nitascool
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Posts posted by nitascool
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My oldest began MUS in 3rd grade. He was struggling in math. We began with Alpha in March and finished Beta by June and that was doing every single page. So yes, it is possible. But we did A-C in the morning and D-F + Test in the afternoon. He needed this much repetition in one day to make it stick in his brain. By mid-way through Beta we slowed to 3 pages a day. In Gamma we did 2 pages a day. Now he is on lesson 25 in Epsilon. He does A, B and D. If he makes any mistakes on A or B then he will do all problems in C. If he make mistakes on D then he does the related problems in E & F.
My writing challenged 4th grader does 2 pages in math a day. A & B Mon. C & D on Tue., if he's made mistakes he does E & F Wed. otherwise he does the test. He does 2 lessons a week.
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My HG ds (going into 6th)
Saxon K-2nd (no retention)
Singapore Math 1A-3B (some retention)
Math U See Alpha-Epsilon (no longer complains about math)
Life of Fred Fractions (just fun)
My 2E ds (going into 4th)
Singapore 1A-3B (pictures distracted him)
MUS Primer-Delta
My untested ds (going into 1st)
Singapore 1A-1B
MUS Primer-Alpha
My dd (going into K)
SM Earlybird series
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I didn't see that anyone mentioned Math U See blocks ($35 The set consists of five each of the 2s, 3s, 4s, 6s, 7s, 8s, 9s, and 100s; seven 5s, twenty units and twenty-one 10s).
My ds who has both gross and fine motor delays hasn't had any real trouble with them. His fine motor skills are just now at the level of an average 5yo and we've been using these blocks for the last 3 years. They were designed with special needs kids in mind. The only problem I have had with them was that ds would put them in his mouth (he has PICA).
The unit block is a cube just slightly smaller then the size of a die, the 2 block is twice that size. The ten block is the size of ten unit blocks glued together. Each block is a different color, so even my dd (at 2 years) knew which number was which.
There is some stacking in the Primer and Alpha levels (2 or 3 lessons) but mostly they are used beside each other. I think it was something along the lines of building a 10 wall and a 9 wall which was not necessary, but a fun extra.
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I'll pray for your family. I'll pray for you and your dh to stay strong and united in your efforts to raise this special little boy.
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I don't know how you feel about supplements but my dss and dh have improved quite a bit by adding fish oil. We've tried the gummy kind, and the capsules... but actual oil straight from the bottle works best for us.
My 9yo's OT is working on finding some more methods as well. He does well with two weighted lap belts (a 22" tube separated into 3 sections with play sand inside). They are about 5lbs each. A weighted pencil has been slightly helpful as well (with the fidgets at least).
We do the exercise ball when listening to audiobooks or read-alouds but not for written work. Ds has low tone issues and it would be way to much concentration to sit up like that. We tried the $2.50 balls you can find at Walmart before investing in the $9.00 exercise ball. It didn't last long but it was a cheep way of seeing if it would be useful.
We tried the peppermint. It wasn't much help for concentration, more of a distraction, it was just way to strong a sensation for ds. Conversely my concentration queen (the 4yo) loved it.
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My dh was talking with my 9yo who was building with Lego's at the time. Ds was explaining to him the the blue and red single pieces were the energy cores. Dh asked what the difference was between them. Ds's answer was...
"Well, the blue one is pure energy, like rescuing dolphins and the red one is corrupted like war."
They then went into an hour long discussion about war.
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going to the Neurologist? We want to start preparing our ds 9 who was recently dxed with PDD-NOS for the Neuro checks that he'll be going through. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
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What we did was to find like words in 1st grade using Phonics Pathways as our guide. I imagine you could use any phonics program We did no spelling until they were reading CVC words well. Then once we hit k=-ck (page 53 in our edition) we used letter tiles to build all the words once a day. When we began 2nd grade we began with letter tiles and ended the year with written lists. I have Writing delayed boys. When we started writing the words we began with 5 words and worked up to 15 by the end of the year. In 3rd my 2nd ds struggled to complete all 25 words (writing wise) but had no spelling struggles. A good writer would have no troubles I think.
