The First 2020 Homeschool Update

Life has been feeling that it is somewhat spiraling out of control.

Autism has sucked this week and last week. Let’s just say that since the start of 2020, things have been in the tank. Bad behaviors, no sleep happening, life sucking everywhere, outbursts daily, lots of tears and anger.

So much so that I can slowly feel myself wanting to crawl in a hole and forget everything. School? We don’t need no stinkin’ school. So I thought I would do this…update all of you poor, unfortunate souls ouot there about how our homeschool journey is going. You may find this exciting. If you find this breath-takingly boring you may move on. I am hoping to do this in order that I can keep myself accountable and provide you all some hope that your autism journey, while it may never not be an autism journey (autism is here to stay), it will have it ups and its downs but it is always worth it.

This week, homeschool has gone pretty well in terms of getting our work done period we still are at a bare minimum of what we can do but I feel like we're at least moving on in making progress. One of the biggest tools that has helped us this week has been our cozy canoe or as it's properly called a Pea Pod which my kids just snicker at because that has been the name for lady parts in our family. You can all laugh now. You can imagine the laughing I received when Cal’s second Pea Pod came in the mail and I said “the extra-large Pea Pod is here!” Oh dear, the hilarity. And yes I do act like a 5th grade boy. You all are welcome.

As I mentioned, I’m starting these updates in part to keep me on track and also in part because I’ve had a lot of people mention to me that they cannot wrap their head around homeschooling in the high school grades. Well here ya go…

Math is actually sticking! I can't say enough good things about right start math for Calvin. We’ve always muddled through Saxon with Emma but it just absolutely did not work with him . I've found that we are actually making progress and he's actually understanding math with the right start math program. This week he was working on geometry and using a T-square which Nick told him that he had used in architecture school; Calvin really took to that and has now preferred that Nick do math with him rather than me. I sometimes miss doing math with him (for about 45 seconds) as I think it's been about 2 weeks since I've done it with him, but I will take this as a huge win because he used to loathe Nick doing school with him. Emma has been rocking Saxon math out of the park. According to CC she is in the right level (Saxon Algebra 1/2) but according to the Well Trained Mind she should be in Algebra 1. No matter because the girl is breezing through 2 lessons a day, is ahead of where she should be according to the CC guide and we will be getting ready to start the Algebra 1 book any day. I am jazzed. I am pumped. I am geeked. Thank you Saxon math for finally adding something to my life. I feel like the years of crying over you have paid off.

We have a behavioral therapist coming into our home one day a week now and she has helped set up charts and sequences and flags (no flags but wouldn’t flags be cool?) that we need to be working on with Calvin. One of the things that has really worked has been to write a list of all of the things that he needs to accomplish during the day on the blackboard. I also put in a few break time options such as read for 20 minutes or play legos for 10 minutes. I then just put that up there and he can see what needs done or what he can choose from so if he chooses all of his Lego times in the morning then he knows that there are no more breaks to be had later on in the day. I've watched him make great strides in understanding this concerning the break times especially because he's very choosy as to when he will take them and try to keep some for the afternoon. It's also been good because he can see things crossed off so it doesn't feel like I'm just continually adding and adding and adding work on to his load throughout the day… this is the set schedule and this is all that needed to be gotten done for the day he could see it from the very beginning of the day to the end so it doesn't feel like it’s a to-do list where he thinks he's done and then moms adding more on. If you are an autism mom and decide to try this method I will caution you that I tried this with Calvin at age 6 and it was disastrous. So if it doesn't work for you it might just be a maturity level thing with your child and don't get discouraged in trying it again. I know as autism moms we know that our kids can become very rigid in what can and cannot be done but I think we as parents also do that. I was telling our developmental pediatrician and our behavioral therapist last week, when they suggested a token chart where we give him tokens for good behavior and take them away for bad behavior,how we had tried this before and it was absolutely disastrous. Like he manipulated the situation any chance he got, it never worked, we couldn't get him to understand when things were being taken away why, and that kind of thing, when he did something good he thought he got more so he should get more than what he did, it was just all around a bad idea. So in my mind I had this setup that like this will never work so we can't do that but both the pediatrician and the therapist just kind of gave me this blank stare and said “well let's try it again and see how it works” and it just dawned on me which it's super obvious but hello things can work now that he's older and that might not have worked when he was younger. So it was a total duh moment for me right there.

Some fun things that we've been doing as we go through our home school week are science and history.

The first semester of school this year I felt like those 2 subjects got totally pushed to the side as I was juggling working and homeschooling at the same time for the first time…so trying to figure out how to do that and so we for awhile were just treading water trying to make it happen to get even just the core subjects done, meaning like math and writing and reading. Never mind subjects like art or spelling because those NEVER got done. But in this second semester I feel like we really got our business together: I put those as priority one because those are things that we have paid for and they come with fun activities, experiments, and projects to do together as a family. We really bond over those and so I made sure those were something that had to be done in the week .

