kirstencan

Garden Party

I got to go to an Art Garden Party with Thomas.  It was an end of the year activity for the kids in the integrated preschool program (delayed/autistic + non-delayed).

It was way fun - the gym walls were covered with these huge flowers, a notebook filled with photos/anecdotes of each kid + a framed painting they'd done in class.

Thomas' painting:  I swear the kid is my favorite artist.

They performed a couple of songs for the parents, and then everyone headed outside - where a ton of fun activities had been set up.  Along with bubble and rice tables, tunnels and giant balls, there was a ton of painting activities.  Had I known about the amount of paint in the vicinity I definitely would have put junkier clothes on him...

Painting with water (on the walls), on easels, with foot stamps, koosh balls, rubber band brushes, spray bottles, trucks, etc.  Of course it took all of 3 minutes for Thomas to be covered in paint...

He ran around lots and played with his friends under the giant parachute.  It was really great to see that he has friends - friends who were excited to see him and wanted to hang out with him.  It's harder for him with the neighborhood kids.

He got his face painted to look like a cat - and it was so very ticklish for him - pretty hilarious.  He had everyone around smiling - his smile is so infectious.

He had a great time, and when I was tucking him in that night he said:  "Thanks for going to my garden party with me."

I wouldn't miss it, kiddo!

(Oh, and BTW, the paint washed out!  Hoorah, that's a first!)

 

Doing School

Some more 'Colonial' type activities for history:  making butter.

(It seemed to take a while to get past the whipped cream stage - and it's still really soft - but lovely on toast).

Yesterday Princess decided to try rolling a hoop with a stick.

It was harder than she thought...

The Kindgergarten Decision

Sorry, guys, I've just gotta let this out today - mostly just to organize my thoughts:

Thomas is scheduled to start Kindergarten this summer. 

For those who don't know, he is currently in a full-day preschool at a school for children with Autism.  He was the only child in his class whose parents didn't apply for the kindergarten there.

We don't know what to do about kindergarten, quite frankly.

I thought that school would be the best situation for him as long as he was happy and had a good setup.  They have routines - he loves routines and it's hard to have strict routines at home - stuff WILL come up (case in point:  2008 so far). 

I feel a little bad about sending him to school when we don't send Princess and aren't planning on sending Monkey.  But as I've said, that is a choice we make individually for each of our children. 

I thought that I'd like to keep Thomas home at some point - maybe after he's had a few years of schooling under his belt, hopefully at that point his attention span would be a little better, and he'd know how to read (I'm not scared of teaching him to read - he's starting to - he just doesn't like to sit and work on it with me at home).

I feel entirely different about that now.  I stumbled upon this book called Home Educating Our Autistic Spectrum Children on Amazon, and luckily, my library had it.  It was quite good.  Surprisingly helpful.  Set up as the stories of 15 or so families and their experiences and why they started homeschooling their Autistic spectrum (nearly all were Asperger's) children.  What was really helpful was that their children were older than mine, and most of them were pulled out of school at some point.  You could see the problems the kids had had in school - and so many of them had similar problems - some of which we've already seen with Thomas/his school this year.  It really flipped my viewpoint completely. (Side note - one of the homeschooling books that really helped us decide to do it was set up in a similar way - just lots of families stories.  All different, none that I related or agreed with completely, no preaching - but very helpful all the same - and I can't remember the title...).

This book made me re-evaluate our decision to keep Thomas in school.  All of the kids in the book learned so much better without all the classroom distractions and more one-on-one attention. Also, in our area they teach reading using the whole-language (sight reading) method, which I strongly disagree with (Phonics! Phonics!).  Thomas is getting both.  At home we work on phonics, but at school they are using the Edmark program, which is sight reading.  So why do I want him to learn reading at school?  I don't!

Like many of the children in the book (and many children with no delays or diagnoses, actually), many days Thomas has meltdowns after school.  He works hard at his behavior and ignoring the overstimulation at school which just takes up all his energy, and when he's home he lets go.  This happens nearly every Sunday as well - his behavior at church is getting better and better - but when he gets home he's done.  Usually when he's home for a long-weekend or has a school break he's a happier kid overall.  Not so many meltdowns.

In our situation, there are three choices for Kindergarten:  homeschool, mainstream, or 'diagnostic kindergarten' (a special ed kindergarten class).  We've had some issues with Thomas mimicking his lower-functioning classmates.  He needs to be around non-delayed peers for social modeling, his teachers and the district agree.  So that knocks out option 3.  I just had a meeting with the school psychologist at his possibly soon-to-be new school.  I walked in thinking 'Well, he may not even go to school, but I'm not going to tell her that - I need to see all the options', and walked out thinking 'Wow, this might work for him.'

