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[Guest jen318]

Hello! I will be homeschooling my daughter next year; she will be in first grade. She has a congenital birth defect (P-ACC) which means the brain matter that connects both hemispheres of the brain only partially formed. Because of this she has both gross and fine motor delays and abstract thinking is difficult. Cognitively, she's pretty much on track. I didn't know if there were any of you in a similar situation and had recommendations for curriculum that might be appropriate. Thank you and look forward to reading the different discussions!

Edited March 27, 2011 by jen318
forgot to add something

[mommama]

...for different reasons (my kids were drug and alcohol exposed in utero; there is some association with partial or complete absence of the corpus callosum, but none of them have been imaged to date)

 

After a frustrating year for my oldest, we stopped everything and are revamping, quite radically. We have decided to throw 'curriculum' out the window completely. We will read, read, read. When our kids are ready, we will teach them to read and write. We will use our content to learn the types of skills usually taught in workbooks and textbooks. This goes for math and science, too. We will use primary source materials, experimentation, and in the case of math, working together through problems of increasing difficulty, and using math as we live.

 

I fully expect my kids to have difficulties with abstract thinking as well. For some kids with in utero exposure, the difficulties are not so much deficits as delays. They may not reach expected levels of abstract thinking until much later than is typical. I haven't read enough to know if this is the case with isolated PACC, but slowing down and really cementing the basics in a variety of ways may be an option for your daughter since you're homeschooling. Even if you're using a public charter, you should be able to do that w/ an IEP.

 

As an overarching principle, I would suggest following your daughter's lead and progressing at her pace, regardless of which approach/curricula/etc you choose to follow. I love that homeschooling is allowing me to think in terms of longterm (ie lifelong) goals for my kids, as opposed to having to worry about whether they'll 'graduate' with their peers, and follow the (increasingly rare) typical school pattern K-8, four years of high school, four years of college, etc.

 

We are free to be, well free. So long as we can let go of prescribed definitions of success.

 

I think it's an exciting journey to begin.