The thing is we did spelling separate from Phonics. We did not require them to spell the words before moving on in reading.
The boys 1st spelling list
sock
sack
tick
tock
duck
suck
buck
luck
Rick
sick
Last list before SS
tend
intend
intending
superintendent
tract
subtract
subtractable
unsubtractable
under
understand
misunderstand
land
landmark
playland
outlandish
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Phonics: Phonics Pathways & Reading Pathways
Reading: Bob Books, Starfall Readers, then into beginning readers.
Math: Singapore Earlybird (she already finished) MUS Primer & possibly Alpha depending on her writing skills mid-year.
Handwriting: Starfall writing book for the 1st half of the year, then Italics Handwriting 2nd half.
Art: Child-sized Masterpieces and various hands on art activities.
Lots of read alouds including the AO Year 0 list. She'll probably listen in on history with the 1st grader... if she doesn't distract.
We do a yearly Nature study that she'll be involved in
She will also be doing all of her brothers Occupational and Physical Therapy activities with him. She's his little helper [he does pincer muscle exercises, textile exercises, oral, vestibular, proprioceptive, gross & fine motor exercises.]
We do so much not because we have to but because we can. She loves school.
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We're not new to homeschooling. I'll be teaching 6th, 4th, 1st/2nd with the boys and K with my dd.
My dd4 began doing K work back in Mar. We took off for summer (mommy) break and will start up again the last week of Aug. This fall we'll be working hard on penmanship and the development of her pincer muscles. She's my one child I have to limit schooling with. She would do seat & computer work all day if I let her. We purchased Starfall's kindergarten curriculum for the fun stuff, Phonics Pathways/Phonics Reader, and Math U See. She did SM Early Bird series last year. We have a hodgepog of art and music materials she'll use with her brothers. We won't be doing any science, social studies or history, just because I won't have time with one doing Jr.high and Mr. tandem boy (my 9yo).
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When we took our son at 4 for a dx with a phsyc. autism specialist she told me that he just needed a good spanking. And that he was mentally retarded. She did an IQ test in which he scored a 70 (he couldn't concentrate long enough to do the written portions). This boy who could do triple digit multiplication in his head and read at a 4th grade level was obviously mentally deficient. How much grief we could have avoided if only we'd gotten a proper dx way back then.
I can't count how many times we've been told he just needs "better" or more consistent discipline. My MIL still doesn't believe he has autism. My 9yo is just a brat... not Autistic. The others are weird because we homeschool.
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We've got a long road ahead of us. We're just at the beginning of the labeling game. We won't see the Neurologist until Nov. for the definitive dx. My 9yo was recently dxed with PDD-NOS from a Pediatric Psychiatrist. He has Sensory Processing Disorder that was dxed when he was 4. He has both fine (6th %) and gross motor 2nd % delays which were only recently caught. He's been in OT on and off for years. His most recent OT believes him to be more Aspie then ASD.
He is very smart. He's crazy advanced in anything science, history or health and is an extreme music lover (no prodigy here though). But is very behind, about 1st grade level, in writing (penmanship). His verbal processing speed is slowed considerably.
We've had to cater the environment to his needs. When he is doing schoolwork (no more then 30 min. at a time) it must be quiet in the house. I can not allow TV, radio, or playing for the younger children and the cats have to go outside (cats paws on wood floors can be deafening for him). He has a special learning space closed off from the rest of the room, and we've removed florescent lights from the house.
I can't leave him to do his work on his own. He has to have me do more of his executive thinking then my other children. Though he comprehends well the attention span is closer to a 5 or 6 year old. So we have to work around that. I can send him to read anything on his own and have no trouble... it's any written output that we have to work on. Closer to high school we will begin working on note taking for lectures. I foresee some real issues there.
He has those social issues others have mentioned. He gets teased and mistreated by the neighborhood kids. They call him Mr. Professor. Fortunately he thinks that is a complement at this time. He speaks too loudly and comes into other peoples personal space. He doesn't do give and take well. We are working hard on eye contact at this time. There are other things I can't think of right now.
