, we could get him done with the 4th grade level before summer, and he'd be able to have a summer break.  As it stands though, we will work the entire summer, just so he will be only a year behind in September.  I have decided that once we get him into the fifth grade level, I am not going to push too hard to catch up, he can just be one year behind in everything but math.  We'll just call him a 5th grader and not stress about it, and he'll be doing 6th grade math by than, so his test scores should show him ahead in that subject.  Later when he is older, if he wants to catch up in order to finish school on time, he can work toward that. 

It is also easier because at times I am able to leave him alone to work, the text-to-speech is certainly not perfect, but it still makes some independence possible for him.

He is working with the One Minute Reader program I blogged about last time as well, and it really seems that it is going to help him.  Of course it is too soon to really judge, but so far it seems to be having some positive effect.  If nothing else it is giving him more practice, and because his sister isn't doing the same thing, he isn't feeling like he's being compared to her.  He is competing against his OWN best speed, not someone's else.

It's been a While!

I haven't posted on this blog for a long time!! I am busy homeschooling, going to work, teaching at co-op, teaching Sunday School, and a billion other things, and I just don't have as much time to write as I would like to have.

A lot has changed in our school lately, we've abandoned things that weren't working well for us, and picked up things that we hope work better.  My son still hasn't been officially tested for dyslexia, but I am more sure than ever that he is dyslexic.  Because I work outside the home, I just don't have the time to keep reading to him, but he needs to move beyond his reading level in subject matter like Science and History. So we've started using Switched On Schoolhouse for him, he can make use of adaptive technology like "Text-to-Speech" and have the computer read the lessons to him, then he only has to read the questions that come after.  However, I do ask him to follow along with the computer while it reads, and I have him read one lesson a day, using the Text to Speech only for individual words he gets stuck on.  He is doing 4th grade level, which is about a year behind where he should be, but the reading problem has held him back in the content areas a little, and the fourth grade level covered content that I felt was an important foundation for the later levels, so he'll just have to work year-round until he's at grade level. He is using Switched on Schoolhouse for Bible, Language Arts, Science, and History/Geography.

To address the reading separately, we are going to start using One Minute Reader which is a program designed to build fluency in reading.  I figure we have covered all the phonics he needs, and what he needs now is practice, practice, practice.  Of course, we continue to cover some phonics through spelling, but really we have been over and over phonics again and again.  Research has shown that repeated reading of the same passage, and choral reading are two of the most the effective ways to build fluency in readers, including dyslexics, and since One Minute Reader uses both of these techniques, we are going to give it a shot. My son is so unfluent with reading, that even though he is "supposed to be" in 5th grade, we had to start him with "Level E", the easiest stage, written at a Kindergarten to early First Grade level.  Hopefully it will work for him.

In addition, he is also reading Pathway Readers, he is doing the second grade level of that, and he can figure them out, he just isn't very fluent with them. 

For math he is continuing with Teaching Textbooks, it has been great for him so far, and is the only subject he is on grade level with. 

My youngest daughter, who is on grade level in all subjects, and in fact a little advanced in reading, is using Learning Language Arts through Literature, The Mystery of History, and reads the Pathways Readers with my son.  For science she does a class at our co-op.  Next year she will move into Switched On Schoolhouse also, but for now we will use what we have on hand for her, and next years he can use the Switched On Schoolhouse that my son is using now, and he will move into the 5th grade level of it.

So there is the catching up on the homeschooling.  In other areas, the big news is that my husband is getting laid off in June.  So I am looking for more clients for my housecleaning business, and my husband is considering further schooling so he can find a decent paying job, while he goes to school he would be able to collect unemployment, and that, along with me working more... will hopefully be enough.

The Sovereign Hand of God

God was watching over my kids and me today.  You see after church I was going to go shopping for a new camera.  I was going to take my kids with me in the van, and take a 45 minute drive, most of which would have been on the freeway at 60 miles an hour.  I told the kids to go to use the restroom at church because we would be driving a while, and then suddenly, really without thinking, I changed my mind.  I decided it would be much easier to shop if the kids stayed at church with their dad and came home with him when he was ready to leave church.  So I took my husbands pickup truck and left him with the van to take the kids home.

