Well today my T4L went dormant…Three of my students will be returning and I let the other 2 accounts drop.

As I was printing out the records last night and looking at the average scores of their activities, I found myself so grateful that I did t4l, esp. for the neighbor’s grandson. Here was written proof of what he had accomplished.

And for my son with special needs, when I meet w/ professionals about his strengths, weaknesses and school performance, I know what grade level he is doing and what kind of “grades” he makes.

It is such a relief to have these measurements of this school year!

I already miss t4l even though it hasn’t been dormant for 24 hours yet! It is quite a motivation to have everything ready to go for school. No one has to hunt for books or pencils, I don’t have to prepare anything…

Actually, I am glad for the break. I think I will continue to do 3 months of T4L and then breaking for a month to do special things that don’t get done.

Today I had everybody make up some spelling words pertaining to their special projects on spellingcity.com.That is a great little site! Normally I use Sequential Spelling. I started making lists on spelling city w/ those words, too.Now that everyone won’t be on the computer doing t4l, we will have more time for it.

I’d like everyone to brush up on typing. I have a typing program and the kids found a great typing game that looks just like guitar hero!

Also on the agenda is math drill sheets.

I’m probably repeating myself, but t4l really did give me a much needed boost just when I needed it! It’s good to have something to fall back on.

Since we missed some weeks from dh’s broken ankle I am going to continue on for probably one more week. But pretty much, we are finished with the school year!

I am so pleased to end on such a good note. This has been my best year yet!

I haven’t posted anything for awhile! We’ve been doing a lot of hands-on activities and little field trips here and there, so I haven’t been on the computer too much. It was really nice, because Tim hadn’t been on T4L for about two weeks, and we hadn’t really done a lot of ’school’ work, which includes reading. He went on today, and one of the sections he did on language arts was where he had to read a story. I wasn’t sure if he’d be able to, usually is memory doesn’t hold anything unless we hammer it EVERY day. But he was able to read along and only needed a little help! It feels so good to see his accomplishments, the little ways in which he’s progressed, and see him really enjoy learning!

I honestly could not ever see sending him to school, and missing out on all of this! I’m very selfish in that area, I want to watch every step of his development and have a part in his reaching his milestones. It would really be depressing for me for him to bring something home that he did, and know that someone else taught him to do it and not me! The day will come soon enough where he will go out into the world and I won’t be as big a part of his life, but I’m not going to allow that to come any sooner by sending him to school now. Somedays, it is VERY tempting, but when I wake up the next morning I’m ready to do it all over again.

I just realized today that it’s been quite awhile since any of the activities have frozen up on us, warranting going back through them. Has anyone else noticed this? I’m wondering if whatever was causing it, has been fixed.  Oh! I came up with an idea for using the social studies that is too advanced for Tim! I couldn’t stand the idea of just using T4L for the language arts and math, it seemed like such a waste of what is offered. So, I go on the social studies, read it myself, and make a lesson on it breaking it down where he can understand it. Then, it gives me a point of reference to look up other sites that gears it down a little more to his level.

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!

I was very frustrated when I first started t4l. As you may recall, my plan to do Sonlight for all of my children, plus the neighbor quickly soured.

So I was really seeking (immediate!)support and relief when I signed up for t4l. Thank GOODNESS someone on the forums mentioned that it takes about 2 weeks to feel comfortable.

I wanted to just give up and quit so many times while I was adjusting educational levels, figuring out how to exit the lesson correctly so that the lesson gets marked completed,etc.

I am so glad I stayed. Even though, I am still pretty far from “stress free”, using t4l is a huge improvement. Even if a lesson is hard one day, it does get easier.And because of the excellent explanations, I have learned to be a better teacher when I supplement t4l w/ something else.

As I go along, I realize that every lesson doesn’t have to be completed, that every question doesn’t have to have the “perfect” answer typed out.

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’!