We've had to be careful not to forget to enjoy our son's strengths while working on the weaknesses. I've had to lower my expectations in some areas. He's just not going to be a prolific writer like his big brother. He may never be a socialite either. But working on strengths as well as weaknesses has boosted his confidence considerably.
Best wishes in this new endeavor. Come back often there are quite a few here who have wonderful ideas on how to navigate all these new experiences.
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Writing is his biggest stumbling block. HWOT was awful for him.
HWOT was a big failure for my ds as well. He is doing a lot better now with Italics at age 9. Not that he likes it, just that I can read it.
Would you just not worry about content subjects formally?
I try to separated the writing aspect from the learning aspects as much as possible. With me as scribe he can go through materials much more quickly and grasp the concepts w/o being bogged down by the labor of the work. So in K-3 he narrated a lot more then the average. We also did a lot more discussions of the material rather then regurgitation. In K- we focused on math, phonics and writing. Other subjects were done through me reading to him. In 1st we added Grammar, Science and History. But he was reading well by then.
What about spelling?
I'm not sure about A&P, as I've never used it. However, ds only started spelling test (writing it down) this year 3rd grade. Instead we used scrabble letters and he spelled words without having to write them.
:)
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We use Sequential Spelling here. I really like how it is set up for both accelerated learners and those who struggles. I have one of each.
I have one who I guess I'd call a natural speller. He may miss one or two words in 4 lists (100 words). However, on occasion he will ask what a word means in our list. He is doing book 3. He is also doing Caesars English 1 for Vocabulary. We don't often have to work on the spelling for those words because he catches them quickly.
I have one who is not a natural speller. He is in book 1. He will miss a word on day two that he got right on day one for no apparent reason. So I do four lists with him and then go over any words that he missed twice. With words he misses two or more time he will make picture flash cards. ie. He might spell the word Could (coud one day and cloud the next): I write the C_ _ _d. then he writes an o with a :), a u as a swing, an l as a ladder. Then he memorizes the picture, the word and learns to spell it forward and backward. I hold the word up high so that he will look for the word up later (that's in the back of his brain where the word belongs). We use all the flashcards throughout the year. Doing this with him has improved his spelling greatly (and mine). But he still has to have this aid for every new list. Usually only 1-3 words out of 100. He is also doing Building Language for vocabulary. He makes a flash card for every new list word (those embolden words or stems). This is something he enjoys.
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With two younger children I really can't always tell if he believes or not... in April he doesn't believe in Santa but come November he does. He knows that the man at the Mall is not Santa. But still has a bit of wonderment in his eyes when we talk about him. That is in Nov-Jan or so. Then it's back to that's just a story for "little" kids. He's 9. His older brother has been going along with the Santa thing since he was 4 for the sake of the younger siblings (and the extra presents). My 6 and 3yo are still in complete belief.
The more illogical nature of a giant bunny hiding colored chicken eggs (that we ourselves colored) has made him less believable to all my children. The tooth fairy isn't liked to much here. Someone coming into the house while we're sleeping is upsetting to my SN son. So we had to tell him about that one with his 1st lost tooth at 6. And we stopped it completely when he pulled the second tooth out (which was not loose) for the money.
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That is exactly how I felt when ds was diagnosed all those years ago. I remember the feeling well. :grouphug:.....
So as far as whether or not Asperger's and PDD-NOS are the same thing? I guess it depends on whose definitions you use. In the new manual they will be considered the same disorder, but they will be called "Autism Spectrum Disorder", not PDD-NOS or Asperger's.
Does that help at all, or have I only confused you more? If it helps, the treatments and therapies are pretty much the same either way.
It's nice to know that my feelings are normal.
I think that the Dr. is using the not yet published DSMV edition... so I guess that's why he didn't say Asperger's. Which is not helpful when someone says what's wrong with your kid.
You can see the differences in the diagnostic criteria here: http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/hcp-dsm.htmlThank you for this site.
So if I'm understanding this correctly? He doesn't qualify for Autism diagnosis because he only meets two of the three categories in Autism. We answered yes to 3 out of 4 in section 1, none in section two and 3 out of 4 in section 3.
