Have you ever seen a letter "b" with a circle on either side of it? Or what about a "d" that could go either way because it's so blurred? Now imagine trying to learn to read or write whenever you can't distinguish between letters because they run together...makes it a little hard, huh? And then imagine your teacher losing patience with you several times and not understanding why it was so hard to distinguish between a ball/bat (for b) or a doughnut (for d). Oh, how I wish I knew that is exactly what my child was seeing last year! How I wish I knew that was at the root of his reading, writing and spelling issues. But, I had no clue and often had more frustration than anything else because we could not get past the whole "b" and "d" dilemma.
I did a lot of research on dyslexia and processing disorders thinking maybe NoNut was headed in that direction except he just didn't line up with the typical characteristics and symptoms. Despite that, we experimented with techniques and methods used to help children with dyslexia. It wasn't until May that I began seeing that NoNut struggled with any letter and number with a circle and stem yet he could read any word that didn't contain a circle and stem combo perfectly. I was hoping summer break and time would increase his comprehension and reading readiness, but I never expected a pair of glasses to solve the problem!
At my annual eye doctor appointment, my eye doctor recommended I bring in NoNut for an exam since astigmatisms are usually hereditary. My first reaction to his suggestion was that it wasn't necessary because NoNut has passed all of his annual eye exams at the pediatrician and doesn't show any signs of struggling with his vision. However, within moments of NoNut's eye exam, I saw that he was really was struggling to read anything with a curve, circle and stem. He did fine with the larger letters which reassured me that he knows his letters, but the smaller they got, the more he could not distinguish between letters. My eye doctor was right and unfortunately, NoNut is following in my footsteps...glasses will be a part of his childhood as much as they were a part of mine.
Today was the first day we put NoNut's glasses to the test with our first day of school. Everything went well until it came to reading, spelling and writing. I caught NoNut struggling with all three subjects, but all three times he didn't have his glasses on. Once he put his glasses on, he would make comments about how he could see the letters or how the letters didn't have extra circles to them or how everything was so clear. His reading took off because he wasn't having to decipher what the letters were. His handwriting was neater because he could see the handwriting chart and could form and copy his ABC's correctly. He found the right spelling tiles on the first try since he could tell the difference between b and d.
I did an experiment with NoNut and saw that the reason why he could tell the difference between b and d in certain situations was because of bigger, clearer or more spaced out print in a book. Everything just clicked in that moment. Here I was wondering if my child had a learning disability when in reality, he needed an eye exam and glasses! It will take time to undo some of the reading habits that were formed as he struggled to decipher between the letters, but to know that we will jump over this hurdle with a little more time is exciting!
With my son's severe allergies, I feel like I'm very aware of his body and what is normal and what is not for him. But when you teach your child something from scratch and they aren't getting it and there is nothing to compare it to, it is easy to miss the obvious while fearing over all the other things that it could be. And when your child is passing all of his annual eye exams at the pediatrician, not putting a book up to his nose or showing any outward signs of visual issues, an eye exam is the last thing I would ever think of especially at such a young age.
I'm so thankful that our eye doctor was blunt with me about the real possibility of NoNut acquiring my eyes and reminding me of what it was like to go for so long with undetected vision problems when I was a child. The difference that a pair of glasses makes is night and day!
The point of this is to encourage those of you with vision issues to consider taking your child to the eye doctor rather than rely on the pediatrician alone. If your child isn't catching on to reading, it could be a readiness issue, developmental issue or a vision issue. Don't discount the helpfulness of an eye doctor when it comes to your child's education.
After today, I feel like a whole new world has been opened to NoNut as we witnessed his confidence soar after one morning of reading and writing without much effort once he put his glasses on!
btw, after our experience, I will no longer think it's really weird to have an eye doctor set up shop at a homeschool convention!! It makes perfect sense and hopefully helps a child from silently struggling!
Monday, June 23
Tuesday, June 17
Getting Ready for a New Year
Tis the season for homeschool moms to research and purchase curriculum! One of the benefits of year-round schooling is that we stagger curriculum purchases throughout the year as we finish some subjects earlier and others later. However, we received our last box last week and we are ready to have our "official" first day of school next week (hopefully).
Several of you have asked what we are using this year. I get slightly overwhelmed thinking about everything we are using, but I'm excited because we finally broke free of school-in-a-box and created a school year customized to our child, our beliefs and our preferences! And, just because we have it, it doesn't mean we will use all of it...we'll see how (and where) it goes!
Like last year, we will do Bible, reading, writing and math every day and then rotate through other subjects throughout the week. We also don't do everything during "school hours". We usually do Character Concepts for family devotions and we do Read Alouds for quiet time or bed time. Art and PE vary according to what we have time for but we often replace those with NoNut's current interests (sports, field trips, etc.).
