Updates

I was doing so well with my blog posts, I need to schedule time to get one in! Which seems crazy but the truth is I just forget.

We are just ending week 25 in our homeschool, and prior to this week I've always written out my lesson plans in a notebook or planner. Jason gave me a hard time about not being techy despite having all the technology easily available, so this week I started scanning in the lesson plans to a Google drive file and then scrolling through on computer. This is actually incredibly handy. I can do just the daily portion of the lesson plan (in case this is confusing; Seton provides lesson plans for each course your child is enrolled in, but they come all together. They also offer a way to print out daily or weekly lesson plans but it's not easy to transfer them to another file type and it's a waste of printing), and then I can add several pages. For Dominic this is really great because he does have several lessons, for Christopher I can add a comment and list out his lessons that aren't included in the lesson plans because they are part of his special ed program. We decided not to continue with Time4Learning, not because it wasn't a good program, but because it was a huge fight for Christopher. I'm hoping to get to the city maybe this weekend and get some more workbooks because oddly that seems to be what he does better.

Benedict is ready to have his own desk and important things to do!

I have decided to start Weight Watchers (WW now) again; it seems like I've started and stopped a million different things, Weight Watchers included, but in some ways this feels different. I'm feeling really hopeless with regards to my weight and I need to make some serious changes. Especially because Jason promised me I could order this dress if I drop 25lbs and I desperately want it (with sleeves and past my knees though)! And I really want to be bike riding ready by Spring. I'd like to get a recumbent bike, possibly a tandem one to ride with Dominic, but at my weight it's hard to justify such an expensive purchase if it's at all possible that I could break it. So, wish me luck!

This book is coming to us, Jason doesn't remember if he ordered it or not, but he got a notification that it's on its way so someone did. I'm actually kind of excited because it looks like it will be really good. We are always looking for ways to live more liturgically in our home. I've been trying to have the boys do saint coloring pages and reading to them about the saint as they do, and I think that's been one good way.

Well, that's all the updates for right now! Hopefully I get a schedule going for writing out blog posts! 

Finding the Right Balance

We've been happily using Seton for our Catholic homeschool since Dominic was in pre-school. I do kind of geek out and look at various different programs, but all in all I'm content with what we're doing. I love that everything has the quiet background of our Catholic faith; Dominic's English lessons frequently have stories about saints and his math has beautiful artwork on the pages. Christopher's lessons are a bit different because we are doing special ed for him and he's not using all of the same lessons from Seton. But, there is still that quiet background of faith in most of his stuff.

However, lately I've noticed that Christopher is mostly just watching. I don't have the knowledge to know how to make sure that he's getting everything. He is tested in spelling and phonics, but he is not tested in math or language arts. He does exceptionally well at spelling and phonics and is a really good little reader! On top of that, he's actually only doing 30-45 min of lessons. Then the rest of the day is filled with too much screen time (I know, I know, I'm terrible!). So, I wanted to add something, but there's a reason that I don't design our curriculum. A friend of mine had used Time4Learning for a bit last year and thought that it was pretty good. It was actually also listed in an article i read about good online homeschools for autistic kids so I thought it would be interesting to try.

We are not changing from Seton. We've added this to our day. I'm not super worried about a schedule with it, so if we finish by the end of the year that's great, if not, that's also okay because this is in addition to what we're doing with Seton. We've been doing it for a week and we do "computer school" in the afternoons and it's a little bit of a fight with Christopher, but I'm sticking with it because it's a good addition for us. Wish us luck!

**here's a few unrelated photos because we have cute kids!

We're getting to where everyone loves the library!

This is Dominic when he was 2 I think? Jason found the picture and it reminded him of the inkling girl's face when she loses! So funny!

Homeschool Life

I wanted to chat about where the boys are with school. Last year we actually took about 18 weeks off during my bed rest. Even though Jason moved a desk into the bedroom and would bring the school books in so I could plan, just sitting that much upright was too hard for me. So they didn't get much of vacation for the summer, I think we took a month off or something. So we have Dominic in 2nd grade this year and Christopher in 1st grade.