From the Asperger's categories we answered 3 out of 4 in section A, 3 out of 4 in section B, C we were unable to answer (he suspected that if ds were PS there would be a clinically significant impairment), D he was an advances talker. He shows impairment in social interaction, in six areas not just two. So it looks like he fits here and when he read this dx in the manual that sounded just like ds. Yet, he dxed him with PDD-NOS. Then referred us to an Autism specialist.
He did say that Spectrum disorders are not his specialty. So maybe with this other guy we can get a better idea of what we're dealing with... but Nov. is a long time away to be uncertain.
My daughter also has been diagnosed with PDD-NOS, and the Dr. told us that it WOULD be Aspie if there were social issues. I just say it's aspie because A) more people are familiar with that, and B) there is a social component, it just isn't evident when speaking one on one with an adult....My son does have the social issues; not using eye contact, getting too close to people when talking to them, not catching nonverbal ques, not knowing when the conversation has come to a natural end, not having propper voice modulation, etc.
They are close enough that you can just tell people he has Asperger's (if you want).. The psych likely didn't give him the Asperger's diagnosis simply because that diagnosis is being eliminated in two years.. If you think he has Asperger's though, they are basically the same thing when you look at the big picture of the spectrum. They fall right about in the same place on the "functioning level" though with Asperger's you tend to see more obsessional interests and special talents.Ds definitely has the obsessional interests and special talents. He's a natural when it comes to music and is obsessed with anything to do with the human anatomy, animals or plant life. He memorizes things that if I assigned for school I would think to difficult for a 3rd grader. For instance, last year he memorized the names of every part of the respiratory system in his Illustrated Atlas of the Human body (an adult book) and then chose to memorize every bird in our state bird guide for fun (over 1000 birds) after seeing a European Starling at our bird feeder.
Anyway, thank you ladies for your responses. I guess I'm not quite as anxious about this all in the light of a new day. Hopefully we'll get a few more pieces to this puzzle tomorrow when we go for a tour of the Integration Treatment Center with ds.
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We just got back from my ds Pscy. appointment. The Dr. was great, asked tons of questions that we were fairly prepared for... and quite a few we hadn't expected. He said ds has PDD-NOS with possible ADHD. But because ADHD has to be dxed by observations in two different environments it would be hard to dx at this time... he also said that the attention behaviors might just be his SPD interfering with his attention.
After telling us that he had PDD-NOS he read to us from DSMV the Asperger description, which mostly sounded like ds. He said they aren't using Asperger dx any more and that it's basically the same thing.
So I'm a little confused is he Aperger or PDD? or are they really the same thing?
He referred us too Dr. Max Wiznitzer who's a Neurologist specializing in Autism Spectrum Disorders, but we wont be seeing him until November.
I feel anxious and relieved at the same time. Relieved because what we are seeing as odd things about ds are really there and we weren't just imagining them... but then I was kinda hoping that we were just being overly paranoid.
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We are using Prima Latina with the DVD and will do Latina Christiana I next year. While it's designed for younger students I think it's a great gentle introduction into Latin. We've made it a thing for the whole family to do. I to use it two years ago without the DVD and don't recommend it. The DVD makes the program work for my SN ds. Hope that helps.
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Music of the Hemispheres. The assignment was to chose a situation and a sound, then write a poem with them in mind. ex. the sound water makes s or a hammer b d b d. He chose Machine as his situation and "cl" as his sound.
What I did was to have him dictate the poem to me. Later I dictated the poem back to him and he wrote it down. I added a step to help him better arrange his ideas in his mind. Here's what he wrote.
The Masheen Robot
The masheen was clanking lowbly.
Clulesly creating clutsy clones of itself.
It cobe cloke its cons but not clules claking self.
He is still doing letter reversal for some letters which we are working on. This is his first time writing a first/second draft. Here are his corrections.
The Machine Robot
The machine was clanking loudly,
Cluelessly creating klutzy clones of itself.
It could cloak its clones but not its clueless clanking self.