He had many fewer miles to drive, and no freeway driving, but neither of us knew that would be significant.

After we were both home later we made a grocery list and I was going to take the van to go grocery shopping.  My older daughter and I climbed in and drove out of our driveway, we drove about half way down our little country road with no trouble, and then "BUMP-BUMP-BUMP-BUMP!"  I wasn't even driving the 25mph hour speed limit, and it was still hard to keep the van going straight.

I stopped and got out to see what was wrong, and I saw this:

We turned around and drove slowly back home.  I have little doubt that if I had taken the van to go shopping for my camera today, this would have happened at 60 mph, and at that speed would probably have been a total blowout.  I don't know why it happened, we didn't add air to the tires recently, but it almost looks like it was over-full.  They are Goodyear tires, I think I remember a few years back of a recall?  These were on the van when we bought it last spring, I wonder if they were part of the recall.

At any rate, I am praising God today that He was watching over my kids and me.

Very Frustrated!

About a month ago I called an educational psychologist and made an appointment to get my son officially evaluated for dyslexia.  I remember the  conversation very well, I asked if it would be covered on my insurance and the doctor wasn't sure, and asked me if I wanted to wait and find out first.  I said, "No, because even if its not covered my son needs to be tested, so I'll just set up the appointment now, and if insurance doesn't cover it I'll pay out of pocket."  From there the doctor proceeded to set up an appointment with me.  10:30 on April 16.

So yesterday I got up, got all my kids ready, and went to catch the 9:25 Ferry across Puget Sound to go to this doctors appointment, only to get there and find out that the doctor never put me in the appointment book.  I came all that way for nothing.

That might not seem that big a deal, but the Ferry tickets are not cheap.  It cost $11.85 on the way over, because passengers are free going that way and you only pay for car and driver.  The way back was a different story, the kids are $5.55 each so that came to $16.65, plus the cost of car and driver again which brings the return trip price to $28.50.  So the round trip to go over there and waste my time cost me $40.35.  On top of that, there was the gas driving around the city looking for an office that was very hard to find with the directions given me, stopping to get food at lunch time because we didn't have time to pack a lunch (we were concerned about "being late" for our vanishing appointment).

The doctor asked if I wanted to reschedule.  I said, "No, I'll find someone else."

So now I have to try to find another psychologist trained in diagnosing learning disabilities.  I may have to do another Ferry trip to get it done, and that is okay with me as long as they keep the appointment.  It certainly won't be at the same office though, if they aren't competent enough to write down the appointments they make, I don't think I want them being the ones to diagnose my son.

Since by the time we got home we had wasted our homeschool day, we decided to go to the park for a little while and let the kids play while my older daughter and I took photos.  Of all the ones I took, this is my favorite one.  The rest are posted HERE. 

 After all of that, we still had to drive into Bremerton, which is over 28 miles in the opposite direction of the Ferry, to get my daughter something to wear for the Homeschool High School Formal.  So I had a pretty busy day  yesterday, and a frustrating one at that.

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"Get -R- Done!" How?

Okay, I lead a pretty busy life.  I homeschool my three kids, pulling together my curriculum from a wide variety of material, which takes PLANNING.  I work up to three days a week outside the home, usually only for half days, but sometimes longer.  I teach Sunday School.  I teach a class at a homeschool co-op.  I am taking a distance education course in Small Engine Mechanics, which requires me to study about 1 hour a day five days a week.  I try to work out for about an hour and a half at least five days a week, and I have recently been convicted that I need to set time aside to quiet myself before God and read His word each day.

So how does this play out in real time?  How can I possibly get it done?

