Primary Program and Articles of Faith

Sunday was the Primary Program at church, and Reagan learned the 3rd Article of Faith to say with her Primary class. She also had a small part by herself which she did in Sacrament Meeting and she did a fabulous job. Here she is saying the 3rd Articles of Faith. Enjoy her pronunciation of the words!Daniel had a small part as well in the program and also did a great job. Of course his demonstration of throwing up while he was sitting up there was priceless as well... He also has been learning his Articles of Faith. Although really that has been for school to work on his memorization skills. Not that he needs much work on them. He hears it once and he has it almost completely, which drives me crazy as I can't remember anything. Here is Article of Faith #1.

School Fun

This was our art project and beginning of our science project a while back. I was hoping to find a kit for Daniel to make with Paul and then paint but we settled on this premade house from Michael's which the kids painted. It took me a couple of weeks to remember the bird seed... But it's finally in and on our balcony. We have so far only seen Stellar Blue Jays visiting it but we're hopeful that as time goes on we'll get to see some more and figure out what kinds of birds they are. This is our Nature Study as the weather gets colder and the days get shorter.

Daniel was very proud of his Liberty Bell. It's a dot to dot which we sometimes do to work on number recognition and sequencing. He remembered that it was the same as a Christmas ornament I had picked up in Philadelphia years ago, so it works for history too. I have recently started making him color things. Fine motor skills are hard for him and it is an extremely rare occasion that he will color on his own. We started just with writing letters, then moved to writing numbers, have now added coloring, and eventually will move to coloring in the lines and not just scribbling through as fast as he can. He loves dot to dots though and picks them out whenever the opportunity arises.

Swimming Lessons... They both love them. The school pays for Daniel's so that is a nice bonus. After tomorrow night we're taking a break for a month or two because I need the break but I still hope to get them to the pool a couple times a week. Daniel has graduated to the Advanced Pike class at the YMCA and Reagan is getting ready to go there as well. Having had a brother who drowned and a child with Autism swimming lessons are very important to me. (The number one killer of Autistic kids and adults is drowning.)

An important day in a young boy's life...

Today is an important day for young Daniel. He lost his first tooth! We had a visit to the dentist about a week or so ago and she informed me that several of his teeth were getting loose and ready to come out. Little did I know just how loose they were!

He's not even 5 1/2 but he already has 2 of his 6 year old molars as well as loosing his teeth so he is well on his way to having an adult mouth. Luckily so far he has not had his mother's teeth. We are praying that his mouth starts to grow soon and a lot as he doesn't have room for adult size teeth in his little mouth. The dentist said that in 6 months when he comes in again we may have to start pulling ones that haven't come out yet just to make room for the adult teeth.

Now that I finally have my phone's camera up and working I should be posting more often and with pictures. I haven't been posting because I had pictures I wanted to add and couldn't get them on here. So here's a picture of Reagan to brighten your day as well.

Where have we been?