And now I have no idea what to do.  More and more, as positive as the counselor made the situation seem, I'm thinking that it might not work out.  He'd be in a large room divided into two classrooms - each with at least 25 kids.  There is one kindergarten aide who divides her time between three classrooms (but supposedly they have a lot of parent volunteers).  Right now Thomas is used to a classroom with 10 children and 5 teachers.  Yeah.  He seems to go in cycles - I've mentioned this before - but up and down and up and down.  Sometimes we realize what triggers an 'off' time, but usually not.  He's going to have 'off' times in Kindergarten - can they handle that?  He's a great kid.  He's smart and capable, but he requires a little more direction most of the time.

I've also realized that my expectations for my child in school are simply too high.  I didn't think that they were, but this year has been an eye-opener.  I want him to be happy and challenged.  That's it.  But he's not getting it at his school now, and I can't imagine that he'll get what he needs at this public school.

There is some major thinking (and praying) that needs to be done here.  I have to admit that it's nice to have some quieter time to spend with the other children when Thomas is at school.  I have to admit that I don't know exactly how it's all going to work if he stays home.

But I also have to admit that my heart is just not into sending my boy to school - again - he's been in some kind of early-intervention or preschool class since he was 2.

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PRO:
only 3 hours a day
less structured and less intense than his preschool
he might like it
social interaction
year-round school means 'off-track' time for breaks
we could pull him out if it's not working

CON:
he might not be able to handle that much stimulation
he might be frustrated by his fine-motor skill issues
his teacher might not be able to handle him
year-round school means 'off-track' time for breaking routines

teasing?

(note to self:  go observe the kindergarten class in session!)

Candles + Cap

We're studying the Colonial times in history with Princess.  Of course I've been meaning to do all kinds of cool projects... and I found the best time/place to do them - my mom's house! :)       

My mom watched the boys while Princess and I dipped candles.  I pulled out my old candle dipping pot from college (from a church activity) and melted an old candle I'd been saving.

I remember making candles in third grade - we burned them for Thanksgiving dinner.

After we were done, Princess helped my mom make her a mob cap (from this pattern - thanks, Amy!) and she's hardly taken it off since!       

And of course she needed some 'chocolate'... it was all very 'Felicity.'

Thanks, Mom!

Handwriting

Just thought I'd share some new 'school' stuff that the kids are really into (scroll down for the links).

Princess really wanted to start cursive handwriting.  Even though her printing is atrocious...  she started trying to figure it out on her own, and rather than let her get into bad habits, I bought her a cursive book - and wow!  Holy neat handwriting, Batman!

She made some lowercase t's at the top of the page that she turned into a woman getting her purse stolen - funny.

She did the same thing with printing handwriting, actually - she wanted to start before I thought she was ready, but she was so determined!  My mom told me about the 'Handwriting without Tears' program, and that's what Princess has used for beginning printing and now for cursive.  It really is a good program, especially for early or delayed writers.

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Thomas really needs work in the 'pre-writing' area.  I bought a couple of other workbooks from the HWT folks for him, but his favorites are the Kumon workbooks.  I don't blame them.  They're pretty slick.  We've bought him the tracing book and the easy mazes book.  Tracing is misleading.  It's not so much tracing as just pre-writing exercises.  The fact that he'll sit and work at these is proof that they're interesting.  He won't sit still for just anything! ;)

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A friend told me about starfall.com - which is a really great reading site.  There is a lot on there, if you look.  My boys are happy with the ABC's section - keep clicking on the sparkly arrows or letters and it takes you to a fun song or matching game at the end.  It's really helped both boys' computer and mouse skills.  Monkey picked up on it really fast.

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Also, my kids are LOVING the new They Might Be Giants DVD/CD.  We're huge fans of their ABC album - the 123's are just as good!  Hooray!  There's even a cool animation made with felt!  We walk around singing the songs all the time, especially 'High Five' and the one about 6 and 9.  Good stuff.  And how great is it that this is only like $13 for the DVD with the soundtrack on CD?!

Click on the covers to see them at Amazon - any other resources that you love that I should know about?

Art Project

Hey, thanks so much for your support and encouraging comments over the last few days - I really appreciate them.  I wish I had time to reply to them all, but that's not happening this week, so here's just a big THANK YOU to all of you.

Yesterday we finished an art project.  Well, Princess and Monkey did anyway.  I was feeling rather stupid that I have a degree in Art Education and barely ever 'do art' with Princess.  We totally copied Alisa's Eric Carle project.  BTW, that is a great site, and Alisa, I hope you update often so I can copy you some more - it's cool that one of us is teaching!

Anyway, first we looked at some Eric Carle books, and then they covered their papers with various colors.  We didn't use brushes, we used popsicle sticks, toothpicks, buttons, straws, etc.

Oh, and fingers.

Then we tried to making different patterns and textures on the wet paint.