Well, this is what today looked like:

The alarm went off at 5:00 in the morning, but I hit the snooze button twice, so I got up at 5:30.  Then I had a mug of homemade chai, put a status on my church's Facebook page, and one on my own, and then went to my room to read the Bible and pray.  I got into what I was reading, and instead of just reading a chapter, I ended up reading seven chapters, this used up most of my time, so the actual time spent praying was kind of short.  Oh well, its more important for me to hear from God than for me to tell Him a bunch of things He already knows, simply inviting Him to be with me on my day and asking for His help to walk in obedience is probably all of the prayer I really need.  After this worked out on Wii Fit Plus for 41 minutes, 30 minutes of which was spent running in place on "Free Run".  Then I took a shower and made myself some oatmeal, and drank another mug of homemade chai.  I packed my lunch, put on my makeup, and did my hair. 

This all sounds like I was moving incredibly fast, but in reality, it was almost 10:00 before I left for work, and the only things I had accomplished was my quiet time, breakfast, workout, and getting ready for the day.  Fortunately, my husband got the kids to do their math lessons, and had them do their daily reading out loud, so there wouldn't be as much homeschool when I got home from work.

I started work at 10:20, and finished at 1:30.  It was a short day, only three hours.  I usually work around four hours at least.  It was 2:00 when I got home.  I was tired so I sat down at the computer to rest, and ended up wasting an hour.  Then, just as I was about to get started on the homeshooling, my oldest daughter reminded me that I needed to reinstall virus protection on her laptop, which had been reformatted after encountering some problems.  I had to get on the phone with Norton and have them help.  They took remote access of the computer and installed it, but I still had to sit at the desk with a phone to my ear for another thirty or forty minutes.  I also remembered I needed to back up my computer, so I started before I left the computer area.

Finally I started the younger kids on their Phonics lesson.  It took a long time, but its vital for my son that we don't skimp on this area.  He needs the review of all the information.  After Phonics, the kids were tired so I let them have a short break.  Then we did Learning Language Arts through Literature.  While the kids did their copy work, I studied my small engine repair course.  When they finished the copywork part of their lesson, I put my studies aside to help them with the rest.  Then when we finished their lesson, I let them take another break while I finished studying the section I was on.  When I finished it was around 8:00 at night, and we hadn't had dinner.  Fortunately my husband had started a soup in the crock pot before he left for work.  So we ate dinner, and I read to the kids from their History book and asked them questions about it while they ate.

After dinner, I studied a bit more.  When Lost came on I had  to watch it, the younger kids were sent into their room to watch kids shows and my older daughter and I watched Lost.  For the first half of the show I sat down and watched, and studied on commercials.  Then during the last half of the show I did Free Step on the Wii Fit Plus while I watched.  When Lost was done, put the kids to bed and did my daily exercises for bad knees.

Then I updated my weight loss blog with my daily exercise and calorie information.  And now, at 11:50 I am writing this, and tomorrow I will get up between 5:30 and 6:00, and start it all again.  Except that tomorrow, I also need to get the kids to Awana and my oldest to Youth Group!

HE IS RISEN!!!

What the Eye Doctor Said

Today our family went to the eye doctor to evaluate my son's vision.  

Sure enough my son has eye trouble.  He is slightly nearsighted, but not enough to need glasses.  However, there are three issues with his eyes that do require attention.  The first is his eye tracking ability, eye tracking refers to the eye's ability to follow a moving object, and to move easily and smoothly from side to side, as is required to read a line of text. Children usually develop this ability on their own as they play, and by the time they try to learn to read, their eyes can move smoothly across a line of text, or follow a butterfly fluttering about the room.  My son's eyes did not develop this ability.  They move side to side in a halting, jerking, movement.  They also move slightly up and down as they attempt to move side to side. The next issue is his convergence ability, that is the ability of both eyes to focus on the same spot in space.  With concentrated focus and effort, he can make his eyes do this, but he has to work very hard to get them to, and it is not supposed to be hard.  It is supposed to be automatic.  The third problem with his eyes is that when he focuses on something near him, and then tries to focus further away, his eyes take too long to relax and refocus, this is probably the cause of his slight nearsightedness.

The good news is that all of these problems are treatable through vision therapy.  It is possible that our medical insurance will cover it, we are still waiting to find that out.