We have been SO busy that I haven't been blogging or hardly even looking at my email. (There's about 200 of them sitting in my inbox...)
Our school routine has become manageable with all of Daniel's therapies, some days it doesn't get all the way done but when the poor boy has 5 therapies a week, some of them more than once a week you do what you can. Luckily for us, since he was ready to start learning how to read in January we are ahead. Last week the school (he's enrolled in a homeschool charter school through the school district), did a reading assessment on all the kids to find out where they are at and make sure they are making the progress they need to. Starting Kindergarten all they want to know if they know them is the Alphabet. He of course aced that. I was talking to the teacher and he said they would test later in the year to find out how they are doing on phonetic sounds. I said, he'll ace that too. He then said that starting first grade they test to see if they can read each letter of a short vowel, 3 letter word and then put them together as well as 3 letter short vowel nonsense words. That is what he is doing now. So he is on a 1st grade reading level. An example of what he is reading right now is this-
Tip is a pup.
Tip sat up.
Tip has a tag.
Tip dug in the mud.
Bad Tip.
With Math he may not be quite so advanced, I don't know, but he is steadily working at it. We had some trouble with him switching 16 and 19 and then when we worked on correcting it, 16-20 all fell apart. So we've been several weeks working on that but I think we've finally got it. The next part of counting we will work on 30, he currently calls it 20-10. Today we added 11+12, 11+15, and 10+20 with manipulatives. We  have been using the manipulatives to work on the place value of 10 as we add. He knows the +,-,= signs and how to use them. A couple of weeks we played store as we have been working on identifying money. The kids started out with some money but as they bought things they quickly ran out of money. I could have just given them more money but I didn't want to re enforce the idea that so many kids have that money grows on trees, so when they ran out they had to earn it by picking up a certain number of things in their room. We are also learning how to write the numbers which is a slow process for him.
We have been reading lots of good books. We just finished Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden Book of Verses, and started on Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes. At "tea time" (snack time) I try to alternate poetry/nursery rhymes and tale tales/classic tales like Peter Pan  of which we just finished a version of.
They are working hard at the Explode the Code Series which is what Daniel is doing for handwriting right now. It also incorporates phonics. Daniel is set to finish book B early next week and move on to Book C. Reagan plugs away at Book A. I don't make her do it, she's only 3 but she want's to be doing it at the same time as Daniel. It has a picture of something frequently and asks you to write, or circle etc. the letter that picture starts with and she has a terrible time with that. But writing seems to be the only way she is learning her letters, so she is slogging through learning her ABC's.
We just started a new book called Building Thinking Skills and it's just what Daniel needs right now. I'm not keen on workbooks for him as he has a very low tolerance for them and we really don't do much of them but I'm excited for this one because it focuses on all of his weak points, following directions (he can't do more than a one step direction and has difficulty following through on a direction in the first place), coloring, positional words and a few other areas.
This week we got the German going. We got a couple of kids German books and Paul has been reading them to them. I taught them the phrase Ich liebe du (I love you), and they have been making up songs all week to about those words and what they mean. I do have talented kids!
Daniel is working hard at his Violin. He is getting closer and closer to actually putting his bow to the violin, but there have been a lot of things for him to learn before we get to that point. He's learning the Suzuki method where they learn to play before learning the notes. It's not a method I like for the piano but for violin it seems to work and I think he really needed it with his problems with gross and fine motor skills, and low muscle tone, it's hard enough for him just to be able to what he needs to without having to worry about the actual notes.
For science we are trying to get outside as much as possible (as much as therapy will allow) before it gets too cold out. We've learned about a couple of plants and leaves falling in the fall. Mostly though we are just going out and observing as we have time.
We have included his therapies as his school work. They would if he was going to school and his therapies work on some of the same things so I'm counting it as his school. Already with Occupational  and Physical Therapies we are seeing a difference. He can finally ride a bike with training wheels (before he didn't have enough strength to get his legs to push his wheels all the way around when they got to the top) and he is asking to go out riding all the time. Occupational Therapy has also helped so that he doesn't throw tantrums as much. My new favorite is Behavioral Therapy or ABA Therapy. The therapist comes to our home and works with him 2-3 hours a day on behaviors that we as parents feel are a problem. She has been WONDERFUL! Every parent should have one of these. It just really helps to have someone come in with a fresh outlook and a positive outlook and say I can help you and these bad behaviors don't have to stay forever! With kids that don't have some of Daniel's problem normal every day disciplines work just fine, if you have a difficult one you might pick up a parenting book. Kids like Daniel and kids with similar sorts of problems need a little something more. So this is what it looks like for therapies for Daniel-
Sunday- Behavioral Therapy, 3 hours (She comes to church with us!)
Monday-Behavioral Therapy, 2-3 hours
Tuesday- Occupational Therapy 1.5 hours, Physical Therapy 1 hour
Wednesday- Occupational Therapy 1.5 hours, Speech Therapy 1 hour, Behavioral Therapy 2-3 hours
Thursday-Play Therapy 1 hour
Friday- Behavioral Therapy 2-3 hours
Saturday- Behavioral Therapy 2-3 hours
And don't forget various doctor's apts., and his violin lessons, violin group lessons and swimming  lessons (twice a week.). I wouldn't choose to have my 5 year old this busy. But from every thing I have read and as his Occupational Therapist put it to us this week, "You do this now and work with him as hard as you can and maybe you can retire when you get older. If you don't you won't be able to because you will be taking care of him for the rest of your life." The key with Autism Spectrum disorders is early intervention. The earlier the better. Since we didn't catch this until 5 we are a little behind but not to late, so this is going to be our life for awhile. We are trying to embrace that fact and love the journey that God has seen fit to place us on. Thanks for sharing it with us.
More about our summer and pictures to come soon.

