MrsRobinson
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Posts posted by MrsRobinson
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(Deep breath) Okay, I think I'm ready to be accountable again. :eek:
I've been so overwhelmed the last several months with dh's ongoing mystery health issues, resulting lack of income, and getting evaluations and OT started for dd. I just squeezed lessons in between the chaos and any plan or routine was out the window. Things haven't really calmed down but they have been going on so long, they feel normal now. We have a busy summer ahead of us and have to do summer school, too since we got behind with endless doctors appointments and medical tests.
So here is my school plan for today:
-reading practice with ds. He is reading me Mouse Soup right now.
-I read aloud to ds. We are working through Little House in the Big Woods.
-dd reads aloud a chapter of one of her books to us.
-Spelling lesson, grammar lesson, and multiplication practice for dd, but all done very simply. We can power through these in just under an hour.
-We've taken to watching a science or history documentary during lunch, which has led to lots of great rabbit trails so I've definitely been counting and recording this time to help me reach our hours.
-piano practice for dd
-pool time after toddler's nap
-swimming lesson sign ups while we are there.
My non school to do list:
-get dinner going in the crockpot
-schedule treatment appointment for dh
-call another practitioner to see what dates his mobile treatment group will be in our area and get that scheduled
-1-2 loads of laundry
-day 1 of trying a new weekly house keeping schedule.
New weekly house cleaning schedule:
Mondays: kitchen and upstairs bedrooms
Tuesdays: school room and downstairs bedroom
Wednesdays: 3 entries and garage
Thursdays: outdoors and car
Fridays: living room and 2 bathrooms
I am so excited to try this! I hope it works. I am sick of always feeling behind with the housework.
Critter, I hope you feel better quickly! :grouphug:
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I once had an ovarian cyst once plus a twisted ovary. It was awful and ended up in the ER where it was diagnosed via internal sonogram. Appendicitis was also thrown out there as a possibility before they did the sonogram. I don't remember that they were able to do anything for it other than for me to take it easy. At the most intense point of pain, I was vomiting but within a day or two I felt much better. Hugs, I hope you feel better soon!
You poor thing! That sounds miserable! So it just untwisted itself?! I'm glad for you that it hasn't been a problem since. Our bodies are weird sometimes I guess. :)
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Mittelschmertz (or however the heck you spell it)???
It has a name! Lol!
Is it weird to suddenly start experiencing it? The few women I know have always felt it or it started after stopping the pill or the first period after baby. I have had no big system changes to bring it on.
I actually do hope this is what it is. It's the least troublesome of the options.
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I am 16 days into my cycle and have had period cramps all day. Both in my lower abdomen and lower back. More concentrated on the left side than the right.
A little bit ago it was so intense it was making me nauseous. So I'm in bed now, drinking water and the pain has eased up a little but definitely still there.
My list of ideas:
1. My mom's endometriosis is moving on to the next generation. Yay me.
2. I am actually feeling a late ovulation?? I've heard some women feel it but I never have so I don't know what it should feel like.
3. Something really unpleasant like an ovarian cyst.
So I'm posting here for wisdom. Is this normal? Anything to be concerned about? What does this sound like to you ladies? TIA!
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Geography: we used Draw Africa, 10 days in Africa, Geo Puzzle Africa and stacks and stacks of books about each country in Africa as we went through. We also loosely used the Simply Charlotte Mason Africa geography curriculum along with it. I can honestly say she can fill out a blank map of Africa to completion and tell me tons of stuff about each country. A favorite for her this year. We did geography about 1 to 2 times per week trying to cover 1 ro 2 countries at a time.
My ds is going to be a first grader this year and he loves geography. I kept it simple this year with a world and US placemat at his spot on the table and Stack the States. I LOVE your plan above. I might steal it for this year! What are you doing this coming year for geography?
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Dd is being evaluated for mono today. I think it is a good step before we look at other more specialized doctors.