So doing those we are working through the Good and the Beautiful's marine biology program. We started that last year after we took the children to the dolphin show at the Indianapolis Zoo. If haven't been to that it is phenomenal and I highly recommend…so amazing and the head dolphin trainer came out and spoke to everybody. At the end Emma was able to ask her questions about marine biology and veterinarian science and all of those things. This week in TGATB we learned about marine mammals and so we also talked about blubber. We did a blubber science experiment which you can see in the picture and then we just really worked on the difference between animals that come ashore and animals that don't. Differences and other facts about marine mammals.

In history we are still working through The Story of the World by Susan Bauer. I should say we are still working through it the second time because in Classical Education we work on things in cycles (from creation to present) and then begin again. This might actually be our third time. At this point in time, the haggard mother that I am, I’ve lost track of what cycle or what track I’m on. Getting back to it, I am obsessed with Susan Bauer now that I've gone through classical conversations. We started our homeschooling journey with The Well Trained Mind (written by Bauer) and I highl, highly, highly recommend the well trained mind program and her writing. I just cannot get enough of her books and think that she is amazing. This week we were studying ancient China and it was exciting to see how much stuff we made it through… we made a lacquered bowl to study how China the Chinese people lacquered things: it was basically, like the book described it, a medieval plastic which I thought was pretty funny. Then we went to lunch at a Chinese restaurant to immerse ourselves in the Chinese culture. If I get an opportunity to, I'll try to combine our history with some geography just to kind of drive home the area that we're learning about. And then I’ll try to put something sensory with it so whether it's a meal or we do crafts, or we dress up like them something like that: that they can pull those items from their memory bank later on and remember what we studied.

This week Emma took a photography class with some friends at a local college and came home with information in how to enroll in dual credit classes. I almost wet my pants or cried (or maybe both at the same time!) because I have no idea how we got here to having an incredibly gifted HIGH SCHOOLER who can even go to college. Where is my pigtailed Kindergartner who needs help with the buckles on her shoes? Because I wasn’t done with that phase yet, Karen.

Emma is finishing out with about 10 more weeks in her Classical Conversations Challenge B Program. They are preparing for a Mock Trial which will take place in our counties courthouse. Emma made a study guide on Memrise for her class to help them prepare for the trial. I thought this was very forthgoing of her. If you also have older students, you might just love Memrise which is an app program and you can study flashcard type things on it. You can also set up competitions for your classes and see who gets the most right, etc. It adds a fun element to their studying.

Emma currently uses Memrise for Logic and Latin studying, in addition to Mock Trial…obvi!

I enjoy when there are apps or games that can actually help her learn and retain information in a fun way and not just be a mind numbing filler that wastes our time.

I have to be completely honest and tell you that I feel like we’ve had a break in the chain of command around here. People always seem to be yelling or crying about something. Kids are arguing or snarky. Fun times are not being had all of the time.

There have been days when I’ve sent Cal up to have a break in the third floor, playing legos, and, full confession here. Kind of forgot about him. Then he comes downstairs with things like this:

And says funny things like “chillin’ with my gnomies”. And then we all feel better. I think life is always better with Lego.

I mentioned that we have the behavioral therapist. She has these charts we’re supposed to fill out when we have an issue with Calvin. She’s offered to make copies for us, dear heart. She asked me on Monday how many copies I’d like. My response… “how many copies can you make?” Oh dear. Like Sunday when Nick touched Calvin on the shoulder so Cal screamed “Stop touching me” and then kicked him in the shin. When we calmly asked how we could do that again, a better way, Calvin repeated it, softer, and kicked Nick in the shin again, softer.

We’re going to need a ream of those sheets, April. Or Autumn. Or Amanda? The poor girl is going to always remember me as the mom who couldn’t remember her name.

But at least I am looking like this.

Not really but let’s all just pretend, okay? Like I said, Emma has been in these college classes so she is getting pretty darn good at taking photos. We went out Sunday, per her request, I was her model and Nick was her assistant. And thank God because when that man takes photos of me I end up looking like Pat from SNL. Like for realz, I had pant creases that did not look pleasant and when I showed them to him in the photos (that were blurry but you know, oh well) he told me he didn’t think they looked that bad. Oh great…So thank the Lord for that sweet little photography professor who has taught Emma to take photos of her mother that do not include double chins or mom jean looks on a dude.

So that's what we've been up to around here. Do you all like these life/homeschool updates? I'm thinking of incorporating these every week or every other week. Let me know what you think!