Don't add to my stress

Let me clear something up here.  I am a mom to three amazing kids, all of whom have unique personalities which leads to them all having unique needs, desires and pursuits.  Homeschooling them is a drain on this introverted mom.  It's all worth it though since I know it is what is truly best for them.

There is something that has been weighing heavily on me for quite awhile though.  The lack of support from those around us that I need to be my support system.  I am not talking about people being my cheerleader-I really am not that type of person.  It's not about having someone who is willing to step in and help me out when I am at the end of my rope.  It's about not constantly undermining everything it is that I do with regards to my 3 children and their education.

Homeschooling 3 kids-one of whom has had some severe issues with his Tourette's- is no walk in the park.  I already question my sanity all the time, and feel like I never have a moment's peace.  The last thing I need is for some family member to come in and start making me feel like I am the worst parent ever because I chose to homeschool.

Yes, I know the oldest is in high school and is not participating in so called high school rights of passage-such as dances.  But guess what, that's his choice.  He has the option to participate in various school activities that he desires.  He is active in school sports and has friends from the high school that he goes and hangs out with.  But he doesn't want to do the school dance thing, or the pep assemblies, or any of the other things that he could participate in if he wants to, but has no desire for.  He's happy.  Just accept that.  Telling me that I am completely in the wrong for homeschooling my high schooler is not the way to be supportive.  In fact, it's the complete opposite.

And here's the kicker.  I am an extremely determined person.  I will dig my heels in and block out the negative energy that is being thrown out.

What a beautiful day-and an update

Spring is without a doubt, my favorite season of the year.  I love watching the trees come alive with color as they blossom with pretty pink flowers, or watch the new leaves forming.  For me, one of the most exciting parts of spring is when the tulips in my garden start poking up out of the ground.  At that point, it becomes a countdown to what I refer to as it being "officially spring"-the day that the tulips finally open up.

This year has been a tough year in our house for many reasons.  Dad was sent by his company to work in Sweden for several months and for the longest time it was just me and three kids, making all the connections that had to be made for their activities, occasionally calling on help from family, but mainly doing it by myself. By the end of the time my husband was gone I found a whole new appreciation for the military spouses who do this regularly.  My hat's off to them.

During the time, things became so crazy that we decided to drop the Parent Partnership Program and become straight homeschoolers with no school district interference.  I am finally at peace with the way we homeschool now, although we are still learning how to establish our regular routine.  The schedule allows for E to pursue her dreams of dancing and gives the boys more flexibility to study what they want.  Somewhere in this routine, I want to make it part of my regular routine to blog.

Well, that's all for now.  The kids just decided to start fighting.

Getting ready for Second Year!

The summer started out with well intentioned plans to keep going with some sort of schedule that would keep the boys going on Math and Reading.  Somehow, W lost his reading book, and Scout camps just got in the way.  After about 3 weeks of trying to get motivated to do lesson plans and feeling like it was drudgery, I threw in the towel and decided to enjoy the summer with the kids, and get organized for our second year of homeschooling.

I picked up an addiction this summer.  Pinterest has got to be the best thing out there for someone like me who likes to collect internet sites.  I usually would bookmark a site and then completely forget why I bookmarked it.  Pinterest has without a doubt made my life easier in that respect.  Need the site for a certain worksheet I was looking for?  Go to my boards and look for the picture that matches the snapshot in my brain.  I am in heaven with this and have been following many other pinners.

 My goals this summer were to get better organized with learning materials.  Well, it's getting there-slowly.  One of the things I found on Pinterest was a pencil organizer box.  It was a cute idea for a classroom, with three drawers, 1 for sharpened pencils, 1 for need to be sharpened pencils and 1 for erasers.  However, we are a homeschool, we don't need drawers for broken pencils or erasers, but we do need drawers for other writing utensils.  So, I found a 5 drawer model that better fits our needs.  I still need to label it but the drawers go as follows:  Pencils on top, Dry Erase Markers, regular writing pens, Mommy's special pens (highlighters and colored pens I use for different things, and vis a vis pens.  I will probably be changing the order and putting pencils on the bottom since I currently keep it up on a shelf and E can't reach the top two drawers without a chair.

The second bit of organization I have accomplished is to set up bins for the kids to keep their study books in.  Last year, each child had a shelf that tended to get completely out of control.  While browsing pinterest boards for ideas, I came across a link that took me to a blog for a mom who was showing how she had set up the learning environment for her kids.  She had these adorable brown wicker baskets with each child's name on them.  The biggest thing was that they held all their curriculum.  Talk about palm meeting head moment.  I already do bins in the laundry room for each child's sports or dance clothes.  Why didn't I think of doing the same for their books?  This is what I did:

I am a big fan of color coordinating a lot of the kids' stuff by their favorite colors.  E is the purple, M is red and W is green.  I tend to continue that to spiral notebooks and anything else I can for them.  Makes it easier to see at a glance whose stuff is whose without having to look through for names.