Week 2 of School

I'm a bit late but better late than never right?
Last week we finished off a session at the local YMCA of swimming for P.E. They are both in the Pike class which is the very first one they offer. Daniel finished the last class with being able to float on his back. He doesn't do it for very long as he can't hold still. But he can do it. He can also dog paddle however it is underwater and he stops as he come up for air. Luckily he can touch the bottom of the pool. He is close to being able to float on his stomach as well. Probably one more session of Pike and he will be able to move up. Reagan finished out the session putting her eyes in the water. She's not so keen as Daniel about her head going in the water. She will be a bit longer in the Pike class.
Daniel finished one of his reading books and is now in the last 2 books of the beginning set of 10 in the Abeka reader series. His books review the sounds of the constants, work on blends and words and the last page of each book there is a sentence in short vowel words. He does really well. Reagan is still working on learning her letters.... One day maybe it will click. We have been reading more of the book Paddle to the Sea by Holling C. Holling. Daniel begs for more each day. I really want to get the other books by this author as they really are great. We are also reading A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson. It's funny how you go from screaming because they don't want to read your book to, "Mom can we hear some more tomorrow?"
In math Daniel worked on a couple of new things this week. In his addition he learned about grouping things into 10 when adding and then adding the remaining numbers. Then he also got introduced to counting by 2's. This is going to take awhile to sink in.
Daniel is working very hard on his violin. His teacher is having him do a lot of pre playing exercises, some of which he isn't very keen on but they are really good for him both for learning to play the violin and for his fine motor development. His teacher had him start practicing bowing some rhythm's holding onto a marker this week. He is getting impatient to actually start playing.
We also went to the park and identified the plant plantain, did a rubbing of the leaf and drew it. We are starting a nature notebook to record our findings. We also finally made it to the local bookstore and picked up a field guide for birds and one for flowers. Daniel really enjoyed looking through the bird field guide and finding out what all the names of the birds are.

What Have We Done This Week?

