What a Week!

HAVE YOU EVER just had one of those weeks where there just wasn't enough time. Maybe that's every week for you. I've definitely gone through my fits and spurts of the that for sure!! This week we just had so many appointments and outings that I'm kind of looking forward to a slower Saturday.

This was the week to prepare for the Washington Homeschoolers Conference. I especially love attending because it's such a fun time and so encouraging. Going to the conference I get so inspired by new things and seeing faces I've not seen for a while. I hoped to have lots of photos to share, but my phone died. Sorry about that! I need a new battery!!

My hubby and my oldest are coordinating a booth for the FRC Robot they had for this year's competitions. Great fun for them and a wonderful way to spread the word about FRC.

There were lots of fabulous vendors and I saw some new curriculum out there I need to pick up. Starting over with my little ones will be a new adventure. I am really looking forward to it. I think I'm going to go with The Elegant Essay Writing Lessons: Building Blocks for Analytical Writing for my oldest. I have to say I LOVE Institute for Excellence in Writing! Their programs are wonderful and have worked WONDERS for my son!!! Then for my younger guys I think I'm going to try PAL Writing Package from IEW. Maybe if I get these guys on the right track from the start we can get writing in hand before high school!! I have my reading stuff for my younger ones that I purchased through Learning Technologies. I am excited to get going on that. Then I'll have to dig out some old stuff to do again with little guys. Love recycling that curriculum! I have almost everything we need for our next school year, so then we can just enjoy our summer!! Over all it was a wonderful conference. Another boost to get me through until next year!! Enjoy your weekend.

Learning disabilities...

DO YOUR CHILDREN have learning disabilities? Do they struggle with reading and writing, maybe math? The first time around I had a child struggle with reading and writing. Math seemed fine to a point and then fell apart. I felt like homeschooling wasn't working and I must have been doing it all wrong. Other families did it and their children seemed better educated than mine and they seemed to enjoy school. I was mystified because this was NOT my experience. Not my experience at all!! There were so many times I thought I would put my child in school, someone else could and should do it better. Of course they were more qualified.
Luckily, even though I felt way in over my head, I stuck with it. Through talking with other mom's I discovered that maybe it wasn't me and maybe we both just needed some help. I had my child evaluated and discovered he did, indeed have some learning challenges. We did occupational therapy, vision therapy, auditory therapy and a lot of trial and error. He is now going into his Junior year of high school and you'd never know he ever had any problems. He reads lots, for school and pleasure. He even took an online course this year though Institute for Excellence in Writing and achieved over a 90% in each semester. I call that success!!! Considering there were years I wondered if he'd ever master the art of writing at all.

Well, now I'm on child number two and he too, seems to have some challenges. However, this time we may not be able to do all of the necessary therapies, due to insurance and cost constraints. Or at least not as quickly as I would like. So I may have found another option and the beauty of it is I can do it at home and at our own pace. I am excited about the prospect!! There were so many times during occupational therapy that I thought, why can't you just show me and I could do this. This time possibly I can!

After watching the Webinar through Learning Link Technologies, I feel ready to again tackle these learning challenges. I've been looking over this program for a while now and when they had their free webinar I signed up to learn more. I really think this will be a good fit with the challenges we are dealing with. When we get going with this program I will be sharing our experiences and progress.

I know from educating my first child how hard it is to deal with learning challenges. So I plan to share this so that if you or someone you know can be supported and helped along their journey of finding what fits. Every family and child is so unique. This is just what we're choosing. I'm not suggesting this is the best or only program, just that for what we are dealing with it looks like a great find. So intermixed with the other activities we do, I hope to be sharing our journey. And God willing our successes!! Some times the homeschooling road is hard, but I've always said that homeschoolers are DOERS and if you choose to you can do most anything. You just may need a little help along the way and that's ok! Just keep moving!!

Curriculum Choices...

NOW THAT THE SCHOOL year is coming to a close, I'm hitting the web and talking with other mom's about curriculum. What worked? What didn't and why? Since I have one student that is getting close to end of his homeschooling career and students just beginning, I'm spending time focusing on what worked and what's a good match for my current students learning styles. What I want to do again and what I want to ditch.

Over the years I've used lots of Sonlight curriculum and have been satisfied with the history and literature portion of their curriculum. I have not however, been as pleased with the Language Arts portion. I LOVE Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW). I've spoke about them before in a previous post. They have such a wonderful concrete approach to the mechanics of an essay and later papers.

I will probably stay with some IEW for all my kids at some point. I just can't say enough about how great their program works. As for history however, a dear friend of mine and fellow blogger just reviewed Heritage History and it sounds absolutely wonderful!! You can read her review at Circling Through This Life. I for one will be checking this out at the Washington Homeschool Conference coming up Father's Day weekend (June 15-16).

For my little guys, we are just focusing on the 3R's at the moment. I find it challenging to much with out reading and writing. At this stage of the game we do lots of "read-a-louds" and mom taking dictation, so at least they can learn the process. But a wonderful FREE resource I've found (I LOVE FREE, don't you?) are the activity boxes at the library. As homeschoolers we all value the abundance of material the library offers, but the activity boxes are kind of a fun "unit study" if you will. Since I've got this younger age group to cater to these are perfect and quite frankly, I tend to forget about them.

They come with different themes and everything is in this tidy little box. All the activities are included and everything is one box! Genius!
So what curriculum are you in love with? Give a shout out for your favorite subject, curriculum, or resource. I'd love to hear about your successes!!

Just as an FYI to those Washington State readers, Did you know that our Governor, Christine Gregoire has proclaimed June 10-16 Washington Homeschool Week? I thought it was kinda cool! Go Washington!!

Struggling???

Staying on the subject of curriculum, I just have to share my experience with Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW). My oldest, who is just finishing up his Sophomore year of high school took his first on-line class from IEW this year and I must say that it is the MOST fabulous program!! Writing is something we have struggled with from the very beginning. Just forming letters was a challenge for this child. There where times we were both in tears. As time past he did progress and did manage to learn grammar, however when he actually had to USE grammar things fell apart. Another obstacle was the fact he was extremely sensitive to ANY criticism. This makes teaching writing quite an under taking to say the least.

Then when he got into the middle school level of work, a friend had recommended IEW. At the time I looked into it, but it was cost prohibitive for us. As time went on I was feeling like a total failure in the area of writing and thought, that while my son seemed quite bright when he had to represent himself on paper his brightness would fade to dim. I used to stay awake nights thinking he'd never be able to go much further education wise unless I hired a tutor or had some other kind of intervention. Finally a couple of years ago, I bit the bullet and managed to purchase the IEW program. It was wonderful, however I still had the challenge of a sensitive child to criticism. I thought "I just can't be this child's teacher for this subject". I just couldn't get him past thinking, "If I can't write it correctly the first time, I can't write". No matter how many times explained that even professional writers had editors, I just could not convince him. Then this school year IEW offered their first on-line class option. It was indeed an answer to prayer!! As soon as I received the email about it I enrolled him. He was quite reluctant at first and quite anxious about having someone else reading his writing. However, after just a short time he was successful and as many of you know success begets success. He has one more week of class and after two semesters has carried a high B to a low A average throughout the class. His writing today is so well done, for the most part, my worry is over! Now we just have to keep him writing so he doesn't lose his new found skills.

So if you have a reluctant writer and don't know what to do. Check out IEW! They will also be at the WHO Conference next month! You won't be sorry and they have curriculum beginning in the lower primary grades. You don't have to wait until high school to fix this challenge!!