In most areas, Tim is far ahead of where he should be, I do believe he’s gifted. But one area that has been a struggle has been letters, sounds, and putting it all together. It’s not that he can’t do it, but he has memory problems in this area. He is extremely sensitive, and if he feels like he isn’t doing good he gets extremely frustrated and this can bring on a meltdown, it pushes his sensory issues into overload. He can learn the letter names and sounds, but if we give it a break for even a week, we’re in trouble! And, if he’s struggling to learn something else, the letters and sounds take a back seat every time, he just can’t focus on two things at the same time. What’s strange, is on T4L, he’s doing 1st grade for language arts and is reading! It takes A LOT of effort, he hates sounding out the words. We do this with readers, too. He also has a hard time with middle sounds. He can tell me the beginning and end, and can find them on the T4L lessons,  but the middle is harder for him. On there, they sound out each sound, and he can do that, but if I say ‘cat’ without emphasizing the middle sound, he misses it. Is that age appropriate? I’m not sure, so I don’t know if I should make a big deal out of it or not.

I started realizing that his memory is much better for memorizing whole words than the sounds, but not in terms of remembering them from one day to the next. He can do that, but only if we use the word A LOT. If we’re reading a reader and I help him with a word, he’ll remember that word through the whole thing. Our readers have about 15 words used over and over again in the stories. So, yesterday I tried something with him. I took some three-letter word flash cards. I held on up and we named the letters, said the sounds together, and said the whole word. Then, I removed the flash card and had him try to write them. He did six words, and got them all right, perfectly, without any help. He wasn’t sounding them out, but he was memorizing the names of the letters and writing them. Is this a sign of a photographic memory, or is it that I’m confusing him by mixing the names of the letters with the sounds? It might be that I don’t need to worry about the sounds, just the letter names and work on whole words? That is so foreign to me, though, and I’m not sure how to teach whole word vs. phonics. I taught myself to read phonetically before I was even in kindergarten, so I just can’t comprehend how he can learn to read without understanding phonics. Any ideas??

It could also be that things are finally just clicking for him, the combination of the letter sounds and names (he’s just now able to tell me what sounds the letters make when I ask him, for most of the letters) and if I change what I’m doing, it might confuse him more. I’m just not sure what direction to go. I do know that I’m going to keep using the flash card idea, because he was having so much fun with that! No stress in his face at all. Up until now when he’s writing I’ve been writing the work and having him just copy it. Then, a few weeks ago, I started saying words and having him spell them by sounding them out. He did pretty good with this, but there was still some stress there. He flips out of he gets something wrong, so he only wants to do what he knows. Makes it hard to try to get him to branch out! And, most kids learn to write by spelling words wrong, don’t they? I’ve heard that before. Like, tough would be spelled tuff, cute would be kute, etc. He stresses so much, I’m afraid to not help him spell words because if he makes a mistake he won’t want to try again. Yet, if I focus on teaching him to spell perfectly, isn’t that telling him he has to be perfect?? UGH! So many questions today! I just don’t want to screw up and turn him off of learning. I know that it can be a fine line with kids with autism and kids who are gifted, so for a kid who is both, it makes this journey really unnerving sometimes. I guess I want a manual to tell me exactly how to teach him the way HE needs to learn. Ha!

We go year round in the truest sense. We go from the first week of August until the second week of July, with a week off for Christmas, one for Easter, and a day off for holidays and birthdays that are important to us. Tim just cannot handle not having his routine, so I’m not even sure if I’m going to stop completely for those two weeks between the end of kindergarten and the beginning of 1st grade.

We finished our 3rd quarter yesterday, which is why I forgot to post on here, it was busy making sure I had paperwork in order. I printed his report card (he just gets S, S-, S+ grades) and printed out his attendance, and looked over what we are doing for the 4th quarter. We only have two more weeks of new material, and the rest is all review from the whole year, which means a really relaxed, easy last quarter. I’ll use T4L and a few other sites for the reviewing, and the rest will be worksheets and verbal review. He loves webcams, so we’ll use those again to review animals.