The doctor suggested that we get him tested for Dyslexia as well, and, as I shared in an earlier post, we have already made an appointment for that.  If he has Dyslexia, the vision therapy won't fix that, but by removing the visual obstacles, so that he only has the obstacle of Dyslexia still in his way, we will make learning much easier for him.

Oooh Nooo!

Yesterday when I woke up the day looked beautiful.  I got ready for work and it was still beautiful.  I arrived at work and it was still beautiful.

Then as I was working I heard some noise, it sounded like a lot of wind.  I looked out the window, and sure enough, the wind was blowing... hard.  Hard enough to bend the tops of the tall pines into shape of a bow.  Around here, that kind of windstorm means one thing... widespread power failure. The people I clean house for have a generator that automatically kicks in when the power goes out, so it didn't effect my ability to finish the job.  I sent my oldest daughter a text, asking if the power was out yet.  She texted back "LOL, Yes."

When I left the client's house, I was a little surprised at the condition of the roads.  The storm was worse than I'd thought.  Tree limbs lay everywhere, I weaved in and out among them all the way home.  In one spot a tree had fallen across the road, fortunately before I got there a guy did who happened to have a chain saw in his truck.  He was just finishing up when I arrived on the spot.  So I was able to continue on home.  The road I live on was no better.  One neighbor's fence was broken down by a fallen tree.  When I got to my driveway, I had to get out and clear some large limbs out of the way before I could continue home.


Once I got home, I saw that the power was still out.  This meant a cold lunch, it was already 3:00 in the afternoon so I was famished and in no mood to search too much for healthy options.   My diet bread was frozen, so I had to use regular, and eat lunch meat and cheese.  After my sandwich I was sill hungry so I ate some of the lunch meat and cheese plain.  Finally I had an apple and a yogurt.  Then I started homeschooling my kids, my oldest works independently, so I focused my attention on the younger two.



We did Phonics, I read them a chapter from their new History book, and then we finished reading a chapter of Little House in the Big Woods.  They had done their Math while I was at work, and they do most of their science at co-op, so I decided to call that enough for the day.  The power was still out.


I decided I'd better go get our generator out of the garage and hook it up before it got too dark to see.  So I walked around behind our house to open the garage door.  Usually we use an automatic garage door opener, so I had to disconnect that in order to open it manually.  Then, to get the generator out, I had to move a bunch of boxes that had been placed in the path.    Finally I got the generator out of the garage and started pulling it up the steep hill to the spot near our door where we usually put it.  It was heavy and difficult to get up the hill.  I could feel the stress on my ab muscles and on all the edges of the hernia patch, but I had to have the generator so I kept pulling.  My son jumped in to help me and started pushing, that made it a lot easier and we got it in place.

Next, I tried to start it.  It has a long complicated starting procedure that involves three levers being in correct positions, and for some reason, the manufacturer didn't find it necessary to put a sticker on it explaining the correct procedure.  So I had to try a multitude of variations, and pull the cord many times before finally getting it started.  Next time I mush remember that the gas switch needs to be in the "Off" position to start, that makes no sense to me, which is why it took so long for me to hit on that variation.


Anyway, we finally had the generator running and the first thing we did was make dinner.  I plugged in the fridge to keep it cold for a while, and plugged the microwave in to heat things in.  I didn't pay as much attention to portions as I should have, which resulted in my calories for the day being higher than they should have been, but I was honestly hungry every time I ate, none of it was just eating for the sake of eating.

After dinner we unhooked the fridge and microwave and tried hooking up both of our convection heaters to the generator.  The heaters were too much of a drain and it triggered the circuit breaker.  We decided to go without heat for a while, wear coats, and just hook up our TV and a lamp and watch LOST.    I also hooked up the Wii so I could do Free Step as I watched.  That was one good decision I made, I didn't skip my exercise.  By the time Lost was over I still needed to do about 40 minutes more on Wii Fit Plus to reach my total calorie burn. So my oldest put the younger kids to bed and I stayed up exercising.  After I was done, my husband arrived home and we hooked up one heater and put it in the hall near all of our bedrooms, and went to bed.