I haven't been here in a while, it was stressing me out. But I've been reading the thread the last few weeks and thinking accountable thoughts. :)
I just had to jump on here to say to Jean that's a good idea to check for mono. I had mono when I was a kid and it took weeks to get a diagnosis. They almost took my appendix out "just in case" because they couldn't figure out what was wrong with me! I hope you get some answers!
And, while I'm here, congratulations Cadence Sophia on your new baby! :hurray:
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I'm so sorry for your loss.
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:lurk5: giving this a little bump and hoping someone has a suggestion for you. You just described my dd to a T! I'm going to check out the book you mentioned. :)
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My son watched some kid cookuling show on netflix but I dont know the name of it and he couldn not understand why we would not turn him loose in the kitchen to make anything he wanted to mix together.
:laugh: That's cute!
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My seven year old likes Kids' Baking Championship and wants to cook, so that's something we are going to start adding in.
Oooh, I'll have to look that up! Thanks!
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My son (also 5 going into 1st) can spend hours with magnatiles on the light table. Look up diy light tables on Pinterest. He played with them before the light table but since the light table... hours and hours of building and creating.
His other favorites are his bike and scooter, an outdoor mud pie kitchen, a water/sand table, and documentaries. Seriously, this kid loves them. We watched one on a topic of his interest (the Titanic) and since then, we probably watch 2 or 3 a week. We've covered Planet Earth, Life, Blue Planet, the Wild series, India's Lost Worlds, Babies, Nine Months that Made You, and many more. There is lots of pausing and discussion to make sure he is engaged and actually learning.
He also loves The Great British Baking Show and we make one of the desserts featured in that week's episode. He has made scones, biscotti, Black Forest Cake, carrot cake, croque madames, pots de creme, trifle, and more.
I love this age. So much fun to be had!
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Those of you who use the Happy Planner - that's a disc-bound system right? Don't the pages fall out easily? Can it be turned completely back like a spiral bound can? I've looked at these in Michaels but can't seem to pull the trigger.
I have never had a problem with pages falling out and I take pages in and out a lot. I fold it all the way back every day with the regular rings. I've never gone up to the expander rings.
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I have the Create 365 Happy Planner as well. I am on my 3rd one. I use the regular size to organize life (appointments, housework, menu planning, monthly budget/ bill paying, etc.)
I use the large size for my homeschool planner. Tons of writing space and pretty. My other favorite feature is the ability to easily add in pages, pockets, and more.
For me, I like a colorful, pretty planner. I find it motivating. But it is also a time saver and writng space saver because I don't feel the need to decorate it any further.
As far as pretty, large planners go, this one is reasonably priced. Especially with a Michaels or Hobby Lobby coupon. I always get my regular sized one at the end of the year when the 18 month ones go on sale for $12. Then I just pull out July-Dec. $12 for a year planner is a great price for me. I get the large one with a coupon or at Sam's in the kit. I would never pay the price for an Erin Condren.
I hope you find something you like!
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Commenting from my phone so I can find this thread again. I can't even remember what I have planned for this coming year, which probably a sign that it's not very fun!
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OMG, you should build a cooking pavilion! I've been to camps that had them. It's like a shed with a fridge, stove, and sink. You can close the door to keep out animals and the elements. You could even get a washer/dryer in there while you're temporary. It's connected to a slab or deck that holds 2-4 picnic tables. And is covered. My uncle had one with a fireplace at one end (no "shed" part for a kitchen) and we used it for so many large family gatherings.
When you're moved in to the house, you'd still have this great outdoor space for large gatherings, canning, outdoor schooling, hanging hammocks, science labs, any messy projects, etc. then all you'd need is a toilet/shower and a box with windows to live in.
This sounds so cool! Off to tell dh I have a new plan!
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ours will build (to basic liveable - not finished) quickly because it's a kit and very simple design with minimal tradespeople needed.