Our state requires 180 days for school. Right now he’s completed 151, so he only needs 29 more to go, but I have 71 scheduled. I like going over, so we can take a day off here and there as we want to and not have to worry about it. This was my test run to make sure I had everything figured out so next year, when he’s officially a homeschooled student (he’ll be six, compulsory age, in July) I’ll know exactly what I’m doing for record keeping, making sure we are covering the required attendance,etc. It’s been great, my system works, so I’m sticking to it! I’ll spend those two weeks between grades writing my curriculum for 1st grade, leaving off where we are now since he’s ahead anyway. This way I can double check curriculum standards and make sure he doesn’t have any gaps, and then just keep going.

I first came across T4L one year ago, when Tim was 4. We were only a year into knowing that he had autism, and still had some serious problems at that time. I found out about T4L from other parents on a special needs homeschooling group,and decided to try it. He liked the site, but I just couldn’t afford it, to be honest. Not that it’s expensive, but when you don’t have money, even $5 is too much. It really wasn’t helping him at that time, either. He was really struggling with letter recognition at that time, and I was trying to find anything to help, but nothing was. So, I quit, reluctantly. I LOVED the graphics, and how well everything was explained. But, it’s not exactly ‘preschool’ level, and that’s where he was then.

We started kindergarten on August 6th, but I still didn’t have the money to add another monthly bill, so I still didn’t sign up. About two months ago I tried another free trial, and he was finally ready to handle it. He’s all over the place in terms of what grade he’s working on, but it’s so helpful in explaining things to him. So, it looks like we’re staying with it now. I like knowing that I have something else to add to our every day curriculum that helps cement things I’m trying to teach him. He’s breezing through the phonics, not even needing my help, and I just love seeing that.

I never bothered to research them. The way I think and act is that I put more emphasis on what parents are actually using and liking rather than what reports say, so as long as something has been referred to me by people I trust, that’s good enough for me. I trusted my own instincts to know if this was going to be right for MY kids, and it is! The only problem I do have, is that from 3rd grade on, it’s not as animated and isn’t as interesting. For a lot of kids on the autism spectrum, this can cause them to lose interest, I’ve seen this happen with my neighbor’s son. At the very least, I wish there was some way of having the text read to him without having to download the parrot that’ll do it. It would be nice if there was a simple button that parents could click on that would read what is there. My son’s reading level is nowhere near as high as his comprehension, so this leaves me doing A LOT of reading to him, not just on T4L but with anything else we’re using. But, that’s only a minor problem compared to the many benefits they receive. There is nothing more exciting than to have your kids begging to ‘play their school games’!

It felt SO GOOD to get back into school this week! Even though Tim gave me a really hard time for giving him a break, it was obvious today he needed it. He did SO WELL today. I found a book at the 99 cent store that introduces word problems for math, and he did a page in that. I am horrible with these and always was, so I want to introduce it early to him. He got it, it was just simple pictures where they showed four cats, showed two walking away, and he had to write how many was left.

For science, I am so excited this week! We are learning about birds, and we’re going to be doing a lot of observations. We started today by just looking at the different types of birds we see, and trying to identify them online. I had him try to tell me how many different birds he heard, and whether he thought they sounded angry or happy. I had read a book to him about why birds sing, too. Tomorrow, he’s going to gather things in the yard and try to make his own bird nest, the lesson being on how awesome it is that birds can do this without any hands.  We are also learning about California, and in the process, he’s learning a little about researching online, and copying and pasting to make worksheets.

On T4L, he learned today how to count by two’s and five’s. I don’t believe I could have explained this to him in a way he would have understood it, but he really got it by using T4L. I was really impressed! The two’s were easier for him than the five’s, until I showed him the relationship between the numbers when going by fives, that the last number alternates between 5 and 0. Then, that was easier for him if he’s looking at a number line.

I’ve been thinking a lot over the past year about the concept of unschooling.

I know that unschooling means different things to different people.  To me it simply means self-directed education.

Even though I am quick to link myself to the unit study approach, I believe I’m an unschooler at heart.  I try my best to supply the resources for my children, but I give them a choice in the matter.

This is why we do not always have a unit study going.  Sometimes we’re busy learning about Stan Lee or Japanese anime’, or graphic arts. 

Time 4 Learning has beome a great tool in our unschooling toolbox.  It’s so easy to use and it’s so fun!