Hi everyone: So now that my son is speaking, he still has severe apraxia that makes understanding him difficult and requires a lot of context. So we still have him sign to us when he is stuck. He starts TK September and I will be homeschooling him. We had him accessed back in Dec by Northern Diagnostic Center in Fremont and they wanted to drop the Autism diagnosis and say he just has Apraxia. I think we will just keep the autism diagnosis until we get back to the Kaiser ASD clinic and just add the Apraxia to it. I am stressed about the whole reading process. We stopped ABA back in January. I just got sick of it. I needed a break. He does get speech from school district and vendor of Kaiser. SO today I started using: Halo-Soma http://www.halo-soma.org/main.php?sess_id=cb1044d6aea5cb73503b1109356a5dce We did it on the floor as he was having aversions to the table. He picked this up quickly and excitedly. He was fine as long as he liked the topics which are ice cream, candy and minecraft. I need help writing lessons for these. Anyone wanna help? Also I just ordered Oral Cued Reading and spoke with the wonderful speech therapist and she gave me some great tips: There is no way he is ready for any type of phonemic awareness stuff so we will start with this method. I am excited to try their eye tracker for his older siblings too. http://yakketyakslp.com/Cued_Oral_Reading.html Finally would like a review on this: Speech EZ https://www.speech-ez.com/ Has anyone tried any of these?

Crimson Wife: yes I understand what you are saying but as someone who has been in the education field I am not excited by anything that I have seen. I have had kids in ps and things were bad. My older kids still have not recovered because of the schools.

So my 4yrs old son was diagnosed with autism by Kaiser at age 2 ish. Now he has been diagnosed with apraxia by Northern California Diagnostics Center. His AB team says he has both. Anyways the school districts all push for him to go to Prek and regular school. But I still want to homeschool him since I have others homeschooling at home. I started going on Apraxia listservs and asked a lot of questions regarding reading... Suggestions: Lively Letters LiPS HWT Anyone tried Lively Letters?

Guess what?! My child is speaking!!! We had no speech therapy for a year and just did ASL and ABA which combined speech and signs. One caveat...intelligibility is a bit of a factor still. Also his sounds are not always consistent. Sometimes the sounds comes out perfectly and we understand his sentence. Other times we are like WHAT?! With that we ask him to sign it to give us a clue on what he is saying. Other times he gestures it or he goes and finds a toy or item or an icon on my cell phone text message to represent a word he is trying to get out. He has great understanding of what is being said. And his grammar is getting there. Sometimes it sounds kind of like ASL grammar. Ex. ball blue catch instead of catch the blue ball for example. Our next step is to start doing harder work. Having more deeper conversations and also sequencing of stories like narration.

In our area Nannys start at $17/hour and can go all the way up to to $30hour. Our deaf nanny who had no child care experience was paid $17. Regular child care is about $1000-$2000/mo sadly in our area. So I guess go way lower to maybe $5 an hour or $8 an hour My point of this was for a single mom who was in school and just need a couple hours here and there for someone to watch their kids that was supportive and understood homeschooling. Of course I would have no problems answer questions and such and help with tutoring but that would raise the fee if you advertise tutoring..tutoring is like $20 an hour in this next of woods. Anyways this was something I totally needed while homeschooling and in school as a single mom about 12 years ago and I paid way more while on campus. Yes some kids may want to socialize but if they see other kids doing work they may do their work.

Kaiser wont say it is apraxia and they won't say it is.. Sigh! But I checked out Ivy Kids and liked their kits for something quick and easy to tide us over for the next couple of months while I agonize over this. http://ivy-kids.com/ Here is a list of subscription kits and there is a sensory box subscription kit too. http://kidsactivitiesblog.com/47867/10-subscription-craft-boxes-for-kids-compared I also like Brainy Kit. Montessori based. I think M is for Monsters is cute too. I don't want a subscription but love the individual kits.