The next day we cut up the dried paper to make animal collages.

(Yup, she's in a princess dress and pearls.)

Finished products:  Princess made a 'Girl feeding a foal an apple'.  This photo crops it a bit, as I forgot to talk about using all of the paper, composition, etc. so her figures were rather small and at the bottom of the page.

Monkey wanted to make an alligator.  He ripped up and glued some paper for the background and helped me cut out an alligator.  He's pretty good about using a gluestick now.

More art soon, it's a must.

It totally counts as history.

Today Princess was reading her history book to me - a lovely chapter about the Plague and the great fire in London.  Pretty gruesome stuff.  But it mentioned how people would push carts around calling 'Bring out your dead!' - and I had to giggle - to myself.

Because I am a nerd, and when Aaron got home and the boys were in bed we showed her that scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

 

*Sigh* Too funny.

Princess really wanted to get it.  She wanted it to be really funny. 
I think in a few more years, maybe.

The Results are In!

First we learned how to make tally-marks and how to draw a graph. 

We practiced by graphing two rolls of smarties, yum.

Then Princess read through all the comments (and giggled several times - you guys are so nice).  Then I read the votes out to her so she could tally them.

Here are the results:

Star Wars - 32

Cinderella - 20

Harry Potter #5 - 17

Narnia - 12

We were surprised that Cinderella came in second - we both thought it would be Harry Potter.

Thanks again for helping us out with this - you made it really fun!

Princess Requests Your Data

Hi.This is Kirsten's daughter Princess. 
In math i am doing graphs, so I want to
ask you a question to make my own graph:

What is your favorite movie out of these four:
Harry Potter #5, Star Wars, Narnia, or Cinderella?

Just put your answer in the comments.  In a few days we'll have the results of my graph.  I'm hoping a lot of people will answer the question so that I will have lots of data for my graph.  Please answer!  Bye!

(from Kirsten:  last time we went over graphs she went around our neighborhood asking people what their favorite color was.  I thought this might be more fun...  We'll probably compile the data on Monday.
And yes, she's doing math in a fuzzy dress-up stole - she does her school dressed up quite often! :)

Get Involved

The Green Outline will wait a little longer, as this post had to come first...

I've been thinking recently about how important it is to get involved with your child's school.  Thomas' school has amazing communication, notes come home every day, but it wasn't until I observed the classroom that I realized that something really wasn't working for Thomas.

In short, there is an attending program that the kids go through to train them to sit with feet and hands still. They do other regular 'preschool' stuff, and when they complete the attending program there is tons of other stuff to work on, including academics. But first, they spend hours a day working on this attending program (which, yes, sounds boring but these kids need it).

Anyway, I get notes every day telling me exactly which step of the program he worked on for each session (there are about 40 steps), and how well he did.  I get notes from the teacher telling how he did that day.  He reached a point where he stalled, and his scores were going slowly down, and he was still towards the beginning of the program.

When I went and sat in his class and watched him, I recognized the behavior (similar at times to speech) that said to me that he is bored out of his mind.  He's a smart kid, and it was hard to watch him watching some of the other kids doing other things - he wanted to move on, but didn't understand that this is a process he has to pass off first.  He completely understood what he was expected to do, but he didn't always do it, either to be silly, or because he was just sick of it (it may be he's hit another off time, or it may be that the sensory demands of school are starting to catch up with him, but boredom definitely is playing a part).

At this rate, he's not going to finish the stupid program until the end of the year!

There were some communications with his teacher (where she really thought he just 'wasn't complying' and needed to just keep going) where I insisted that he's only not complying because he's bored, and he's perfectly capable of trying the end result. They eventually skipped him to the last few steps.  Yeah, he's doing WAY better.  I cheered for him when I read the teacher's note that they'd skipped him way ahead and he did AWESOME in his first session.

I volunteered in the class again yesterday, and he's doing at least as well as last week, but at a much higher level.  That's my boy.  He'll be done with the program in a couple of weeks.

***My point being, it doesn't matter if your kid has special needs or not, goes to an amazing school (or not), has a teacher who has excellent communication with you - you need to go check out the classroom.  Go and see what your kid is doing, and if it's the right fit for your them.  Most kids (and even teenagers) don't really know what and how to tell you about school. Volunteer in the classroom, get to know the teacher better, just watch your kid - no one knows them better than you do.***

I just shudder to think how Thomas' behavior and happiness at school would have continued to decline if I hadn't gone in to watch and insisted on something that worked better for him.

If you're not your child's advocate, who will be?

(Also a result of the past week's 'issues', we've decided that we just may homeschool Thomas as well - depending on what Kindergarten program we find for him.  More and more we're realizing that there probably won't be the perfect school situation for him - and anything less isn't good enough.)

Which is a lot to think about.  Makes me tired already! :)