As you can see a little in this picture and a little bit more in the next, I use the wipe off board to use as a calendar. I write the day and the Litrugical time of year. I think that's super cool, and gets them used to it. We start the school day off with Dominic reading the day and then we say a prayer.

Beth Anne has that printable Liturgical calendar available on her website, I recommend you head over and check it out. She also gave me a link to print out the calendar like what we get from the church. That's nice because we can keep it easy to read and up close. 

After praying together, we have a few lessons we do together. We do an art lesson once a week, it's slightly painful because the boys are not art kids. They don't like drawing or coloring or anything like that. Also, I am a terrible artist. 😐

I've been impressed with the change in Dominic, from not wanting to do it at all to being willing to at least TRY, which is all that I ask of him. The one on the board is mine, and then the one with the chalice that is very clear is what I started for Christopher then he added the rest. 

Religion is mostly just Christopher barely listening, but Dominic is really engaged. The 2nd grade book is set up very cool because it's like the lesson with a few questions to reiterate things. Then the next day it repeats the prior days lesson in a super short version, and adds to it. There are 4 days of lessons with Fridays free or for review. 

Then Christopher has Phonics/Reading, Language Arts, Math, Spelling, and Social Studies. With his special needs counselor we added Handwriting Without Tears which might work for some kids, but for some reason it is a serious misnomer for us. So instead I have done a combination of printing out some handwriting sheets as well as using his spelling for writing. 

Dominic's list of lessons is a bit longer; he has English, Phonics, Reading, Handwriting, Math, Science/History (every other week), and Spelling. Sometimes I even feel like a real teacher with writing on the board and things. 

It's been super fun to see what the boys are good at and what they enjoy. For example, usually for Christopher's spelling tests, he will just tell me the spelling. I mean, sure, he's saying something like "no S no A no T" but he still spelled 'sat' so it's a win. But last week...last week he wanted to spell the words with writing them himself. 😭

He needed help with writing the 'e' and he has a weird habit right now of turning letters into 'H'. So like you can see on number 3 it was  'this' but after writing it he changed the 'i' into an 'H'. He's silly. Number 6 was 'wine' and he did that without any help at all. It was just such a huge change from anything before. 

One other thing that I really love about Seton is that there is religion in everything. Here is some of Dominic's English which is actually the best example. He was learning adjectives, but it tells the story of Tarcisius. He's also learned about Joan of Arc, and most recently St. Bruno. And that's just because of assignments with a story throughout each assignment. 

All in all our lessons seem to be going well and I'm excited to continue on!

Christopher's Progress

Considering that I haven't updated anything about Christopher in FOUR years, things will be really big here! Christopher has done so much in the last few years that in some ways he seems like a completely different kiddo. In other ways he is still very much the same!

First and foremost, Christopher speaks. He can't necessarily carry on a conversation with you if you are not interested in what he wants to talk about, but he can and does definitely verbalize things. I would say that for necessary communication we're at about an 80% give or take. When he is really upset/bothered by something he cannot always tell you what is going on. For instance, he really doesn't like the bells being used during the consecration at daily Mass. Instead of saying something like "I don't like the bells" or even "no bells" for a while he would say "punch/kick/hit Olivia" who is one of our friends' daughters and she is really a great kiddo who was altar serving at daily Mass for a bit. He really likes Olivia, she's one of his favorite friends, but he couldn't figure out how to articulate that the bells were bothering him so instead he blamed the person who was making the noise.

Something else that has been amazing is to see how he is with Benedict. We were really worried about how he would handle a crying baby, something that we couldn't control the sound with. But, it was actually not something to be too worried about; initially he was really upset but then we just put Benedict in his lap and suddenly he was "Christopher's baby" and Christopher was holding him often. Funny thing though, he had to pull his pant legs up!