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I was thinking something was wrong with my 9.5yo, and I was right. The PT gave the TGMD-2. He scored in the 5th% in locomotion and 1st% in object control. So his age equivalence is 5.6yrs and 4.3yrs. One thing I was impressed with was that ds was able to be redirected fairly well and was a little more focused then usual. I was proud of his efforts. I could tell that he was really trying.
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I just got an OT appointment for my son at an integration center and they asked us to familiarize ourselves with the program before coming to the visitation/intake. If you've used this approach I would be grateful for your experiences. Thanks
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" LD do not just affect academics, they affect all aspects of life. Many also struggle with social, day to day activities, communicating effectively, following instructions, going to new places, seeing details, managing their time, being their own advocate, organization, cooking, driving, etc.
Now it would really be nice to have some "curriculum" for these subjects. And yes, that don't cost thousands of dollars. If we could find a nice volume control system for his auditory issues, some sort of focus toggle bar for his hinky visual issues, and some way to teach writing while laying upside down on the couch. I could really get into something like that.
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I have people actually comment to me that I'm doing a disservice to DD because she is not experiencing being bullied. What?!?! According to these people, kids need to be bullied in order to survive as adults. Wow!
And this is why I regularly harass my children. I try to get in some shoving and arguments at least once a week. But mostly I call them nasty names, like four-eyes, dork and retard. :ack2:
But seriously... some people are soooo stupid... can I say stupid... the kids are asleep so they wont hear. :lol:
How Long is Your School Day?
in K-8 Curriculum Board
Posted
We begin school at 8 and end at 3. With an hour for lunch. That's a total of 6 hours of active schooling for ME (not all the children are working diligently the entire day). For each child I've added an average of 1 to 2 hours of teaching time to my day.
So, what am I missing? Or am I missing anything?
I noticed that you don't have spelling or vocabulary study (I realize that some children are natural spellers but most can benefit from some vocabulary study), history, foreign languages, art or music. Also handiwork (such as knitting or woodworking) and home economics. None are really "necessary" studies (except for history), but can expand your academic day if that is what you're looking to do.
It's been a pretty good rule of thumb for me that each grade level should add about an hour to the child's scholastic day. 30 to 60 min. in K, 1hr in 1st and so on. My 11 year old was doing 5 hour of work last year and is doing 6 this.
My 4th grader does six hours this year but that is because we include his Occupational and Physical therapy exercises into his school day (which is about 1.5 to 2 hrs of exercising broken up throughout the day).
My 1st grade is working about 1 to 2 hours depending on his motivation. Some days he prefers to play with his sister. Still he begins at 8 and ends at 3... with lots of time between to play. But actually sitting down and doing written work is no more the 20 min. at any given time.
Mine are 6th, 4th, 1st and K.
Our schedules look something like this
6th Gr
Bible reading daily
Spelling daily We us AVKO
Italics 2 pgs daily
Practice Town 2pgs daily (kinda like diagramming sentences)
Grammar/Writing/Vocabulary/Poetry 1 chapter per week
Math MUS 2 lessons a week
Life of Fred 5 chapters a week (this is reviewing Fractions)
Usborne History Reads Two 2 page spreads a week and does an outline
History Reading (Living Books on Medieval Times)
History read aloud (to his little brother & sister)
Apologia Zoology 1 1/2 chapters a week + notebook and reading suggestions
Latin 1 chapter per week
Logic 1 ch per week
Art 2x a week
Music 2x a week
Health a health journal daily
Nature Study 1x a week
Computer science 1x a week with typing the remaining 4 days
4th Gr
Has a similar schedule
He does not do Computer science but does typing 5 days a week
He also does piano practice and Occupational and Physical Therapy Exercises throughout the day
1st Gr.
Bible
Italics
First Language Lessons
Spelling
Phonics Pathways
Reading Pathways
Reading various books (3 to 4 a day)
Math U See
Story of the World Vol. 2
Zoology 1
Thinking Skills 1 for logic
He has health readers instead of a journal
My K
Bible
Italics
Phonics Pathways
Reading Pathways
Reading various Books
Math U See
And lots of Read-alouds