This whole thread is really fascinating as we contemplate our options that we'd like to get rolling on this year.
But this "kit" you mentioned really jumped out at me. I don't mean to hijack the thread so if you wouldn't mind messaging me a link? I'd be so grateful! Googling now to see what I can find on it...
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We use Handwriting without Tears - we used their print programs to no avail but we tried their cursive anyway (he is left handed) and it has been a major win.
Did you just use the workbooks or did you get the kit?
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Have you tried cursive? DS8 has very poor and labored handwriting and no amount of remediating print or doing hand exercises really helped much (we did a lot of things, too). We started cursive this year just on a lark and not only is his cursive much better than print (and easier for him, judging by the amount of complaining) but somehow print has become easier and clearer too. He writes his own video game guides willingly in his spare time now.
What cursive program did you use?
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Did you look for explanations for the toe walking?
Years ago the ped said it wasn't a deformity or anything because if it was, she wouldn't be able to walk on her feet at all. One of her same age bff's has the deformity. Achilles tendon thing I think. She couldn't walk on her feet at all. She wears braces on her legs. So that lined up with what the ped said and nothing else was pursued.
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When you say don't hear, is that connected to background noise?
When I say don't hear, I mean I will say "close the car door." She will walk away from the car and up 5 porch steps then stop and ask me "wait, what did you say?" Or multi step directions. She cannot do multi step directions at all. I don't know if she only hears part of it or if she forgets. Even just getting her attention. I have to say her name several times, my voice naturally raising each time before she responds.
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To answer OhElizabeth:
I just bought some $20 cheapie headphones on Amazon. They were hot pink and I thought that would get her on board. :lol:
I am so glad that we don't have to abandon our flexible school environment! What a relief!
If she doesn't get a diagnosis for the writing issues, that's ok. I just really want to know what I need to be doing to help her gain some ground there. It seems like the younger we do that the better, right? I am happy we have the ability to accommodate but the feeling that I'm not actually doing anything to help her improve creeps in.
Retained reflexes could definitely be in play. She is a toe walker. She can walk on her feet. She does when she is wearing shoes. But in bare or sock feet, she walks on her toes. Always has. I would be thrilled if we could get her some OT that could help.
She does color. She loves those relaxation coloring books and soft colored pencils. She goes in waves with them. She'll be really into them doing a page a day for a few weeks then doesn't touch them for months. She has a Highlights subscription and does all the dot to dots and mazes in those. The problem is really just in letters, words, and sentences.
Elaborate on discipline? I'm not sure I want to, lol. :leaving: I think dh and I just need to learn the ropes better if it is adhd. I think he's too harsh on her and expects too much. Expects her to fit into a re gulag kid mold and then I'm too easy on her to make up for it so she takes advantage of me. We need to find a balance.
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To answer myfantasticfour, yes, this child has been like this her whole life. Since she is our oldest, dh and I always just talked about how shocked we were that it is so constant, this parenting thing. Constant reminders, constant redirection. I guessed kids just literally don't hear or remember anything you say, ever. Then ds turned 4. And for that whole year we were fighting the comparisons because it felt wrong. But he was sooooooo much more capable than his 7-8 year old sister. We've seen another huge leap for him at 5.5 and we've stopped fighting it. We started researching what we could be looking at with dd. She has never had a noticeable jump in maturity. We still do so much hand holding. She is very exhausting for us and at 9 is still our most challenging child with 2 rowdy brothers.
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I'm looking at your sig and seeing rowdy boys and that you're saying she can't work. Are you sure you have a workable situation? I tried to keep my dc in the same room. They're 10 years apart almost, so you'd have thought she'd be able to do her gig. It was AWFUL.
At some point you have to get really realistic about what is going on. Sure meds can help, but meds plus structure plus motivators plus plus plus, kwim? That's what they'd be doing in school, and it's all stuff you can do at home. School only solves the problem if they're willing to go to lengths and bring in supports that you aren't willing to do. If you're willing to bring in that level of support, then the differences shrink. There are still differences, yes, but they shrink.