I still have tons more organizing to do.  Maybe it will be there by Year 3.

Small Little Successes (That Mean A Lot to Us)

Whew, the last two weeks have been a roller coaster of excitement, joy, and some tears.

First off, our family is very active in Boy Scouts for M, and Cub Scouts for W (he crosses over to Boy Scouts this summer).  M (our child who wants to do absolutely everything in Scouts he can) had two really huge things happen last week.  He even told me to post it on here.  On Monday, M was elected and called out for Order of the Arrow.  This was something he was really excited for and is an honor for him.  Not so sure about him staying quiet long enough to make it through Ordeal though (we heard they have to take a vow of silence or something like that.)  Then, on Wednesday night, the news he had really been waiting for-the official notification that he will be one of 72 scouts from our Council going to the National Jamboree in 2013.  He is very excited.

On Thursday, the Parent Partnership Program we use had it's annual Science and Art Fair.  W was entered in both due to his painting class as well as his science class.  W was one of a handful of artists to receive a Special Recognition award for his painting of a mountain scene.  He is very proud of his accomplishment and has taken every opportunity to show it to everyone he sees.  Below is a picture of the Periodic Table that a number of classes taught by his science teacher put together.  This was so cool.

For me, the best thing happened on Tuesday while driving out to the boys' classes.  M was talking about how he was looking forward to seeing some of his friends and I commented that it seems like he has a lot of friends. His response had me crying.  He told me "I really don't have any enemies anymore".  Such a simple statement, yet so important.  M was severely bullied due to his being different from his classmates.  He would cry all the time about how he had so many people bullying him.  To hear him say that he no longer has enemies was the best affirmation I could have gotten that this path of homeschooling was the absolute best thing we could have done for our children.  I am so grateful to God for sending that message when I was feeling full of self doubt.  Most of all, I am grateful that my son finally feels good about his place in the world.

Now, off to bed.  We are going on a cruise tomorrow as part of M working on his Oceanography Merit Badge (kid has the goal of earning them all)

An Update on our World

Wow, I can't believe that 8 months have passed since I last wrote what was supposed to be a weekly entry on our activities.  That didn't work out as well as I had planned.  Things have been busy and crazy as we work to learn and figure out how we want our daily learning to be.

Some quick updates:  First off, we use a Parent Partnership Program through a local school district.  This program has good aspects and negative aspects.  The positives are the classes that the boys are able to take that fit their interests.  M takes classes in Robotics, Guitar, Computer Programming, Woodworking, Crime Scene Investigation, and something called Sr. Tech Trek which is building contraptions with Lego kits, which he absolutely loves.  W is taking classes in Piano, Art (both painting and drawing), Science, and Fun with Cupcakes.  Both boys love their classes, although we have had a few that got got dropped for W.  He didn't do well with Irish Step Dance.

To me, the negatives of this program are the way in which it sucks up all of our days.  I want to be out adventuring with the kids, enjoying all that our area has to offer from a learning perspective.  The study environments at this facility leave much to be desired due to the high volume levels of everyone else.  I mean really, I don't need to hear someone's conversation from the opposite end of a 50yd room.  This year, we are there three days a week, and when we get home, the boys go into that "home from school" mentality, even though they have spent half the day out there just hanging out with other kids because they can't focus on studies with all the noise.  I am hopeful that next year we can reduce our time there, otherwise, it's going to have to go.

Updates on the three kids:

M is thriving and excelling in learning.  He loves the freedom he has to get stuff done as he sees fit.  He has a goal of earning all of the Boy Scout Merit Badges.  In fact, he is currently out in the swamp behind our house counting plants and animals for his Environmental Science Merit Badge.  He has found that one of the great things about homeschooling is that when his schedule is crazy with Baseball (as it is now), Mom is willing to change up the plan and ease back on time requirements met so that he isn't stressed out from his hectic schedule.  Trust me, he needs it right now with all of the last minute changes to the baseball game schedule that have been occurring.

We recently got ITBS (Iowa Test of Basic Skills) and found that he is testing at college level.  Last year (at the end of 5th grade) he tested at the end of 7th grade level.  He's pretty pleased that he was able to show everyone that he really does know all that math stuff he said he did.

