Garden science fun predictions

 Creating a plan to track our experiment- do watermelons grow bigger and sweeter with rocks placed on them?

Homeschool- different resources

 Well we are just over a year and a half into this home school journey.  It is not easy, but so far has proven itself as the right decision for our youngest.  

It takes a village- of people and resources! One full time woking parent, one fill time working hybrid parent makes for a lot of coordination.   

Very thankful for our step daughter, who without her I would have lost my sanity 2 months in! 

We have mostly been using miacademy.com as our main learning source, which we absolutely love.  We are getting to a point where we need to supplement though, because our little man is getting to a level where the work required is above his social/age ability. So backing off a bit and looking for some supplemental resources I found https://www.thewaldockway.com.

We are trying out two of the units - survival and space.  Looking forward to the rewarding rewarding we will do and see how we will manage this more Mom teaching time. 

I really like the mix of games, books, pinterest and YouTube waldockway has put together.  We shall see how this goes, but for no we we are organized and ready to start! 

Decision made - jumping in with both feet

Post have been on the slower side because we made a big decision as a family and had to get things set up.  I am thankful for my tribe that allows this to be possible.  We have decided to homeschool our youngest.  We will reevaluate after a year or two, but after much reflection and reaching out to different schools who specialize with neurodivergent kiddos and either not feeling they would be a good fit or no response back we have decided to homeschool.  

We are 9 days in and have figured out our schedule.  Things are calm and we are thriving.  We are using on online guided course and then using the unschooling philosophy for additional learning.  He is able to take breaks as he needs them and spend extra time on things that feed his interest.  In just the last couple of days he has shown a renewed interest in music and instruments.  I'm sorry to all our neighbors who are getting serenated by the harmonica in the morning! He is also being exposed to a Spanish lessons as well.  

This has nothing to do with the schools themselves or teachers.  We have wonderful teachers in our lives and we love them dearly.  For us I just couldn't have him going on to hate school - which we were setting ourselves up for.  Right now he needs small focused lessons followed by breaks where he can be active.  I know there are IEPs and 504s, but I just didn't feel that this level could be accommodated in the school setting with as many kids as they have.  As we figure out the balance between his ADHD and his Autism and he gets older this will be more manageable and we will see what fits at that time. 

So what curriculum are we using.  www.miacademy.co is what we chose.  They have the core classes as well as extras i.e. foreign language, music, fitness, etc. Each course you can set the grade level.  There are also assessments to gage if they are understanding the lessons.  It keeps track of attendance and reports that will be needed to provide to the state at the end of the year.  

We are still very new to this, so any advice, lessons learned you want to share we would love to hear it. 

Things that we have found useful, so far, I have linked below.  To help with his writing practice and support his "prop" needs we have weights we put on his pencils.  We has have sensory gels that we put on the pencils that he says help him. 

Then we have an Ipad that is just for school work and learning apps and of course has a kid proof case, because 6 year old boy.  We supplemented with a key board and a mouse to help with those skills as they come up, rather than a whole other computer or laptop.  Also I got the pencil, because I like gadgets, but it is also helping with pencil control and writing practice.   

We will share more from our journey as we travel this road.  I don't expect it to all be sunshine and rainbows, but just the weight lifted and the stress that seemed to have lifted from both of us in just these 9 days is worth it already.  After the last year and how it ended we knew that a different path needed to be taken.  

Next post I will share more of our dye free things that we have tried and liked or hated.  If you have dye free things you are wondering about leave a comment and we let you know. 

 Disclaimer: Some of the links included in this article are affiliate links, meaning that at no additional cost to you if you click through and make a purchase, I will earn a small commission.

Pencil Weights

Pencil Grip Soft Gel Pen Grip

Ipad  and  Ipad case

Ipad keyboard and mouse

Metapen iPad Pencil

How do you make letter learning fun with sensory kids?

Is your child a hands on sensory learner?  Are they just learning their letters or starting spelling and reading?  These sensory squishy letters and cards are a great way to make that learning fun!  

Tested with a new letter learner and a stating to read learner and both were able to learn and have fun with these.   The only con that we have found is we really need two sets, not because we have two students, but because some of the words they have on the cards to spell call out things with double letters.  

There are small cards with the word and pictures and there are the flat cards with just the letters to match the shapes of the letters.  They are also soft and squishy so they can also be used in a "bean bag" fashion if you lay out a big board on the floor to spell out words.  Many many possibilities await with these fun letters. 

*affiliate links below

Alphabet Letters Sensory Toys