And would it be so awful to put her in school? I'm just playing devil's advocate here. It's not going well and she's distracted by two rowdy boys. Your attention is divided and you may or may not be up for providing the level of structure and support she would need. She might actually really enjoy the stimulation level at a school, which would match her level of creativity.
I chose to keep my dd home, so obviously I think that's ok too! But we did a LOT to up supports and structure, a lot. Personally, your situation sounds like a losing battle. Just being blunt. My dd would have wilted and died in that, couldn't function in that.
Sorry, I've made a lot of assumptions there. If they're not what is going on, fine. I'm just trying to play devil's advocate and show you some more takes on things.
What strategies are you using with her that work?
If you were to list your three biggest problems with her you need to solve, what would they be?
Ok, I think I'm ready to reply to this one! Whew, you really gave my brain a workout! But that's good. That's what I need.
I wasn't expecting a diagnosis from the ped. But I just figured he needed the account of what we are dealing with to decide whether or not to refer out for evals. He doesn't really like to refer out. He likes the kids and likes seeing them. It took me a year to convince him to refer us to an allergist for ds and when we went to get an embedded splinter out recently, he said right to ds, "now that you are seeing Dr. ______ for your allergies, I never get to see you anymore! I miss your funny jokes." Which is sweet but also confirms in my mind that he likes his patients and he doesn't like to see them go elsewhere. Maybe I'm misreading that or over thinking it. I don't know. Just explaining why I'm jumpy I guess.
As far as the rowdy boys issue, ugh, I don't know. She used to get distracted and want to play blocks or play dough with them rather than do schoolwork. But I changed to letting her play with them or outside for an hour before schoolwork. I also switched to more interactive, hands on science and history which she loves and is always really engaged in. (As long as I scribe for her, of course.) So with those changes she doesn't feel the need to play with the boys all the time. I also got her some noise canceling headphones which work great when she wears them. She busts through her math in no time. But she doesn't like the pressure they put on the sides of her head so she doesn't use them much. We have good days and not so good days.
Yes, I am willing to increase structure and use whatever supports are necessary to help her thrive. I am having a hard time visualizing what that looks like in a homeschool environment. For instance, we unexpectedly had to handle some small business issues and wound up at the bank for almost 2 hours this morning. So the whole day's plan got shuffled around. Another example: we shift our daily family walk/outside time based on when the weather will be nicest that day. Some days that's 2pm, other days it's 10am. Another day we went hog wild making slime, play dough, kinetic sand, and more. It ate up most of the day but everyone had so much fun. To me these are the good things that come with homeschooling but also don't seem very structured. Unless I'm misunderstanding what everyone means by "structure" when applied to a kid with adhd.
To the question of school possibly being better for her... I don't know the answer to that either. I think it would exhaust her. She has a hard time falling asleep at night so she sleeps in until 8:30am or later. She needs quite a bit of down time. On the 2 evenings per week that we have outside activities, she gets a solid 2 hours of quiet time in the afternoons before we leave the house and she doesn't complain about it. She craves it. I also won't see her up before 9 am the following mornings.
Even though she is distracted at piano lessons, she does pretty good at home during practice time. Her piano world really opened up when I split her 30 min practice in to 2 15 min practices am and pm. And she's out paced me so practice feels like she's in charge and showing me what it's all about. She loves that. She also attends a once a month art class at a local gallery and does a once a week art class during the summer months. She loves those too. We do a mostly weekly play date or park day rotating among her 4 similar age friends, all of whom also homeschool.
So while we do have challenges with her attention and her school lessons run long because of that, I think she's reasonably happy with her learning environment. **** I don't know, should I just ask her? :huh:
I think I've already answered what strategies are currently working. 3 biggest problems that need solved?