This morning when I woke up the power was still out, the generator had run out of gas, and the house was cold, so I just went back to sleep for a while.  Later I woke up to find it still out.  My husband and I decided we might as well get the generator going again so we could start our day.  Just as he was about to go get the gas can and fill it up, the lights came on.  (Yippee!)


So my calories for the day were 2053, instead of 1600 like they should have been.  I hope that the hard day at work, moving all those boxes, hauling the generator up the hill, pulling the start cord over and over, and then still going on to complete my workout made up for the extra calories!  I won't depend on that though, I was 453 calories over, so for the next few days I'll try to come in under to make up the difference.

Its Been so Long!

Its been so long since I've updated.  It seems that lately I am too busy homeschooling to have much time to blog about it.  My son's dyslexia evaluation is scheduled for next month, which was the earliest they could get him in.  The test is a formality though.  I've already been told based on questions I answered that it is 90% sure that he is dyslexic.

Meanwhile, he is plugging away with his reading.  We are past the halfway mark for Saxon Phonics 2, and I swear this curriculum is exactly what he needs.  I wrote a review about it HERE.   For those who don't know, my screen name on most sites is Thrice Blessed.

On Friday my son is seeing a developmental ophthalmologist  who will thoroughly test his eyes, this is because often visual tracking, and binocular vision difficulties accompany dyslexia, and can make it even harder to overcome.  The vision difficulties are usually reversible, leaving the child to only deal with the brain/processing problem of dyslexia, rather than continuing to struggle with both  processing difficulties and vision difficulties.

On another note, since my son's reading is improving with the Saxon Phonics, I've decided we should now begin to try to catch up in other areas of academics, areas that have been somewhat neglected as we focused so much time and energy trying to get him reading.  

One of those areas is Language Arts, things like writing, grammar, and reading good literature, which have, in my mind, always been important elements of "education".  So to address this we are going to start using Learning Language Arts Through Literature. 

We will be starting with the Yellow Book.  The Yellow Book covers third grade skills, and my son is in fourth grade approaching fifth grade.  I would love to be able to skip this level, and put him in the fourth grade book, but he still needs so many of the skills in the yellow book, we are going to work through the summer, and once we finish Saxon Phonics, we are going to try to do two days worth each day in order to catch up.  In the Yellow Book, my son will learn third grade grammar and punctuation, will practice some spelling patterns, will review some principles of phonics, will read and study some quality children's literature, and will learn cursive handwriting.  My youngest daughter will do it right along with him, I know she is capable.  In fact, I think she could probably handle the fourth grade level, even though she is in second grade.

We are also going to start doing some history, which we have been neglecting this year.  We will go through This Book together.  

I plan to do most, if not all of the reading on this one.  There are review questions at the end of each chapter, which we will discuss.  I won't be testing my kids on them.  Again, my daughter will do this with us.  I hope to finish the History book before summer, so that during summer all we have to do is Language Arts.  Then next year, I would like to do Mystery of History, Volume 1.

For Science, we may or may not start something this year.  The children are both taking science at the co-op, so we don't really need to do it.  However, I am considering THIS for next year.  

I am considering teaching it at the co-op, which is just once a week, and then also using THIS at home.  

I know that is two science programs, but I think we can handle it, and the plus is that we already own both!  The "Considering God's Creation" one will review earth and space science, and since it been almost two years since we covered that, I think the review is good.  It will also add depth to the Biology that we will study once a week at co-op.

Well, I hope to post again soon, for now I have to get to bed, because tomorrow I work and the come home to homeschool the kids.

So Much Conflicting Information!

I have written before about my son who is (most likely) Dyslexic, I say most likely because he has all the symptoms on the list, he has developed the strategies that dyslexics usually develop to try to cope with or hide their disability, and I've had a reading specialist tell me that they are about 99% sure he has dyslexia, but he hasn't been formally tested yet, so there is still a very small chance that it is something else.  The only people who can actually give a formal diagnosis are developmental psychologists, and as of yet we haven't seen one.  We will be seeing one soon, I plan to call for an appointment this month, but in the mean time I have been doing a lot of my own research.