I wanted to find something fast and quick for my sons for the next couple of months. I like Ivy Kids http://ivy-kids.com/ Going to try out their kit on under water since we don't have that book and not covered in Moving Beyond the page 4-5yrs Here is a list of different kinds of subscriptions kits http://kidsactivitiesblog.com/47867/10-subscription-craft-boxes-for-kids-compared

Yes I called Prompt Headquarters and they had no one in SF Bay Area. Specifically East Bay. I like Moving Beyond the Page a lot but my son is just not ready. Just need something to start with next year and then when he is ready for Moving Beyond the Page we will go that direction. Will check on Ronit Bird

Oh Elizabeth: Thank you Thank you. Yes yes Looked into the Timberdoodle stuff just yesterday. You are on the same wavelength as I am. I guess why I am looking at a curriculum like Moving Beyond the Page is that I NEED some kind of structure. If it is random half hazard, I will feel nuts. I need structure and organization. I tried to get Prompt Speech btw---can't get anyone out in the Bay Area. ARGH Yes I have rapid prompting in my Amazon cart right now ready to order but just waiting for better pay from husbands work He's been watching CHALK online preschool. They have two month free trial. It is pretty good. My seven years old really likes it too. You did K5 work with a 3/4 yrs old child? Yes I have some art kits/craft kits for him. He doesn't like to get his fingers/hands "dirty". But we will continue doing them. Sonlight/Bookshark will not work. I will lose my voice. Tried it before. I did one month before with older kids and lost my voice for three months. I am going to try those Rod and staff preschool books. Kumon just bugs me for some reason. I think its the glossy glare on them and the smooth texture makes it hard to grip or something for the kiddos. I will check on your resources and see what you used. I am thinking Education Unboxed?

Ok,....love the ideas! 1) Wood kindling 2) Recycle bin 3) Free table or give away 4) Use as wrapping paper 5) Make on the go packets. 6) Resell on Amazon 7) Give to younger kids to scribble and do pretend school 8) My daughter suggested use it for collage/art project with decoupage 9) Maybe make a board game out of it 10) ??????

I am not sure why he is dropping signs other than the fact that we are a hearing family and we are not all adept at ASL. His older brother (age 7) cannot sign much and thats the one he plays the most with. His brother has dual presentation of ADHD and ASD but he is extremely verbal with a large vocabulary though. We have tried and tried to teach his brother signs but he fights it and its just not working. His brother is able to kind of understand him better than anyone else though or maybe he is making up words for him. The signing has made a huge difference. It really changed his IQ level to show that he is really bright. Basically if he knows you can speak and hear, he speaks or attempts to speak. If you are deaf, he will sign. So he knows he needs to sign to and those who will just suffer and try to figure out what he is saying. Kids in general chose to speak than sign. Its just easier to speak or vocalize than sign. Signing takes more energy or something. His ABA decided to drop signing mainly because they can't find a person who knows it. Sigh Today I called Kaiser to get an OT evaluation. Next Monday is his eval! We have been watching Chalk Online preschools and he likes it. Two months free trial. He is signing all the ABCs and numbers. Learning days of the week, Months of the year, seasons, colors, shapes, opposites, geography etc. Yes we are reading lots of books. He loves to act out all the animals and things in the story. ie animals and ships and cranes. He has not acted out the actual stories though. I have started noticing his play involving the toys he's moving around are interacting with each other more. Like have a conversation or something. More of a goal or plot. Rather than just driving the car around randomly He participates in a preschool science co-op about once a month and loves it. He teaches the other kid and mom how to sign the different animals. They are following Bugs to Bunnies curriculum. He gets community speech at the local school district about 30 minutes a week and the speech therapists wants to increase the hour to about 45 mins now. He love school stuff and learning. Its not a hardship like it is with his older brother who fights it. He loves the drawing, the sorting, categorizing, stories etc. I am just trying to get a curriculum to just do with him. He would love MOving beyond the page 4-5 yrs and he looks so jealous when I do it with his brother. But he's just not ready. When we had Minescraft about 6 months ago he was able to find and open his file and manuever around with his fingers on the keyboard and he knew what he was doing one Minecraft. He loves watching the Dan TDM movies. As well as unboxing videos. He doesn't always get board games. It depends. He is fully potty trained, knows how to turn and off lights, wash hands, puts on and takes off clothes except for socks. Can feed himself but with a fist. He puts his clothes often inside out. He strips when having to go to number 2, he wont sit down for 1 but stands up. He eats just about anything. Not too picky with food. Doesn't like to get wet. Loves vehicles. Makes a lot of sound effects. Starting to notice music and kind of wiggle to dance. How do get rid of the Palmer Grip? Where do I get Webster's speller?

Everyone says do your research..... Can someone send me the steps you took to do so. Whom did you speak with ? What questions did you ask?