W is still our challenge.  We have good days and bad days with him.  I find that a lot of the time, it has to do with how the adults around him are responding to him.  If we are stressed or irritable, he gets worse.  He loves the new freedom he has to focus on his art, or playing piano.  We have found that if we write out all that he needs to accomplish for the day on a list, and let him choose the order he does it in, he does really well.  Somedays, he really wants to do Math first, and some days it's Piano, or maybe it's art.  We have seen  all tics go away which has been wonderful.  Granted, they came back with the cold he had last week, but that's to be expected.  He's so much more cooperative and eager to help out.  He's still my challenge child and we still have a lot of things to work out, but it is getting better.  Sometimes, when I am in the trenches dealing with a temper tantrum from him, it's hard to stay positive, but it's getting better.

E is now 4 and our little dancer.  She takes classes twice a week and works hard.  For her, that is preschool and she works at home with me on everything else.  She's learning to read and loves to learn.  There are some days where I am at my wit's end because she has had me going for 8 hours reading instructions for her as she works her way through workbooks.

So, that's our update.  I wish I could say that I am going to keep up with this, but I am lucky to keep up with housework (so not happening) and the crazy schedules my kids have me on right now.

Starting out, and how we decided on this path

Here we go, the first blog post of which I hope there will be many.  I plan on using this blog as a written journal of what we are doing here as we endeavor to teach our children to be wonderful people and lifelong learners.  I figure that it’s a good idea to start at the beginning and explain what led us to this point.

First, a little bit about me.  I am a stay at home mom of 3 energetic, articulate, loving kids.  I knew early on that I would stay home with the kids.  Working in high school and college jobs where I was around children who spent the large part of their lives in school and daycare, I was witness to many examples as to why having a stay at home parent was the best choice for my children and I am fortunate to be married to a wonderful man who also feels that this is the best and has a career that provides for our family.

My oldest child is M, an intelligent, passionate 11 year old boy who would be entering 6^th grade this fall had we not decided on something different.  M is actually the reason that we decided to homeschool this year.  M started his school career in a preschool program where his teacher achieved an ideal balance for his academic needs as well as his need to learn to communicate with others.  M was obsessed with dinosaurs and at the age of 4 would tell everyone he wanted to be a paleontologist.  He had an extensive vocabulary and had no problem telling people to stop “antagonizing him”.  M’s downside was a distinct disdain for normal preschool pursuits such as coloring, drawing, etc.  He despised art, but loved building stuff.  I figured that as long as he was learning, happy and adjusted, I didn’t care if he didn’t want to color.  After preschool, recognizing that M thought differently than other kids his age, and worried about how that would affect his ability to relate to other kids in the classroom, we decided to enroll him in a parochial school.  Having grown up and gone to school myself with kids who had attended this school and experiencing their kindness and understanding for my own idiosyncrasies, I felt that it would be a good fit for him to be able to excel as he saw fit, while being in a more nurturing environment where his classmates would be taught to be accepting of his differences.  He had an amazing Kindergarten teacher who recognized his strengths and his weaknesses and told me that while coloring would help his fine motor skills in penmanship, not to stress about it too much.  M would want to improve his penmanship on his own, probably around 5^th grade.  In the meantime, he needed to practice a little bit, but let him do that which he really wanted to do, which was read as much as possible and explore math.

           

His first grade teacher was on the same page with regards to how to best approach his academic needs.  Her classroom was full of interesting things to explore and she let him go more in depth as he wanted. 

Then came second grade.  That year, M’s teacher expected him to sit still and be quiet while everyone finished their work.  There was no challenging him.  He would finish his work quickly and then proceed to annoy those around him because he would fidget, or make noises out of his boredom.  Her response was that there were coloring pages he could do.  I told her that wouldn’t work, he hated coloring.  He wanted something more challenging to do.  Her solution then was that he could journal, but what he really wanted was to build things, out of pencils, blocks, etc.  Things were getting so bad that M was having anxiety attacks.  He was stressed because he felt like he was a bad kid because he couldn’t behave as the teacher expected him to.  There was also an issue with a group of girls that liked to poke the buttons of the boys and it was largely overlooked.  At the end of that year, we had had enough.

We spent the summer deciding what our next step would be.  M tested into the highly capable program in our local school district and was able to thrive in an atmosphere that encouraged the kids to have some freedom in how they did things.  His third grade year they were assigned a unit on inventing, complete with researching inventors and then inventing something of their own.  Throughout the next three years, he did well, although he had struggled with conflicts with other kids and a few in particular who thought it would be great to bully him.  He is sensitive to the intent behind actions and that can make him hurt more from perceived slights than other children. 

Six months ago, when it came time to consider where he would go in sixth grade, we looked at a special school program that would not have been the rat race of middle school.  However, the program was a lottery system and M ended up #33 on a waitlist for the program.  Knowing that there was no way we were going to send him to the middle school that all the kids in our neighborhood attend, we made the decision that we would homeschool M at least through Middle school. 

