Homeschooling Trevor: Peek at our Week

I'm not gonna lie. This week was rough. Trevor had good moments followed by very difficult. It's hard to discern if we're dealing with behavioral challenges or something medical. My litmus test is telling him he may go lay in his bed to rest (the most common complaint I hear is "I tired" or "tired sick"). Resting in bed includes no iPad. If he willingly goes to rest in bed without his iPad I take that as a cue that he's really not feeling well. Several days this week he rested in bed for over an hour. I do know his allergies are quite aggressive right and it is possible that's making him feel cruddy. I just hope the "tired sick" isn't something more neurological and ominous. Sigh. My heart is thankful I can have him home where I can keep a close eye on him always.

In between the difficult moments, though, we did have some sweet and productive time. 

Making a snack to go along with his AAR lesson. Lots of fine motor work and socialization happens in the kitchen!

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Morning Meeting

We start each day with a morning meeting. The kids and I gather on the couch and we sing a hymn and a folksong, work on memorizing a poem and Scripture passage each month, rotate through read alouds, listen to the bird song of our bird of the week, and do picture study. 

Trevor LOVES our Morning Meeting time. He's very visual and musical, so the songs and picture study and even the bird study are all right in his sweet spot of enjoyment.

Starting together is a great way to ground ourselves for the day and it's often a lovely time. I say often because we're very human and do have the occasional conflict over who is reading and who is operating the computer and who is breathing too much. (just keepin' it real for you ;) )

He's been requesting Bristel give him his meds. She made up a fun choo choo game and mom is boring. :P

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Schedules

I started using Google Docs to share the weekly schedule with my two older kids at the beginning of this year. It's worked really well for us. Some day I'll have to write a post on all the reasons why Google Docs is an amazing tool, but for now you'll just have to trust me. 

For Trevy, I have a long caterpillar mounted on a wall. Each body circle has velcro and represents one task. His tasks include: Bible, All About Reading, Sight Words, Copywork, Before Five in a Row, structured OT, structured ST, and more. Each day my goal is to complete 9 tasks. Currently his homebased ABA program is targeting his Math and many life skills so these are not included in our time unless it's part of the lesson plan. I have a flow that I follow with him and will put the corresponding pictures up. As we complete tasks he removes the picture. Once we've worked through three tasks he earns a break. I've divided the breaks up so that one will be spent with big brother, one with big sister, and one with mom. The break with mom includes doing laundry and playing a game together. We have an air hockey table and basketball hoop set up in our basement. He loves kickin' mommy's boot in both!

We enjoy doing some lessons outside. He's playing Eggy Words on his iPad here, which is one of our favorite sight words apps.

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Nature Study project to go along with our BFIAR lesson. You can read about other activities we did here.

Nature Study mom problems...

We were working on the sound /l/ this week with our Super Star speech lessons. I gave him the word "owl" and asked him to repeat it three times for me.

After a pause he said, "snowy owl, snowy owl, snowy owl". 

I repeated that my direction was to say just "owl". One of my goals is more compliance less meandering to get there.

He protested, "I know, but different kinds!" 

As if to say, um, Mom, you're teaching me all the different kinds of birds and now you want me to not be specific?! 

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An amazing friend made me a whole shopping bag full of sight words duplos. We're making a giant tower out of them with all the words he knows.

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This year we started going on a Saturday afternoon family nature hike. Now that it's tick season, and we want to avoid Lyme Disease, we're finding interesting places to explore.

My hubby (as are the rest of us, due to his influence) is a huge Baltimore Orioles fan. He discovered that Tom Gastall, who was a catcher for the Orioles and died unexpectedly in a plane crash, was from and buried in a nearby town. So we ambled through the cemetery for our nature hike. It was Providential that we found his stone because it's a massive place and we had no idea where his was located. We also found a lovely bird's nest that had blown out of a tree and is now added to our nature tray.

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Lastly, I share a candid picture of what my livingroom might look like it you popped in for a surprise visit during the week. Lest you begin to think I'm some kind of super mom. For every ounce of energy I expend in one direction, I have to let something slide in another. Before Trevy joined our homeschool full time my livingroom was always neat and tidy. Those days are over! ;)