Van: I added these links above to my post as an edit but figured I should recopy them here for you to find and use as resources and contact these people for help immediately and meet others in your very exact shoes. http://www.responsib...tion-what-next/ http://www.responsib...chool-graduate/ http://www.responsib...school-diploma/ http://www.responsib...ool-transcript/ First I want you to make a list of everything you have ever done, gone to or seen. Let's consider what video games you played and consider it English Language Arts. Some video games can be construed to be strategic or mathematical. Also what movies have you watched? What documentaries? You said you were into political stuff. That could be consider Government. You can type-so that's typing credit. Computer-computer credit. Some people are amazing at turning non academic things into "educationalize"-turning nonacademic activities into something academic that can give you credit all with words. Did you do Boy Scouts or 4H as a kid? Play an instrument? Make or build anything? Did you build models? Do you have photographs of your childhood to help you remember? Did you cook, bake, sew, draw, paint? Read this: This is good too! https://homeschoolersanonymous.org/2016/08/03/how-early-college-actually-set-me-back-jos-story/ Suggests kids need to get a small part time job just to have experience with some kind of work. Gives them an idea of what they might like to do before wasting time and money on a degree before they know what they want to do.

Hi Van1998: Your writing/typing skills are actually not bad for someone who has had very little education. Your spelling looks good as well as grammar unless you are a using a voice to text program or dictating this for someone else to type for you. I have known people who have gone to all 12 years of school and still can't write at all. Your language skills again are not bad. I have seen worse. Can't you still go to high school up until you are 21 years old? My son was in high school until 19/20yrs.Go to the nearest high school and find out. Also contact these people. There are others in your shoes and read this: http://www.responsiblehomeschooling.org/so-you-have-a-deficient-homeschool-education-what-next/ http://www.responsiblehomeschooling.org/adult-basic-education-for-the-educationally-neglected-homeschool-graduate/ http://www.responsiblehomeschooling.org/how-to-obtain-a-homeschool-diploma/ http://www.responsiblehomeschooling.org/how-to-obtain-a-homeschool-transcript/ I too lost many years of education. I made up for 3 years in one year during high school. In elementary school, my home life was so bad that I don't have any memories of several grades. Plus I was moved around from placement to placement. I got little sleep at nights for various reasons- trauma, domestic violence, abuse of various nature, neglect. CPS and cops entering in and out. 14 different schools in a four year period I remember. But I survived and so will you! So I will toss you some tough love cause that's all I know... 1 ) Yes you will feel overwhelmed and depressed but it's not going to get you anywhere. 2) People break up with others for various reasons but that is life. You just got to move on. Turn it into a learning experience and you can say you got one year of education down already. I had a similar situation. I just looked up my ex boyfriend. Not very appealing anymore :) I have a great husband now who gets me as he has walked a similar path as I have. I respect him even more in fact compared to my pompous ex boyfriend of a lawyer who had everything handed to him. No he was a very nice guy but he broke up because our paths (past, present) were just different plus I think he got pressured from his parents too. My husband I did not meet until I was 35 years. It took me that long to find the right man for me and lots of painful mistakes but learning experiences along the way. Turn everything painful experience into something educational, something you learned about yourself and the world. Learn to gain insight. The worst is to get into the trap of feeling sorry for yourself and blaming others. 3) You may have hit rock bottom...but there is only one way to go and it is UP. 4) Here is a hint: People are learning all the time. Not just the first 12 years of their lives. Start giving yourself an education right now. 5) There are many types of education. Think of all the things you do know that many of us do not know. And tap into that. 6) Put yourself on hyperdrive with learning. Consider yourself a sponge and read everything you can get your hands on and watch every documentary you can get free on YouTube or at the library. Work through Khan Academy step by step and get your GED. Learn to write incredible essays. Start keeping a journal and start to learn to express yourself daily for 5 mins, then 10 minutes, then 20 mins, then 30 mins building up. Listen to that internal conversation in your head and get it out on the paper. Once you start writing your personal story down you got a great college essay as well as for scholarships explaining your situations. 7) Its not impossible but it will be hardwork. 8) For every hardship you have right now, there will be someone else who have walked this similar path. Listen to those who have walked that path and continued moving on. It isn't always beautiful or graceful but its still moving on. 9) What does it mean to move on? It means making goals, setting up steps and taking steps to achieve them. 10) Take one day at a time. What does that mean? Todays goals will be different than tomorrows goal. Maybe todays goals is to not wake up without crying about your ex and to read a chapter in a book and do a set of math program and watch a good documentary. Tomorrows goal is just going through the day and only thinking of your ex three times a day only, read another chapter, do another set of math program and watch another documentary. The following day is think of ex twice only,read a chap, do math, start freewriting/journaling, watch a documentary and post a discussion on it here on the forum. Pretty soon your day is packed of all kinds of things that will be your life education and you will once again start living. Add a goal to maybe learn a new recipe, a song, meet a new friend, get a GED book, take the GED test, go to Community College and look into financial aid 11) Start right now and right a goal for tomorrow and post it here. 12) If you start feeling sorry for yourself, put a rubber band around your wrist and snap it. Stop yourself and don't go down that road. HOPE! Stay with Hope! Imagine how you want your life to be and write it down and turn it into a reality. I'm sorry if I have offended people but that is how I have learned to survive and many others I have known who have walked that path. Reminding ourselves that life is not meant to be fair. Its a fight for many of us. Right now my life is so good: I do not go to bed hungry, beaten, mistreated, scared and assaulted anymore. I have an awesome husband and a family to work for. I have a house to live in. I have friends in person and online. I may not have a degree as I got exhausted working 40 hours a week to support myself through college full time but I have enough education to survive day to day and to be able to educate my children and support my husband in his job. I enjoyed being an EMT, CNA with six kids in tow and a preschool teacher before having kids. I started nursing school at one point while a single mom. I even brought my infant son to college. Many times I am not sure how I got into college but I remember my high school principal of my last year did some illegal things to my transcript and I got into college somehow. He ended up getting fired for embezzling or something illegal but he helped me get into college. Ps ...My house is filled with books and pictures of my kids and their picture that they have drawn and made. We have board games and lots of craft things. My house now is nothing like my childhood and proud of it. So you can do anything if you want it badly enough. Another friend of mine grew up in a bad neighborhood of Richmond. His mom was a single mom of five kids and his mom died of cancer when he was young. He is the only one who made it to college. He went to UC Berkeley and got an engineering degree and started med school in his mid 30's which is a really late late start. Husband was in special ed all of high school and he said all of high school he went there high and drunk. Starting 10yrs of age he got started on substances from his elementary school. He was also neglected and abused. He has no recollection of any schooling beyond 2 or 3rd grade. He never cracked open a book that he remembers. Now over 20yrs later he is fine supporting his family of 7 in the SF Bay Area which is not a cheap place at all. I think he is bright and wonderful. He is amazing in carpentry and fixing things. He's often on the computer seeking information. The most important thing of all: my husband is a good hardworking man who loves his wife, family and life. He is an awesome father. My kids adore him. Got another friend who was human trafficked. She eventually made it through college and became a therapist working in the hospitals. Another friend victim of incest and horrible horrible childhood. She became a teacher.