I'm noticing that the older your child gets, the longer your school day gets, too. The 30-45 minute school days are long gone, and even now, I'm wondering if two hours will be long enough! We have yet to have a full day of school, so it will be interesting when it all comes together next week. Like every other year, we will be tweaking our schedule a lot the first few weeks especially as we juggle hanging out with friends who are on summer vacation and going to the pool. However, going to the pool is the best incentive for getting school done work early!
Here is what we are using this year:
While we were traveling this past weekend, I began creating our lesson plans for the first ten weeks of school. Every year, I relied on Sonlight to tell us what to do and when for every subject, so it was rather fun creating our own lesson plans. Okay, I felt liberated and like a Sonlight rebel creating our own version of the familiar Sonlight boxed schedule! It is exciting to see everything come together for a new school year!
NoNut and I had our usual ice-cream celebration after we mailed off our Notice of Intent (NOI) last week. And then we celebrated again when we received the customary NOI form letter from the Superintendent. Every year, we use these days to celebrate the freedom and blessing to homeschool. We want NoNut to realize that homeschooling is a gift and a sacrifice that come at a cost. There are many pioneers who fought for the right to educate our children at home and we have no clue what the future holds for the freedom of this educational choice. So we purposefully celebrate this freedom and thank God for this blessing!
NoNut asked me today if we can start school on Friday because he just can't wait to officially start his school year on Monday! I love my child's enthusiasm for school and for his desire to learn, to snuggle up together and read the afternoon away (although we don't need school to do that...) and to see what adventures await him each school day (me, too)! While we have a lot on our plate this year, I am confident that God will lead us to what He wants us to know for each day. He will lead us to the right resources, right field trips, right contacts and right opportunities that enrich and complement NoNut's education.
Here is to another great year...!
Several of you have asked what we are using this year. I get slightly overwhelmed thinking about everything we are using, but I'm excited because we finally broke free of school-in-a-box and created a school year customized to our child, our beliefs and our preferences! And, just because we have it, it doesn't mean we will use all of it...we'll see how (and where) it goes!
Like last year, we will do Bible, reading, writing and math every day and then rotate through other subjects throughout the week. We also don't do everything during "school hours". We usually do Character Concepts for family devotions and we do Read Alouds for quiet time or bed time. Art and PE vary according to what we have time for but we often replace those with NoNut's current interests (sports, field trips, etc.).
I'm noticing that the older your child gets, the longer your school day gets, too. The 30-45 minute school days are long gone, and even now, I'm wondering if two hours will be long enough! We have yet to have a full day of school, so it will be interesting when it all comes together next week. Like every other year, we will be tweaking our schedule a lot the first few weeks especially as we juggle hanging out with friends who are on summer vacation and going to the pool. However, going to the pool is the best incentive for getting school done work early!
Here is what we are using this year:
- History: Sonlight Core C, God's World News
- Science: Science in the Beginning; How Things Work book; Magic School Bus (books and Netflix)
- Math: Horizons, Life of Fred (Butterflies & Cats)
- Language Arts: Explode the Code, Easy Grammar, Sonlight Reading, All About Spelling, Handwriting Without Tears and Sonlight Read Alouds
- Bible: Positive Action Bible, Character Concepts Kids of Character, Notgrass' Walking in the Truth and words2remember4kids
- Extracurricular (as we have time/desire): Baby Lambs Book of Art (still working on How Great Thou ART curriculum...it still has not captured our interest like we had hoped even after meeting the author) and Fitness 4 Homeschool (Family Time Fitness).
While we were traveling this past weekend, I began creating our lesson plans for the first ten weeks of school. Every year, I relied on Sonlight to tell us what to do and when for every subject, so it was rather fun creating our own lesson plans. Okay, I felt liberated and like a Sonlight rebel creating our own version of the familiar Sonlight boxed schedule! It is exciting to see everything come together for a new school year!
NoNut and I had our usual ice-cream celebration after we mailed off our Notice of Intent (NOI) last week. And then we celebrated again when we received the customary NOI form letter from the Superintendent. Every year, we use these days to celebrate the freedom and blessing to homeschool. We want NoNut to realize that homeschooling is a gift and a sacrifice that come at a cost. There are many pioneers who fought for the right to educate our children at home and we have no clue what the future holds for the freedom of this educational choice. So we purposefully celebrate this freedom and thank God for this blessing!
NoNut asked me today if we can start school on Friday because he just can't wait to officially start his school year on Monday! I love my child's enthusiasm for school and for his desire to learn, to snuggle up together and read the afternoon away (although we don't need school to do that...) and to see what adventures await him each school day (me, too)! While we have a lot on our plate this year, I am confident that God will lead us to what He wants us to know for each day. He will lead us to the right resources, right field trips, right contacts and right opportunities that enrich and complement NoNut's education.