I was reading another blog I follow and the Mom posts each week what the kids did for school that week. I thought that that was a great idea as it helps you realize that yes, you really did accomplish a lot. So... we'll see if I can follow through with it.
This week was a difficult week for school for two reasons. Paul had Monday and Tuesday off for vacation and Daniel had ear infections. Monday (because we spent several hours in the E.R. as well as on Thursday) I don't think anything got done other than my reading books to them. We started reading a marvelous book called Paddle to the Sea by ? C. Holling. I can't remember his first name at the moment. But it's about a canoe that this little boy carves and puts in the snow in Canada as the snow melts the canoe is swept into the stream and the book tells all of the adventures of this boat as it makes its way from snow to stream to sea. We will use this book again next  year to work on some geography as well as some science but for now we are just enjoying reading it.
We also read Ping - a story about a duck who doesn't want to be the last one on the boat as the last one always gets a swat so he hides out instead and the boat sails away without him. He almost gets put in duck soup but a kind boy rescues him. He realizes that sometimes getting a swat is better than what might happen otherwise and returns to his boat with his family.
Yet another one was called Blueberries for Sal. Sal goes picking blueberries with his Mom and Mother bear and baby bear do to. The children end up with the wrong mothers and figure out how to get back. It's an old story but a cute one!
This week I also introduced Poetry to my kids. Daniel was screaming because he didn't want me to read from my books. I read to them Robert Louis Stevenson's  A Child's Book of Verses. I read to them several poems from it and when I went to stop they were begging for more. I  had to laugh. 
Daniel has been working in a Math book right now. I have a different curriculum coming for him as workbook work is really hard for him to sit still and do but it hasn't come yet. We did manage somehow to get through 5 pages anyway this week. He is doing 1st grade work and doing really well. He is currently working on finishing learning to count to 20, (16 and 17 are the problem for him.) and adding and subtracting. He just started working with groups of ten and it was interesting to see how quickly he caught on to the idea that this is a group of ten and you don't have to count them all just know that these are ten and you can start counting at 10. It also helped cement numbers 11-20 for writing as you have this group of 10 and then you have 5 more. You write the 1 from the 10 and then the 5 which also teaches place value. Reagan is working on numbers above 10 slowly...
We try to have Daniel read from his books twice a day but it doesn't always work that way. I think only once this week did we get it in twice but it's the goal and as long as we get it in at least once that's okay. He is currently finishing book number 8 and starting on learning number 9 in a series of 10. He can read short sentences of short vowel words. He's having problems with book 9 right now as it has the Y in it and because the J and Y sound similar he thought that the Y said J like the C and K make the same sounds. So we are working on correcting that. He was excited to get to a letter in his Explode the code book (handwriting) that he already knew- n. That made the writing, which he struggles with, a little easier for the week. Reagan has a hard time learning the sounds or names of letters. She has to write them so we are very slowly learning to write letters and learning what they are and what they say. So far we have done B and F and she knows O. The alphabet for some reason does not come naturally to my kids.
We also went to swimming lessons this week, picked raspberries twice (Yum!), went to therapies for Daniel, and made cookies (which also works on math skills). We went to Daniel's violin lesson and I'm loving his teacher. I chose a Suzuki teacher for him as I felt like he was going to have a hard enough time learning to play right now not having the fine motor skills without having to learn the music too. She is fabulous with him. She comes up with little games to teach him the things he needs to know and varies it frequently so that his muscles which get tired quick have a chance to rest. We are also listening to and learning a little about Mozart. Daniel says he doesn't like his music but oh well.

That's some of what has been keeping us busy at our house!

Small Victories

When you have a child who has learning and developmental disabilities, small victories become VERY important. We worked with Daniel consciously for about a year trying to get him to dress himself and yes it took a year. It wasn't that he couldn't do it (He had problems with buttons, snaps etc. but I was willing to help him with those.) He just didn't want to do it because it was hard. Little did we know at the time that it was actually hard for him. But now he almost always does it without complaining and this morning he buttoned all the buttons without asking for help! Yay!
My small victory today was something else though. Since we started to take him to Occupational Therapy we learned that he needs to hit and kick things. His body needs and craves that contact. That would be why he is always hitting, or kicking, not always because he's mad, but his body just needs that hard contact. Frequently he will just sit there and hit you gently (or not so gently) over and over again. Well that's a problem and it isn't an appropriate behavior. Previously he would have gotten into trouble for it. But knowing that his body needs that (It makes a world of a difference for me as now I understand what's going on!) ,means that we redirect the hitting or kicking to something that won't break and won't hurt him, and isn't a person. I've been trying very unsuccessfully to get him to hit the floor, the chair, or the bed instead. Whatever happens to be around. He just wouldn't do it. Today while we were at the doctor's office waiting to be seen and he started in hitting me; I thought okay, we haven't been home all day as we've been trying to get things taken care of for Daniel and we haven't had any time to do any school work today so how can I get him to stop hitting me and hit something else and incorporate math as well? Well, we counted how many times he could hit the chair. It worked! He finally hit something other than me! The first time we tried it he hit the chair 30 times and then he was tired. That took care of the need for about 30 mins. and then we did it again and it was 40 times. But you cannot understand how I just wanted to sing and to dance because of this one small victory.
Tomorrow this may not work. Tomorrow I may have to come up with something totally new, but it's a start to something that I can build on and that makes me happy.