Week 30 ~ Birthday, Tile Mosaics, and Spring

On My Mind ~ My oldest turned 23 this week. This was a rough year for Tim. Our move to a new home as well as his pacemaker surgery took quite a toll on him. He recently had a brain map done by his doctor, and we were surprised to see how much stress his brain was under in comparison to the last brain map. His doctor said it was probably the surgery and living through those weeks on emergency mode (when his pacemaker was in failure but we were required to wait for his Medicaid to approve the surgery). It explains a lot about his stressed out mood this last year. My prayer and goal for him this year is to find happiness and relaxation. On the very bright side, Tim has a great group of friends. They are a really nice set of "kids" who don't curse in front of me or my family and are unfailingly polite. He gets together with them a few times a month. Besides that group with whom he takes fencing classes, Tim has another friend who is older than him and who also has special needs. They both volunteer each week at the nature center. They also enjoy going to the movies and recently tried roller skating. He is another great guy and gives me a glimpse into Tim's future. This young man also lives at home and gracefully models living with a disability.

Stepping Stones ~ A few months ago, my sister-in-law gave us wonderful garden mosaic tiles. I wanted to wait until it warmed up so we could make them to place in our "secret garden". There is so much landscaping to do in our yard! The goal this year isn't planting so much as figuring out what is already here and removing the dead/unwanted plants. However, I do hope to plant a bit in the secret garden. The tiles will be such a nice addition to the stone path I hope to lay in the coming months. She sent us seven tiles. The kids really enjoyed making them. They take two weeks to cure enough to be stepped on. I can't wait to decide where each one will be placed. Each week we will work on our secret garden and update on this blog what we have accomplished. Besides making the tiles this week, we also cleared out more dead undergrowth and worked on the little stone wall at one end of the garden.

Making Our Homeschool More FASD Friendly ~ I've been reading Fantastic Antone Succeeds for the last week or so. I am getting lots of ideas on how to make our homeschool work better for Goldilocks. One idea that really helped this week was introducing tactile wake-up time. The theory is that kids with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorder (FASD) usually have sensory issues. This is true for both my adopted FASD children, Tom Sawyer and Goldilocks. They both can be noisy (yet hate others' noise) and touch others way too much (but hate to be touched by others). You can see how crazy-making that can be in a day. Well, this week we had sensory wake-up each morning. Most mornings the kids played with shaving cream or "cloud bags" (shaving cream in double zip-lock bags). I noticed an improvement in Goldilocks' ability to stay in her seat and pay attention for the first hour of school. I am also moving her into more alone/one-on-one time school with me instead of group school with her siblings. Her test results came back from the Hewitt Pass Test and she did VERY POORLY -- even worse than expected. We are hoping the changes we are making at home and starting her with a reading tutor will improve her scores. Also, she will be going to respite for a whole weekend once a month for the next few months. Hopefully, this will help her get emotionally stronger. There is no way she is going to make huge gains with her academics until she is emotionally back on track.

Our School This Week ~

• George Washington Carver unit study
• Teaching Textbooks for math
• Life of Fred ~ Dogs
• Daily journal writing
• All About Spelling
• Lots of Reading ~ my kids are in love with Franny K. Stein Mad Scientist books
• Lots of learning about photosynthesis in biology
• CNN Student News
• Each child finished another workbook during independent language arts time.
• SQUILT study on O' Fortuna ~ The kids loved listening to different versions of this song. Thank you so much, Mary, for the all the great SQUILT lessons. We loved this version by the Piano Guys. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwvmrXEHt0Q

We also spent hours outside exploring nature this week. The weather is warming up! It is always impossible to keep them inside during this season. They planted strawberries, a raspberry bush, and a tomato plant, as well as jumped many hours on the trampoline.

Blessings, Dawn