The last month or two of homeschooling were busy..as you can tell by the lack of blog posts...that's ok. School and my son come first. Wow...our first year of homeschooling is done...honestly,where did the time go??
I believe we both learned a lot, and I basically feel good about how this first attempt at homeschooling went....not perfect by any means, but good. I learned how my son learns and will change some things in how I present material. Text books are pretty much out...too much language. I choose what is important and present only those things in a simplied version. I also learned that my son truly enjoys and is good at working on the computer. He likes doing power points....finding the info and displaying it in an interesting way, editing and re-editing each slide, adding different effects. He also dabbled in making brochures and using Gloster,http://www.glogster.com/ where you can make posters on-line. Next year he'll try Prezi,http://www.prezi.com/ ,Fake Facebook,http://www.fakebook.com/pp/, Storybird, http://storybird.com/create/ and Voki, a web site where you can create speaking Avatars, http://www.voki.com/. With some thinking on my part, my son can learn his subjects through these creative outlets. Many thanks to my sister-in-law for sending me these ideas.
I have been blessed with wonderful people who have given me ideas and supported us throught this this homeschooling journey. My husband, sister-in-law, friends, teacher friends, and my mother-in-law who taught our son 2 classes. But most of all, I thank the Lord for giving us this opportunity and blessing our efforts in giving our son his first year of high school education. His promise in Philippians 4:13 has proven true, as do all of His promises..."I can do all things through Him who gives me strength" As in all things, God is good.
Yesterday was our son's 16th birthday....I know this will sound cliche', but where did the time go? He was born at 8:01 a.m. on a Saturday, weighing in under 6 pounds. Just days later the Doctor found a nickel size hole in his heart. "Lets wait to see if it closes on it's own", he said. So after many trips to the Dr. and medications given,
almost a year after he was born, our son had open heart surgery to repair the hole. "You won't believe how fast he will recover", our Dr. assured us. And he was right....it was amazing. Except for the remaining scars, one would never
know he had heart surgery at such a young age. He has grown into an incredible young man. God is good and faithful.
We don't know how or why he developed his learning difficulties, his speech apraxia and language challenges, but we know our God has a purpose for everything. Romans 8:28 assures us of this.
James has a love of the outdoors...and is the only one in our immediate family who likes to fish and is interested in hunting and target shooting.
His wish for his birthday was to go fishing...thankfully the weather cooperated and we went to a nearby park with a pond....he fished while his brother and I watched. No fish were caught...not even a nibble, but it was fun.
With turning 16 most teens look forward to getting their driver's license...we have discussed with our son that he will probably need to wait until 18.....
He did get his fishing license though yesterday. He and his Dad went together before supper and got his license....that made his day.
The Lord has given my husband and me many wonderful blessings, 3 of which are our children. Each unique and special. God is good.
Ok, here it goes....this blogging thing is very new to me and I'm not 100% sure of what I'm doing...but I'll give it a shot.
I wanted to start a blog because my husband and I decided to homeschool our youngest child, who will be starting high school in the fall. I am hoping this blog will help me organize my thoughts and to hopefully engage others in homeschooling discussions and/or disussions regarding education in the regular school system....especially as it pertains to special ed.
Our son has been in special ed since he began our county's birth to 3 program. He was officially tested in 2006. His spec. ed teacher thought for sure he had ADD and wanted us to put him on medication. We thought there was something else going on so we had him tested at our Children's Hospital in Milwaukee, WI. We were so happy we had that done! Not only did it show he did not have ADD, it answered our concerns about our son.
He was diagonosed with a language processing disorder affecting both his comprehension and production of the spoken language and childhood apraxia of speech. (http://www.apraxia-kids.org/) It was thought that what appeared to be ADD was due to the fact that his listening skills were/are due to this language impairment.
This diagnosis helped us plan his IEPs (www.ldonline.org/indepth/iep) better and also the way we helped him at home. I know there are some parents who are opposed to having a label put on their child, but in many ways having the "problem" named aids us to know how to help our child better, it also opens the door to therapies which might be helpful.
In future posts I will discuss some of the challenges as well as the highlights of our son's school years to present. For now, I will end my first post in saying that in spite of all the good things that have helped our son in the regular public school setting, we are hoping to tackle the issues that a regular school cannot address, through no fault of their own.
Thank you for reading my first post, and I would appreciate any feedback, especially from those who have children with special learning needs.
