Our Week of Fun

I was able to make our school lessons fun this week by doing some hands on learning.

We worked on our Colors & Shapes Brownie scout badge here. I love incorporating scouts into our 1st grade curriculum. It breaks up the everyday of homeschooling. It really teaches many things, including social studies and science. If she's really into it, we take a longer time and study that badge more in depth. We also go to a weekly girl scout meeting with a troop, but as with public school, it is mostly just crowd control time. Shayla is so busy watching the others around her, that I don't know how much she actually takes in.

Last week we did a literature based unit study, Peter Rabbit. We haven't done one of these for awhile. It was fun to do one of these again, we used to do one each Friday. We also worked on Letter I. From insects to icicles, to Isaac and infinity. And lastly, we worked on self-esteem last week. Which is probably an underlying cause of Shayla's selective mutism. For more on these, go here and here.

What are you doing with your kids? For more ideas go to 5 Minutes for Special Needs and Proverbs 31.

A Vacation from Learning????

We're ready to get back to homeschooling today. But I wanted to share with you how we incorporate homeschooling into play.

Shayla loves plays. She loves to watch plays and put on plays. We are using this love to set up social scenarios. I went to the library and searched "shy." I left with a whole load of books. We are going to read one book a day and reinact the story using her puppets, stuffed animals, whatever she fancies that day. We will answer all of her whys and what ifs. I realize this is very important to her because she loves to reinact things that happen in real life. After several times of doing it at home, she reinacts it the way she wishes she would have responded.

I decided for Shayla's New Year's resolution to tackle her shyness issue. It must have been meant to be because I happened to flip through the Dec/Jan issue of Family Fun magazine and read an article entitled "Fear Not!" I learned that extreme shyness, or selective mutism was a form of anxiety. (Yes, she was diagnosed with that). There were several ideas mentioned in the article that we are going to try. I will post more about that as we attempt them!

If your children are having anxiety issues, here are some sites I have checked over (thanks to Family Fun).

• http://www.adaa.org/


• wwwWorryWiseKids.org


• childanxiety.net


• toolkitsforkids.com

Joy to the World!!!

Joy to the world, Shayla can color!!!

Ok, maybe I'm getting a little excited here, but here's why.

In the spring of 2007 when my just-turned six-year-old daughter, Shayla was exiting the public preschool system the Occupational Therapist estimated that her fine motor skills were that of about 18-24 month developmental level. How upsetting is that!?! She just turned six, we had already delayed kindergarten for a year!

Now I am homeschooling her at a First Grade level. With the one-on-one she is thriving. She is still behind, but I think she'll eventually catch up.

She still has anxiety and does not talk in public places. She is diagnosed with selective mutism. But, now that she's getting caught up a little academically, maybe now we can try going out more. Recently we've started attending church and Brownie scouts, again. After Christmas, I have a whole list of library books to check out about shyness. I hope to coax her out of her shell just a little bit more at a time.

I hope to do more posts about how we recovered from autism.

To see what other special needs parents and kids are doing, visit 5 Minutes for Special Needs.