Here is to another great year...!
Friday, May 30
Our Biggest Homeschool Helps -- Part II
...Continued from "Our Biggest Homeschooling Helps -- Part I".
We previously talked about behavior stoplights and the treasure box in Part I. Here are two more areas that have made the biggest difference in our homeschool.
Reading & Writing
My child is like many other boys who do not like to write. We have our biggest struggles over formal handwriting. And I have had to realize that there will be plenty of time for formal handwriting as NoNut gets older. While we struggled through Handwriting Without Tears during first grade (but with fewer tears than the year before), we took the rest of the year to find ways to make handwriting fun and to create that need and desire to write.
We took NoNut to the toy store with pen, paper and clipboard and he had to write his own Christmas list. His "copywork" was copying the logo or item name to his paper. He would write shopping lists (especially when it came to planning for fun family dinners or parties). He wanted to write signs for his door, his bed and even the bathroom. It may not be a formal writing program, but he is getting writing practice in without realizing it.
For reading, we did a lot of
sight word games (All About Spelling usually offers free games so we
printed out a lot of those). We read store signs, mail, comics, etc.
Again, there will be a time when all the fun and games are pushed aside
for more formal learning, but we are building the learning foundation
for our child. Will he love learning and seek out ways to find out what he wants to know, or will he get bogged down too early in the
tediousness of formal learning that could squelch any future desire to learn and even possibly give him a label
for the rest of his life?
Learning IS fun especially when you think outside of the box and discover that there are so many non-book ways to learn! One of the big lessons we learned in first grade is that curriculum should be viewed as a guide. It steers you in the right direction, but you should take advantage of the things your child is interested in. NoNut quickly learned to count change by making Lego creations for his pretend Lego Store or "selling" his Ninja Turtle collection to the employees at work. He learned to tell time when snack time depended upon it. I would tell NoNut that snack time is at 10:30 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. He was in charge of keeping an eye on the analog clock and letting me know when it was snack time. It didn't take him long to learn to tell time as well as learn a bit of responsibility in that way.
And the cool part is that after we would finish sections of our year-end testing (required by the state), NoNut would tell me he "saw" this activity or that activity in his mind and that helped him figure out the answers. It wasn't pages in a book that he remembered, but the activities, the movement, the crazy motions or silly skip counting cheers that we made up. It was really neat to see that reinforced with his testing results as he scored anywhere from well above average to highest level in every category.
Yes, we do our fair share of book-learning, but book learning isn't everything. Don't be afraid to get wildly creative in teaching your child. It might not work for anyone else but your child, but you can be confident in knowing that he will learn, understand and retain regardless of method!
Bedtime
One of the biggest things that helped us was putting our child to bed at the same time every night since birth. I am an introvert and crave time alone to recharge and essentially function. Having a newborn altered my world big time and I wasn't used to having someone constantly take from me every second of the day and it got draining fast. I struggled for a long time over whether that was a selfish mindset or the way God created me. And it didn't take long to see that if I don't have alone time to think, write, pray, read, etc., I cannot wholly function. A firm, consistent bed time was my sanity saver, and it still is seven years later! We do the same routine every night that we've done with NoNut since Day 1 -- pjs, brush teeth, prayers, story and glow stick (these are completely dependent on behavior) and bed.
For the first 6 1/2 years of NoNut's life, he went to bed at 7 p.m. One of his 2013 Christmas presents was an extended bedtime to 7:30 p.m.! He thought he was big stuff to stay up that late! Since Christmas and with Daylight Savings Time, it's been a bit harder to hold fast to the 7:30 p.m. bed time. But we do our best to get him in bed at 7:30 p.m., and then I enjoy reading to him in bed until 8 p.m. After that, he is expected to stay in bed and go to sleep. NoNut does a great job respecting that time. We have all had to learn to decipher what is a legitimate need that needs a parental response/attention versus trying to work the system which we do not respond to. If he can't sleep, he'll turn on his little camping light and read, play Legos or play with his glow sticks in bed. I count on that time between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. to spend time with my husband and get my work (personal work, school work, housework, ministry or volunteer work, and sometimes professional work) done without constant interruptions. Putting NoNut down to bed at a specific time every night has saved our marriage and our sanity. My husband and I have time to connect and communicate every day and I can get a "break" to get stuff done that contributes to who I am as a person, not just as a mom, especially a homeschooling mom.