And then we have him and Dominic. They have moved into a really typical brother relationship which is super cool and super annoying simultaneously. Most often if he's annoyed with Dominic it's for pretty normal reasons and he reacts in that normal way. Interestingly, when we were going through the really rough stage with Christopher, Dominic could sense when it was an autistic meltdown and would just sit there and take it. Now we have to remind him when Christopher is having a hard time because he's autistic and when he's just being a bratty little brother. But they are still best friends and do really play together these days!

Currently we don't have Christopher in any therapies, I took a course called More Than Words with his speech therapist that got him his "talker" or communication device. It was amazing and I'm actually planning on doing a refresher course and going through some of the lessons to work on specific things that he's struggling with. We attempted to restart OT and Speech when Benedict was about 4 months old but it was just too hard for me because it was an hour away. And, with his progress it seemed to be more than what we needed at the time. Speaking of his communication device, he still uses it, but it's often to learn new words or work on sentences. He's started using the keyboard to type out the words if they aren't in his dictionary on there. Because, OH YEAH HE CAN READ!!! That came as a shock as we'd never worked with him on it specifically but suddenly we realized he was reading signs. He can read all the words to me when he does his phonics in school as well as reading his spelling words. Seton helped us to set up a modified course for him with different courses than what Dominic used when that seemed appropriate. Primarily English and Math right now. We are having him sit in on Dominic's religion lesson and then we were gifted a set of these 1st Reconciliation and 1st Communion sets by Beth Anne. It was an amazing thing and he can often be talked to about his behavior with words from the 1st Reconciliation kit including "is this a bad choice?" Which he will often reply to with "No bad choice Christopher! Sad Jesus!" while sobbing, and really, does it get more pure than that?

All in all Christopher has made really awesome progress. He even does things sometimes specifically to get a reaction from you and joke/play with you. Of course, then it becomes a script and deviation is not allowed, but you know...baby steps! 😁

School Daze

A Monetessori type activity. Dominic did very well with this, but got bored quickly

Ah homeschooling has been a difficult task for us this year. We started the year with online public school, but found it to be a very difficult task for us. It was very rigid, and there was A LOT of work every day, the phonics lesson alone was an hour and there were days when he had to do two lessons in one day. It definitely didn't feel flexible, and it started to be such a fight just to get Dominic to sit with me and do anything. That is not what I want school to be like for us.

Then we tried some unschooling, but it switched quickly into laziness and we accomplished very little. I decided that this was unlikely to make anyone successful. We had purchased a preschool/kindergarten set of curricula from Catholic Heritage Curricula and I decided to give that a try again. It is sort of workbook-ish, but it is such a small amount of work that, so far, it has gone well. Also, this adds religion in, which is definitely a big part of why we want to homeschool anyway, and I've been impressed with Dominic's knowledge and how quickly he has caught on to new concepts.

This was an attempt at an art project. We used sponge cut into a heart shape and dipped in green. Dominic was not impressed

He has a difficult time with scissors, he refuses to let me help him hold them with one hand, but I'm trying to let him cut it anyway. 

He does a very good job of gluing though. ;-)

I really like the picture of the number displayed on a hand, he's able to know those on site, which makes him feel better

Dominic doesn't like to color, but he does enjoy telling me what color to do

Oh--Ahem--A Blog!

Ahhh it has been much longer than I would have liked since my last blog post. I have much that I want to write about, and I've just been thinking "I'll do a blog post about that soon", and I have yet to do any. So this is going to be a bit of mashup of all that has been happening in the months since my last post.

We are still nowhere with getting Christopher coverage to start therapy. I thought that maybe things were looking up as the person from Southeastern Developmental Services (which is our local service that helps people with special needs, from children to adults) brought some paperwork for us to do and she made it sound like we would get funding soon. However, things piled up on her plate and it's been about a month since I saw her last. But, she has scheduled an appointment with me for Friday to bring the end of the paperwork and hopefully I'll have a time frame on when coverage might start. At one of the other nearby hospitals (sorry PMC) the speech therapist has a connection with a group that does scholarships to provide speech therapy for those whose insurance doesn't cover it, and I'm looking into that as well. I have to just finish that paperwork and send it off, I've been delaying on that simply because I'll have to pay for the evaluation and that's kind of pricey.