Our second child is W.  Another extremely bright, energetic 9 year old boy.  W is very different from his older brother in many ways.  W is not as articulate as M, and does not inhale the written word as his older brother does.  While M despises art, W thrives on it.  He has always loved coloring, painting, whatever he can do to fill his days with art.  The wall above my computer is full of his drawings, little panda bears that he has created, pictures that are in many ways, valentine’s day cards to me.  W has always been my snuggle bug. 

W is also my challenging child.  He takes things very literally which can be a challenge as he doesn’t understand sarcasm.  He also has a red/green deficiency which has gotten him into trouble. 

W went to the same preschool as M, even had the same teacher.  And once again, that teacher did an amazing job with him.  W was a kindergartener the final year that M attended the parochial school.  It was also the year that his little sister was born, and he struggled with finding a new niche for himself as he was no longer the baby.  He learned to read in Kindergarten though, and loved art.  W likes routine and structure.  He does better if he has a schedule and knows what’s coming next.  His kindergarten teacher did a great job keeping that structure in his day and W did well. 

When we moved M to the highly capable program, W entered 1^st grade in the same school, but within a mainstream class.  His teacher that year found him to be a challenge due to W’s tendency to want to do things he found more entertaining, such as art. 

Second grade was also Ws very challenging year.  That year he had a teacher who was ill for most of the year.  In one 3 week period of time, he had 14 different teachers-a new substitute every day.  W was in a tailspin at home, struggling with the complete lack of structure, the chaos of children in the class who were physically combative, and we were frustrated with dealing with his teacher who seemed to have some serious memory/truth telling issues. 

W took apart a pencil sharpener in class one day and used the blade to cut the hand of the child sitting next to him.  Another day, the teacher was reading a story that resulted in W making a comment that she perceived as racially offensive.  The teacher was showing a picture of a girl who was of color and W, having a red/green deficiency that made it so he couldn’t see shades, only saw a brown circle with two white circles.  He couldn’t distinguish any facial characteristics.  So, when the teacher asked him if he thought the girl was pretty, he said that it was too dark, meaning it was too dark for him to see her face.  That resulted in a meeting with the district’s diversity coordinator, the principal and the teacher.  The teacher lied, the principal tried to label our child a racist, and the diversity coordinator thought the whole thing was ridiculous.

We ended up taking W to be evaluated that fall because we suspected that he had Tourette’s.  The diagnoses came back with Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Tourette’s, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and then just because a large percentage of kids who have Tourette’s and OCD also have ADHD, they threw that in too.  We were urged to start him on medication for the ADHD, but were also told that it could make the tics worse, and at that time, they were pretty bad.  Reading the report, and recognizing that the ADHD was only because it was likely due to percentages that he had it we said no way to the medication and went with behavioral modification. 

Third grade started with an IEP in place.  The IEP clearly laid out how to deal with certain things.  And W started to do much better.  Then after spring break, they got a student teacher in his class, and we saw a return of old behaviors at home.  Things started getting really bad and eventually came to a head in May.  W was sent to the principal’s office for the morning because he didn’t follow directions to return to his seat.  The teacher was out of the class, assisting another class with standardized tests and the student teacher and the specialist were in charge of Ws class.  The student teacher failed to follow the steps for instruction by not making eye contact and making sure W was actually paying attention when she told him to return to his seat.  Instead, she sent him to spend the morning in the principal’s office which was only supposed to happen if he was physically combative-something he had not done for over 1.5 years.  I decided to keep him home the next day and have him do school work at home. 

The plan for homeschooling had been for M only for the first year so that I could get things in place and then bring W home a year later.  I was worried about having W home due to the stress he put me under with his behavior.  The situation with his IEP however showed us that the reality was that we had to bring him home sooner.  And that’s what we have decided to do. 

I often say that I feel that God made it so M didn’t get into the special middle school program specifically so we would go to the right path for W.  Since W has known that he will not be returning to school, he has changed drastically. His tics are almost completely gone, we only have throat clearing, which seems to be partially due to allergies.  He is much more cooperative, and things are going much smoother at home.  He and M are getting along better, although M has a lot of hurt he still needs to work through and put in the past with regards to his little brother, but I feel that we will get their with time.  We have good days and bad still, but on the whole, things are much better than they were 4 months ago when W was dealing with chaos in a classroom setting.

About the youngest, that’s E, a soon to be 4 year old who is eager to sit along with her brothers and work on letters and numbers while they do math, or reading or work on their scout stuff.  She is learning how to share her mommy with her two brothers, but also delighting in having them to play with.