With each of these things, setting and defining the expectations and then following through with consistency are the key. There is a way to do this outside of homeschool and to incorporate expectations and consistency into every day life outside of homeschool hours. However, I haven't been consistent enough to figure it all out. First grade taught me a lot about the importance of building on the foundation, but you have to have to lay the foundation first before you can begin to build on it! If the foundation isn't there, you don't have anything to build on! It's worth the work and consistency to start out right. And it's worth it to start out building the foundation throughout your child's whole life and throughout your whole home rather than limit it to just your homeschool hours!
We previously talked about behavior stoplights and the treasure box in Part I. Here are two more areas that have made the biggest difference in our homeschool.
Reading & Writing
My child is like many other boys who do not like to write. We have our biggest struggles over formal handwriting. And I have had to realize that there will be plenty of time for formal handwriting as NoNut gets older. While we struggled through Handwriting Without Tears during first grade (but with fewer tears than the year before), we took the rest of the year to find ways to make handwriting fun and to create that need and desire to write.
We took NoNut to the toy store with pen, paper and clipboard and he had to write his own Christmas list. His "copywork" was copying the logo or item name to his paper. He would write shopping lists (especially when it came to planning for fun family dinners or parties). He wanted to write signs for his door, his bed and even the bathroom. It may not be a formal writing program, but he is getting writing practice in without realizing it.
 |
| Fun with sight word cookie game! |
Learning IS fun especially when you think outside of the box and discover that there are so many non-book ways to learn! One of the big lessons we learned in first grade is that curriculum should be viewed as a guide. It steers you in the right direction, but you should take advantage of the things your child is interested in. NoNut quickly learned to count change by making Lego creations for his pretend Lego Store or "selling" his Ninja Turtle collection to the employees at work. He learned to tell time when snack time depended upon it. I would tell NoNut that snack time is at 10:30 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. He was in charge of keeping an eye on the analog clock and letting me know when it was snack time. It didn't take him long to learn to tell time as well as learn a bit of responsibility in that way.
 |
| "Selling" Ninja Turtles. |
And the cool part is that after we would finish sections of our year-end testing (required by the state), NoNut would tell me he "saw" this activity or that activity in his mind and that helped him figure out the answers. It wasn't pages in a book that he remembered, but the activities, the movement, the crazy motions or silly skip counting cheers that we made up. It was really neat to see that reinforced with his testing results as he scored anywhere from well above average to highest level in every category.
Yes, we do our fair share of book-learning, but book learning isn't everything. Don't be afraid to get wildly creative in teaching your child. It might not work for anyone else but your child, but you can be confident in knowing that he will learn, understand and retain regardless of method!
Bedtime
One of the biggest things that helped us was putting our child to bed at the same time every night since birth. I am an introvert and crave time alone to recharge and essentially function. Having a newborn altered my world big time and I wasn't used to having someone constantly take from me every second of the day and it got draining fast. I struggled for a long time over whether that was a selfish mindset or the way God created me. And it didn't take long to see that if I don't have alone time to think, write, pray, read, etc., I cannot wholly function. A firm, consistent bed time was my sanity saver, and it still is seven years later! We do the same routine every night that we've done with NoNut since Day 1 -- pjs, brush teeth, prayers, story and glow stick (these are completely dependent on behavior) and bed.
For the first 6 1/2 years of NoNut's life, he went to bed at 7 p.m. One of his 2013 Christmas presents was an extended bedtime to 7:30 p.m.! He thought he was big stuff to stay up that late! Since Christmas and with Daylight Savings Time, it's been a bit harder to hold fast to the 7:30 p.m. bed time. But we do our best to get him in bed at 7:30 p.m., and then I enjoy reading to him in bed until 8 p.m. After that, he is expected to stay in bed and go to sleep. NoNut does a great job respecting that time. We have all had to learn to decipher what is a legitimate need that needs a parental response/attention versus trying to work the system which we do not respond to. If he can't sleep, he'll turn on his little camping light and read, play Legos or play with his glow sticks in bed. I count on that time between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. to spend time with my husband and get my work (personal work, school work, housework, ministry or volunteer work, and sometimes professional work) done without constant interruptions. Putting NoNut down to bed at a specific time every night has saved our marriage and our sanity. My husband and I have time to connect and communicate every day and I can get a "break" to get stuff done that contributes to who I am as a person, not just as a mom, especially a homeschooling mom.
With each of these things, setting and defining the expectations and then following through with consistency are the key. There is a way to do this outside of homeschool and to incorporate expectations and consistency into every day life outside of homeschool hours. However, I haven't been consistent enough to figure it all out. First grade taught me a lot about the importance of building on the foundation, but you have to have to lay the foundation first before you can begin to build on it! If the foundation isn't there, you don't have anything to build on! It's worth the work and consistency to start out right. And it's worth it to start out building the foundation throughout your child's whole life and throughout your whole home rather than limit it to just your homeschool hours!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)