In the meantime, I'm working on being better at working with him. It is hard to remain focused and limit screen time. These pictures show some of our activities when I'm trying to keep him away from his device.

Dominic is set to start Kindergarten with Colorado Prep Academy through K12 online schools. I'm really excited for this because I feel like it will give us the best of both homeschooling and public school. The person who helped me register said that for Kindergarten it is 80% offline and 20% online; they sometimes have video chats with their teacher one on one and sometimes all the students video chat together. I'm very excited to see how this works. Dominic is a little young for our district's standards (he turns 5 in August) but we're going to give it a try. If he has to repeat next year then he does, it isn't something I'm going to stress about right now. Of course, having public school allows for us to have an IEP for Christopher next year and therapy services normally provided in school. I'm stoked about this for sure. It's hard for me to imagine either boy actually learning and doing school work, but I think they'll do well.

I have some plans for an update post about my weight loss, but I need to do some research about where I was the last time I posted. I have many posts in my mind, and I'm hopeful that I'll start posting regularly again!

An Afternoon Project

So I've been trying to get the boys to do some craft type stuff. Maybe just coloring or maybe cutting and gluing stuff onto paper. But they really haven't shown an interest in almost anything. This afternoon Christopher grabbed the paint out of our art box, So I put out the paint brushes too. Pretty soon Dominic came in to join the fun.

Here's what we did!

Spiritual Dusk

I was trying to find a way to verbalize how I feel about my spiritual life right now. I don't feel like it is a "dark night" but I definitely feel like I am not living up to my spiritual potential. If Jason has to go to work early or I can't get myself to wake up in the morning, I find that I am struggling to just get my morning prayers said. I know that he is the spiritual head of household, but that's kind of ridiculous. ;-)

When I try to make the time with a calendar reminder for us to pray the Rosary together as a family in the evening, something comes up and it gets moved back until the night is over and I am praying the Rosary until I fall asleep. Not only do we not pray together as a family, but I'm not getting the most out of the praying that I do on my own.

I sat down with the boys this morning and tried to go over the sign of the cross and some other prayers from this book. Dominic flipped out and didn't want anything to do with it. He's kind of been doing this with any kind of reading, but I'm feeling a bit guilty that I don't focus our day enough on the spiritual. We pray before meals and we talk about Jesus and Mary but I just feel like we could be doing so much more.

Sorry for this rambling, word-vomit type of post. I just needed to get my thoughts out there so that hopefully I can organize myself a bit better. Suggestions for integrating more spirituality into our day would be greatly appreciated. :)

Making Corrections

So we had a well child checkup for the boys last week and discussed a number of things, vaccines included. We delay vaccinations and I was just asking for some ideas on when our doctor thought it would be good to get any of them. He is super supportive of any choice of vaccinating, whether you delay, don't vaccinate, or if you go by standard suggested vaccination times. I think this is ideal in a physician; someone who will support your choices as a parent (assuming no abuse or neglect of course). I'm open to research if anyone has some links they'd like to share, for or against vaccinations, I like to read it all. :)

Also the doctor went through what things the boys could do developmentally and he seemed a bit concerned about Dominic. In fact, he was concerned enough that he wants us to get a speech evaluation done for him. He didn't tell us the specifics but apparently he is on the "low" end of normal and since we have a documented delay (Christopher's speech) in the family, he didn't want to risk missing something. Let me tell you, I left that appointment feeling terrible. Feeling like I must be doing something wrong because both of our boys might be behind. I've since thought that through and I don't believe it to be "my fault", but I do think there are some changes that I can make.