For a child with severe articulation ie Apraxia and fine motor skills issue still fisting with forks, spoons, thick writing implements and thick paint brushes Curriculums that have them rhyming and doing phonemic awareness work orally just would not work because his sounds don't come out the same each time or even close to it. Thinking of using About 3 workbooks from Rod and Staff to work on cutting, pasting etc and then the workbooks after that. Then Memoria Press Special needs A I would love a secular version of this program so our charter school can buy it. Thoughts anyone else?

I opted to homeschool after San Leandro Unified School District couldn't find his 17 page IEP at the start of the year according to several people in the district and the special ed contact person quit over the summer. I had many copies of it myself electronically and in print but wrote the special ed director that I wasn't their paid paper pusher and please look into it. She promptly did. I was happy about that. But after that I had very little faith in this particular school district. Plus had a friend who worked in the school district spec ed dept and she literally begged me regularly to not send him to the programs there. We visited a program there for their SDC preschool communications focus class. It was so pathetically subpar. I had worked at Mills College Children's School and I know what a good preschool is supposed to look like. That was just childcare in my humble opinion. Besides our special ed lawyer told me to NOT place my son in SDC (Special Day Class). He is way too smart despite having autism and being nonverbal. At the time he was signing many things such as phone died, needs charging and the school district really didn't know any child whose family took the route we took. We immersed him in the deaf world and picked up many things from them and the language such that he was not your typical nonverbal child with autism. My son learned how to make eye contact, learned how to imitate facial expressions and read facial expressions. He learned to sign his abcs, 123s and he learned to sign lots of vocabulary. He also was extremely social and expressive. So basically they had a nonverbal autistic child in front of them who just acted more deaf than anything else but he wasn't deaf. Anyways, the lady at the school district basically told me How well he was doing and that I was doing something right. It was her way of saying...just homeschool him because he is getting better everything compared to what they were doing at the school. I just blasted this kid with signing and deaf people...signing videos, signing classes for the whole family, signing babysitter, signing books, pictures, posters for a year and half. He went to a deaf school locally for the weekend twice. I also signed ASL in English grammar and spoke. Not quite deaf etiquette. We are only getting community speech for 30 mins a week from the school district this year and we will see how he does this year. So now its trying to find resources and curriculums to homeschool him with severe articulation issues. BUT IN GENERAL FOR EACH FAMILY: 1) Go with your gut-can you homeschool the other kids with this other child home, or perhaps another child might thrive better in a school environment (however for many families, having everyone at home is so much easier) 2) If not, see if your ABA people can help you teach him to play quietly for periods of time while you work with other kids 4) If not, then go visit programs 5) visit private programs 6) Talk to others who have done 1 or the other 7) Look at your homeschool options ---are you going to go to R4 route or through an independent study charter school 8) Will you get good services at your charter school-most likely need a special ed lawyer to get all the services your child needs (my 7yrs old gets ot, speech, group speech and resource) 9) Try out a spec needs class and always always stick with your gut feelings and your child's feelings and reactions. If things are going bad, you can pull him out. 10) Do all your research if you are going to homeschool and plan and structure your day. With clear cut pictures and daily schedule and structure. 11) Start with a few goals and see what happens 12) Remember every homeschool families have really good days and really really bad days and that is the same with all teachers in classrooms. There will be days you want to call it quits and that is the same as many teachers in the classroom. The difference if you stick with your child that child will have to deal with less turnover but a child in school will have so many teachers (within the year and at the new school year), its dizzy.