What I have found is that "experts" don't even agree exactly what dyslexia is, let alone how to treat it, however most  of the experts agree that there is more than one type of dyslexia, for some children it is primarily a distortion of letters on the page, something in the visual processing area of their brain mixes things up, and they don't really "see" the print correctly, for others it primarily an auditory processing problem, the brain must use its auditory center along with its visual center in order to sound out words, and for some children this is more difficult than for others, so it takes them much longer to recall the sounds of the phonemes they see on the page, even if they do see them correctly.  For other children it is a basic language difficulty, these children typically had trouble learning to speak, and seem to have difficulty with language in general, including written language.  Then from those three basic types of dyslexia, children can suffer from widely varying degrees of difficulty, a few have such severe problems they never become functionally literate, but most can obtain literacy eventually.  Not only are there widely varying degrees of the disability, and at least three separate processing problems that can cause it, but it seems that many children have a combination of two or more of these types of dyslexia. Some of the children also have a lot of problems with memorization in any subject, which effects their ability to learn sight words and phonemes.

All of that makes me understand why the approaches used to teach dyslexics often differ from child to child.  Depending on the exact mix of processing problems, some dyslexic children will do best with intensive phonics, some need to get a large number of sight words under their belt, some need to improve their eye tracking ability, some need to work on general language skills by being read to and answering questions, engaging in conversation, writing and dictation, and other activities like that.  Some children need to learn to use their hands on the page to help their eyes and brain determine directionality of the print. 

While I am not an expert special education teacher, I do know my son.  I know that his problems seem to touch all of those areas to a degree.  He struggles some with distortions on the page and with eye tracking, but is usually able to overcome those problems just by keeping a finger on the page.  He did have a language delay, and needed two years of speech and occupational therapy before he was speaking on an age appropriate level.  The auditory processing seems a little slow, but not too severe, and he has really improved his phonemic awareness since we started intensive phonics instruction.  Rote memorization takes him more time than it does most kids, which is why the phonics program we use is so good, it reviews everything daily, so he gets the practice he needs in order to memorize what sound each phoneme makes, and which sight word is which.

In both my research, and in speaking with other mothers with dyslexic children, I have found that there is a lot of disagreement.  Some people insist that phonics is the ONLY approach that works, while others insist that dyslexic children can NOT learn phonics an must memorize sight words to the exclusion of phonics.  Others insist that you must use a combination of approaches.  My intuition and my experience with my son tells me that the last group of people are the ones who correct, at least in regards to my own son's reading difficulties.  My son needs the phonics instruction in order to be able to figure out new words, but he also needs to see those words repeatedly, over and over again, until he begins to recognize them by sight.  Even with words that are phonetically regular, he needs to have enough repetition so that he does not have to continue sounding them out every time he encounters them.  The intensive phonics we have been using has greatly increased his accuracy and decoding skills, but has done little to improve his fluency.  He still sounds out almost every single word letter by letter.  So I know that we need to also start using repetitive books to help him start to recognize common words without sounding them out letter by letter.

I have some repetitive books, and I am also going to start working with him on learning Dr. Fry's 3000 instant words.  This is a word list compiled of the most common English words used in print, the 220 dolch sight words are part of the list, and those words alone make up about 50% of written text that children encounter,  these words, along with the rest of the 3000 instant words make up about 90% of written text that any English speaking person will encounter.

So my son is going to continue learning his phonics, he is also going to start practicing his reading with some repetitive books, he is going to do some reader's theater to practice reading with expression, and we are going to start adding the words from Dr. Fry's list to my son's weekly spelling list, and also start practice reading those words off a list or from flash cards each day.  

For the 3000 instant words, we will be using THIS BOOK. As you can see, we don't try to get the 3000 words memorized in one year, instead we have weekly lists, which the child can learn to spell, and can also practice reading.  Any that give my son difficulty after a week's time will be carried over into the next week until he masters them.  However, I won't teach the phonetically regular ones as pure sight words, I will introduce them first while pointing out the phonetic elements and helping my son to sound them out, but thereafter will have him practice them until he recognizes them quickly, by sight.