For one, we are going to get back to making some attempt at "school" even if it's just coloring or talking about numbers or things a long those lines. I'm currently looking for my book about Charlotte Mason's ideas for preschool so that I can go through that and do a bit more unschool type schooling for this age. For another I'm going to be making some cuts in my social media/blogging/playing online or on my phone time. I don't think that I do it so much, but I know that I'm easily caught up in something. An online discussion on Twitter, a video on Food Network (that quickly turns into 2 or 3 videos), sucked into a blog that leads me to another and another. It's so easy for me to get sucked in to the online world. I'm going to try to limit my phone/social media time to only if the boys are napping. What this becomes is less time the boys are watching SpongeBob or other cartoons. Because it gets really easy for me to just turn it on "for a minute" then I get busy and we are doing nothing. This will help me keep my focus on the boys and playing, laughing, teaching, BEING with them. I hope.

So that's my plan, I'm going to try to refocus (it seems like I do this often) on my vocation as wife and mom. I thought about cutting out social media completely, but the truth is that I enjoy the connections that I make. It helps me to feel connected to other Catholic wives and mothers and gives me a community. I won't feel guilty for having those connections and fostering friendships, but that doesn't mean it's OK to neglect my primary duties.

And now, to lighten things up a bit, here are some pictures from the weekend!

The boys and I went to breakfast at Cracker Barrel without Daddy since he hates it, and I told Dominic "let's take a picture for Daddy" and he looked at the camera and said "hi Daddy!"

Dominic enjoying the chairs at the Dodge dealer. Also some dinosaur show on PBS that he loved.

Went to see Aunt Jonnie for her birthday and Dominic loves driving this Jeep around, but mostly in reverse.

Christopher was thoroughly enjoying Daddy swinging his cousin Emily into him

Quick Takes (Vol 10)

--- 1 ---

This week I talked about how I am trying to not let being bad at something discourage me from trying. Not letting what is hard for me kind of rule my life and what I attempt. I'm seriously taking this to heart with as many aspects of my life as I can. I'm working hard when I workout with the Insanity video; I'm doing dishes and sweeping multiple times; I'm keeping SpongeBob off (I didn't mention that in my post, but when it's hot outside and we can't go outside it has been so hard not to succumb to movie watching) as much as I can. I feel like this is really positive and I'm pretty proud of myself.

--- 2 ---

Speaking of being hot outside, this is what our week was like:

--- 3 ---

Speaking with my friend Krista today we were discussing some homeschooling information (she's pretty much my hero with regards to homeschooling, and cooking; I'm planning on moving to Canada and moving in next door to her. Look out Krista!!), and she gave me this great link to Charlotte Mason info and I bought a new book! (Krista, Jason might be contacting you regarding your influence ;-)) I am really excited to get into it and get the book, because this is the kind of learning that I want to do with the boys.

--- 4 ---

We had Christopher's early intervention meeting this week. We met with the Speech therapist and the developmental...I don't know what her title is but she's the one that will come in most of the time to work with us. We will start with 2 times a week and then that may go down once the school year starts again, depending on how he's doing and their schedule. I was a little put off by the speech therapist because she seemed to be judging some of our parenting choices like homeschooling (apparently early intervention cuts off at 3yo if your child is not enrolled in school) and the fact that we don't do playgroups. I did speak to a friend of mine who works with this therapist and she told me that the therapist is just really blunt and she comes off sounding harsh often, but to not take it personally. Anyway, we still haven't gotten a good hearing test and the early intervention test people are telling us our next option is for him to be sedated, which I'm really not feeling. So I called the ENT that did his tubes and asked them, the MA suggested we get him in to be seen since his right tube has already fallen out. It might all be related to fluid in the ears, so wish me luck with regards to that, I'm sure he'll love being held down so they can check his ears.

--- 5 ---

I'll be working every Sunday for a semi-local (40 miles away) nursing home starting next week on top of the helping out I do in KS and I'm excited. I enjoy working in KS but sometimes that 2 hour trip is a lot. But, I will still be able to help them out at least one day a week, so that's good. I enjoy working, but when I come home exhausted and hug the boys, I have serious doubts that I could do it every day. I mean, I could if I had to, or if it was the best choice for our family, but I probably wouldn't want to. :)

--- 6 ---

Also when talking to Krista, we discussed some good books for the kids and she made this suggestion. I probably would have been unconvinced that the boys would like something like this because it does not contain what you would consider typically kid images; but, the boys' favorite Mass book, which they fight over, is very similar in art. You should totally click on that link and take a look inside...the pictures are beautiful!