STE consultants did a good job with my youngest son who is now 4 years old. His main issues are really minor at this point: articulation, fine motor delay with fisting still, having to undress full when going number 2, needing to sniff me constantly I think they could have worked more with my older son who now has a dual presentation of ADHD and ASD and possibly dyslexia. He is still screams and can be pretty rough and aggressive to himself and others. Just a pretty intensive kiddo. Academics is a challenge for this kid: reading, writing mainly Focus and attention issues too We had two ABA therapists with STE consultations to begin with. I liked the one for the older kid and got rid of the one for the younger kid and moved the one for the older kid to the younger kid since he was lower functioning at the time. They got a new one for the older one. He was ok but I could tell they didn't really bond all that well and his services with my son ended in November. We just have supervisory hours now. I really liked our clinical director too. However in Jan our ABA therapist for the younger kid left to work with Kids Overcoming. And we were really bummed. We have a new one and he is ok. Plus our Clinical director changed position so in one month we got a new ABA and a new Clinical Director. Sigh. So much turnover. Remember this is our third ABA company since we started this whole ABA situation 5 years ago with my 7yrs old.

It is expensive and we got wierded out by it for some reason. My son got really really bored! We have found better results with Chalk Online Preschool which has a free 2 months trial. So after that you can cancel. https://www.chalkpreschoolonline.com/ Some videos repeat but there are variations. All of it just feels more natural than Gemini. Maybe some kids really need Gemini but my kids were really bored.

Anyone?

I have a lot of workbooks.....half used. I would use for younger child but that child would need the beginning parts too to build up to the level. I seriously considered using them as wrapping paper. Creative ideas?

I have personally found BFSU is best in a small group setting. Doing it one to one would drive me and my kids batty. Its fun to hear how other kids not from the same family would think about these topics in a group setting.

Not that I know of. But if you start one. I have a 7th grader interested!

We have a preschool coop right now and it is a science based coop. But a lot of skills are covered in that two hour period. The kids are using Bugs to Bunnies. I should mention that it is a co-op from preschool through high school. The prek has a parent teaching them using Bugs to Bunnies The older kids (Elementary to Middle School) do BFSU. The high schoolers are assistants/aides. Help if someone needs to go to the bathroom, help with spelling/writing, help with discussions, help lead a discussion, read a book, find materials, draw pictures etc At the beginning and end of group everyone is included. We use the time to review or talk about what they learned or share their journals. We play a group game etc.

So I have a child who is essentially nonverbal but he is speaking but hard to understand him. He signs if he can't get a word out but he is quickly losing the signs unfortunately. He is average or bright in everything else. Delays in speech and writing (still using a fist for everything including eating with utensils) I was considering Moving Beyond the Page 4-5 yrs because I could see him enjoying the crafts but he really isn't ready for the discussion stuff. I was thinking All About Reading prek book but again he's not ready to rhyme or any of the phonemic awareness stuff yet. I should add that he is in a science coop and just loves it...all the worksheets, coloring, sorting etc. Any thoughts?

Has anyone started a Moving Beyond the Page Learning Center or have been a part of one? Meet twice a week and do group work and then do work independently at home other days. http://www.movingbeyondthepage.com/learningcenter/ There is freedom to run it like a coop or people can pay someone to teach while they work with other kids or run errands or do housework back at home for a few hours.