1. Writing stamina
2. Willingness with writing as a part of school lessons (like writing out answers to questions or writing a brief summary for a documentary or book)
3. How do dh and I approach parental roles of training, discipline, support (and probably more things) with adhd? (I realize I'm making the assumption there.)
****I just want to add in here that one of the reasons I think she is happy with her situation is because of the accommodations I make for her with writing. I transfer all her grammar pages to the white board because she prefers that over paper and pencil. We do a lot of math aloud. I try to make spelling fun by letting her practice with shaving cream, finger paint, sidewalk chalk, a drawing app, pretty much anything goes. Pretests and final tests are pencil and paper and the complaining and tears over that mostly stopped when I brought out the fun stuff for midweek practice. For persuasive paragraph unit, descriptive paragraph unit, etc. I always double the amount of days the curriculum says it should take. So we usually are able to stop the lesson about 30 seconds before the tears would show up.
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There is a cousin that has mentioned how much like her dd, my dd is. She babysits for me when there are medical appointments and things like that. I can ask her if she'd be comfortable filling out a questionnaire.Yes have the piano teacher fill out a form. Is there anyone else in a capacity to observe her where she is comfortable that could fill out questionnaires?
As for the dysgraphia, what are you seeing to think dysgraphia? Poor letter formation/spacing between letters/spacing between words/erratic sizing of letters/lack of ability to write within lines/lack of ability to write legible on blank paper/etc.? Or is it getting ideas out, whether written or verbal, such as in analysis of something she has read? Or something else? Or all of the above?
As far as Dysgraphia goes, the problems are all in your first question combo. Analysis of something she has read or that has been read to her is fine. Verbally. If you asked her to write her answer, she'd have a meltdown. She does everything in her power to get out of writing. Unless it's something she wants to do.
Example: The other day she made labels for our vegetable garden. She copied from the seed packets to get spelling correct. She had 2 spelling errors and I think 4 random uppercase letters. She totally disregarded the printed lines on the labels but her words were pretty straight where she randomly put them on the label. This was 15 labels. Basil, tomatoes, etc. I raved and raved about the project and the first thing she said was "this is my writing for the day, right?" :rolleyes:
We did the writing 8 exercises 2 to 3 times a day for about 6 weeks. She was really sick of it by the time we stopped. I haven't seen any improvement. She still starts her letters at the bottom right and circles numerous times and backtracks to add stems to h and n and tails to g and p and all the rest. Because of this, her hand fatigues quickly and her brain is working way faster than her hand and she gets frustrated and breaks down.
I have started giving her and her brother the same copywork. A one or 2 sentence verse. She has been doing it all in one sitting with no complaining. I give her brother the option to take a morning and afternoon session to complete one verse. So she is determined to get hers done all at once because "I'm in THIRD grade and you are just in kindergarten" she tells him. I think that peer pressure has been good for her. She also makes me circle which letter she formed the best. :D
Accountability Thread: 6/4-6/10
in General Education Discussion Board
Posted
Good morning! We are up early today (for us) to go to a couple of appointments. Lessons will have to wait for this afternoon. We also have our activities out after dinner so I really have to be on the ball today.
Shortened school day to do list:
-read another story for Mouse Soup with ds.
-read ds another chapter of Little House in the Big Woods
-dd read alouds
-dd spelling practice
-dd grammar page
-dd multiplication practice
-dd piano practice
Non school to do list:
-5 loads laundry :svengo:
-start slow cooker (this has become my good friend on super busy days)
-2 morning appointments
-clean school room, downstairs bedroom, and the one upstairs bedroom I didn't get to yesterday
-evening out activities
I did pretty good yesterday on my first day. I just missed one upstairs bedroom which I think was just because dh was home. Sometimes co-parenting takes longer and there is more talking and coordinating. That was the only thing I noticed that slowed me down. He's going to be here all week so I'm going to have to get used to it! :laugh:
Have a good day everyone!