--- 7 ---

I'm still trying to come up with a good idea for a vacation. The boys are too young to get much enjoyment out of something like Disneyland so I think that's off the list for a few years; and I'm trying to come up with something that won't cost an arm and a leg. I'm also trying to talk Jason into a road trip! Suggestions welcomed and appreciated!

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

Homeschool Preschool

So, I've started a very relaxed, very low key PRE-preschool with Dominic. The fact is that we were totally not being productive (this we means me :() and we were watching too much SpongeBob (this we means the boys...I was usually reading or something else not actively engaging all the time). So I needed some direction, a little bit of a schedule.

[caption id="attachment_662" align="aligncenter" width="300"] This is our schedule, I write it out each week (week 2 right now)[/caption]

This is not to say that we always follow it, or that it has our time blocked out. We spend about 10-15 minutes doing each task, and we don't do them in the order they're written necessarily. Basically it's a few ideas for us to direct our day.  This was where we started with our first week:

Week 1
Color: blue
Stack all blue toys
Color with blue crayons and chalk
Find blue items
Letters: D and C
Find things that start with D and C
Learn sounds
Draw the letters
Numbers: 1-5
Counting toys, snacks
Shapes: Circle
Find all circle toys
Draw circles
Body Parts: Arms
Go over parts
Color pictures
Religion: Sign of the cross
Practice before all prayers
Go to Church and practice
Animals: Duck
Find all ducks
Noise

I was going to write this up new every week, but basically I am just changing the color, the letters, body parts, animals and religion aspect each week, so I will keep this as sort of our template. Then I spread out these tasks during the day/week.

[caption id="attachment_668" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Our wall in the "school room" (dining area)[/caption]

When the boys do something like coloring, I put it up on our wall, and they've actually enjoyed going over to look at it later. :) Actually Dominic's obsessed with his this week and he wants to hold it a lot.

[caption id="attachment_666" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Can you guess why he loves it? Yes, I drew SpongeBob for him[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_664" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Christopher doesn't really do much yet, but he loves coloring[/caption]

Our animal this week is the frog and the color is yellow; our letters this week are S & P. If my choice of letters seems odd and random, well it is. Last week I chose D & C  because that's the boys' initials and we say their names a lot in the day. Obviously Dominic is not going to be reading at the end of our preschool year so I wanted to do something that was pre-phonics that would help him. We're focusing a lot on sounds and what words begin with those sounds. S & P I chose because, as I mentioned before, SpongeBob is a big deal in our house. And Patrick is his best friend. Today we were talking about 's' sounds and trying to find toys that started with those sounds. I was finding the SpongeBob and Patrick toys, really emphasizing the "sssss" and "puhpuhpuh" noises, and Dominic came over and asked for Squidward. It might be they just connect for him, but he doesn't have a Squidward toy anymore and we don't talk about him a lot. So, I think maybe he was making a connection??

[caption id="attachment_667" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Practicing Hail Mary this week[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_663" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Advent calendar[/caption]

Our religion this week is about the Hail Mary. I have the book My Jesus and I for the boys and I read the Hail Mary to Dominic while we looked at the pictures. We read through it twice and then I wrote it out in four parts to practice with. I wrote it on the yellow paper of course. And put up one of the prayer cards we have of Our Lady of Grace. We will continue to practice things like the Sign of the Cross, which he seems to try doing before meal prayers but sort of looks like he's dancing. It's obviously very adorable. :-D

Then in the midst of these tasks I have some chores listed for us to do. "Daily" chores a couple of times a day and one "weekly" chore. Sometimes Dominic helps me, and other times he just plays. He likes helping with the dishes, and both boys really like sweeping. But other things they haven't caught on to yet.

So, this is how we're doing preschool. Do you do anything specific with your kiddos?