Deciding how to homeschool

No matter how I choose to homeschool Cooper, someone will think I am doing it wrong.

I've been reading lots of homeschooling books lately, and that seems to be my consensus.

The classical education people think I should be teaching Latin and reading Cicero to my kindergartner. Not that's there's anything wrong with that.

The unschoolers think that workbooks and structured, parent chosen learning experiences will crush the love of learning out of your children. There's something wrong with that (the crushing part, not their philosophy.) You can imagine how well these people get along with the classical education types.

Charlotte Mason thinks I should be spending hours outside everyday, regardless of the weather (easier said in England than in Idaho, lady) and not allowing our children to read "twaddle." But if reading Cars books is going to get my child to read, is that so wrong?

Then there is delight-driven learning, and unit studies, and notebooking and lapbooking and workboxes and Waldorf and Montessori and Thomas Jefferson Leadership and the whole range of Christian/secular debates and comprehensive versus eclectic and three learning styles and five learning personalities and eight types of intelligence and

And my head just exploded.

And that doesn't even get into the whole educating a kid who has ADHD stuff (fidget toys! sensory pillows! no fluorescent lighting! face him away from the window or close the curtains!) that I am trying to deal with, too.

So, I am developing a mantra:

I am educating my child, not a hypothetical child.
What matters is what works for my child, not what someone else says should work.
You are trained as a scientist, view this as an experiment. Make a lab notebook. (Bonus: new notebook!)
If it doesn't work, I can change it.
If it doesn't work, I can change it.
If it doesn't work, I can change it.

Updates and stuff

Life has been crazy!

I've had a cold that's refusing to go away, and then Sunday I got a migraine for the first time in a really long time. It's taken two days to fade. I'm starting to think one of my students has a voodoo doll.

We are gearing up for homeschooling here. We're talking about swapping the living room and the playroom so we can have the bigger room for the combination playroom/classroom. I've been researching curriculum and reading about teaching little ones and specifically teaching kids with ADHD. I've found lots of good resources and have to keep reminding myself, "You have years ahead of you. You don't have to do everything at once."

Cooper is responding really well to his medication. One of his teachers has been on medical leave since before he started medication. She came back this week and has commented both days on how well he has done and what an improvement he has made. That's wonderful to hear someone else validating our views that this is helping.

He's been doing great at home as well as at school. He's fallen in love with Lego, but still loves playing with his Trio blocks as well. He built a quite complex trailer bed with pontoon wheel supports (he actually figured out how to use gears as wheels), and then built a trailer hitch out of the blocks and hooked it up to one of his cars so the car can pull it all over.

We were looking through one of his animal books the other night and talking about the different types of animals. I said that animals that have hair or fur are called mammals. He said, "I have hair. Am I a mammal?" Yep. Then he looked at me. "You have hair, are you a mammal?" Yep. "And daddy has hair, so he's a mammal, too!"  Smart kid.

Also, he thinks getting to use the hose to water the flower beds is the funnest thing ever, so that's a great help. He also likes to fill the bird feeders. We're working on identifying some of the birds that come to the yard as well, but he still has urges to try and catch them.

And he insists on calling me Captain Momma and GeekBoy Captain Daddy. And sometimes he salutes and says, "Yessir!" when we ask him to do stuff.

Catching up

New one for the birding life list - white-crowned sparrow. Very noticeable black and white striped head and bright yellowy-orange beak.

Drove by the river yesterday and was wondering what the little fluffballs on the ground were. Then I realized they were baby goslings! Awww, little fluffballs.  I've also been watching some birdcams - great heron, red tailed hawk and peregrine falcon - so have seen lots of little fluffballs.

Cooper had his speech evaluation today. He has all his sounds except he's about 50% on R and misses almost all of his L and TH sounds. The speech therapist is a friend of mine and works for the school district, so she is going to do speech therapy with him over the summer. She says she doesn't think it will take that long to get his sounds in, it will just take some training to get his tongue to go to the right place after having a tongue tie for so long. I'll just pay her directly - take that insurance! We'll do two 15 minute sessions a week until we get him caught up.

I'm a Spoonie

The most accurate description of what living with fibro is like that I have ever read.

Last day of Spring Break

I got the snow tires taken off my car. That pretty much guarantees that we will get a blizzard in the next few days.

Cooper has an appointment tomorrow morning with his pediatrician. I'm pretty sure he's been losing weight on this medication, and I want to discuss where we go from here. The recommended specialist in pediatric ADHD isn't covered by my insurance, but it is by GeekBoy's, so we will gain coverage in about four months. I need to call my insurance tomorrow morning about out of network coverage for seeing the specialist before then, and if we need an official referral. I'm sick of waiting for things to happen for him. This medication has helped with impulse control, but I'm not seeing an improvement in attention. That combined with the weight loss means time to try something new.

I also need to call the school district to follow up on scheduling a speech evaluation for him. At his five year check-up, the pediatrician expressed some concern about his speech. I'm pretty sure that it is just from him being tongue tied for so long; he doesn't know how to shape certain letters. But that's one more thing to work on.

Cooper has a large head, just like both his parents. We went to Target tonight to find new shirts. We actually have to try on each t-shirt to make sure that it fits over his head comfortably. So, all his shirts are big on him, but at least he doesn't complain about the pain they cause going on and off now. Also, thank goodness for polos and henleys. Bonus - button  practice!

We also picked up a horseshoe and badmitton set at Target. More outdoor activities. I am so looking forward to it warming up. Our second daffodil bloomed today. It may be half way through April, but it is still on the chilly beginning of spring here.

Back to campus tomorrow for my last semester. I bought a new funky necklace to wear for the first day of classes on Wednesday. I am such a girl.

Notes about Cooper

Cooper and GeekBoy are practicing math with pretzels right now.

Last night, Cooper engaged in an act of civil disobedience. We put him to bed, but he didn't want to go to sleep, so he sang the ABC song at the top of his lungs for an hour straight. He varied tempo, but it was pretty much always at blastissimo. Sometimes he would just sing the same six letters repeatedly, like a record that was stuck. After an hour he started to fade off, and then after a few minutes he would start up again. That repeated a few times until he finally fell asleep. It is very difficult to read or concentrate on anything with the Cooper Choir in the next room.

We had our first camp fire in the back yard Friday night. We're burning off a lot of brush that we trimmed out of lilacs and other bushes. Cooper perked up after about ten minutes and said, "We need marshmallows!"  He loves roasting them, but doesn't really like eating them.

We went to Salt Lake City last week and rode the commuter train around downtown. Friday Cooper asked if he would could ride the trains again. I said we don't have trains in our town. He pulled out his hand, pointed to a dot on his palm, and said, "Here they are! I don't know how to get there, but this does." I asked him, "Oh, is that your map?" And he replied, with a slightly disgusted tone to his voice, "No, that's my phone."  Okay, child of the 21st century, excuse me for not realizing that a phone is a map now.

He also wanted to go back to "the room with all the balls in it," i.e. the Children's Discovery Museum at the Gateway in Salt Lake City. He thinks we should be on vacation every day now. GeekBoy took him to McDonalds to play on the indoor playground, but it totally did not cut it.

He turned five a few weeks ago. He gets more fun every day.

Taking the plunge

Cooper starts medication tomorrow. We'll see how it goes.