"Block" Scheduling ~ or what we're trying when the first schedule epically failed

Remember this post?  The one where I displayed my middle three boys' assignment charts?  We made a valiant effort to make them work, and I kept encouraging the boys, son L in particular, that it was a time management thing more than an "I can't do it" thing.  But in the end, it was just not going to cut it.

Son C has done fairly well with his assignment chart, so for now we are keeping his the way it was.  Why fix it if it ain't broke?  But for son L, he struggled all throughout the day to switch gears between subjects (note to self, he has always had trouble with transitions, why did I not expect this?).  I thought I had given a reasonable amount of time for each scheduled subject, but for him it was NOT enough.  Each day, according to the little squares on his assignment chart that were not checked off, he fell farther and farther behind.

Many tears.  Many late night conversations.  Many prayer times together.  Many pep talks, especially when the dreaded "I'm stupid" words came.  I was and am committed to helping him succeed ("success" in his mind being completing a day's worth of work in one day with enough time left to play before dinner, "success" in my mind being putting forth his best effort most of the time and finishing assigned work before dinner) but I wasn't convinced he couldn't succeed with the way his assignment chart was currently written.  I made myself more available to him.  I played quiet praise music in the school room.  I gave him a signal that meant "focus" whenever I saw he was being distracted.

No significant improvement.

One of the beautiful things about homeschooling is the ability and freedom to change things midstream if they are not working.  And clearly, this was not working.  An assignment chart is simply a tool.  Not our task master.  If this particular tool wasn't working, maybe I could change it to make it fit more closely the way he worked.

Enter "block" scheduling.  His new assignment chart has a morning "block" of 2 hours, and an afternoon "block" of 2-3 hours.  He now does his 4 academic subjects only twice a week (during a morning or afternoon "block") instead of every day, doing 2-3 days' worth of work each time.  This way, when he gets  in the zone he can simply stay in the zone, and not have to switch gears to another subject when the first subject was not yet completed.  We made the switch mid-week last week so the jury is still out.  But so far, so good.  This schedule also gets rid of the 3 subjects he was "supposed" to do on Tuesdays, in between classes at co-op.  So now during his co-op "off" hours he can just hang out with friends or work on things he wants to do, which will make Tuesdays much more fun for him.

(click on picture to enlarge)

Son L is our child who lives with Sensory Processing Disorder, so certain aspects of learning have been challenging for him his entire school career.  We have tried a variety of things to help him over the years, including professional therapy.  The physical and occupational therapy he received was excellent and definitely a piece of his school success puzzle at the time, but the thing that has probably helped the most was just doing lots of reading and then experimenting with various "tools" and routines that might help him.  Each child that lives with SPD is wired so differently, it is often a process of trial and error to find the right "cocktail" that best helps your particular child.

Things we are currently trying:  I am letting him use a tiny little mp3 player I got in my Christmas stocking a couple years ago, to see if music in his ears will help him focus.  Music in the schoolroom is great for 2/3 of the family, but a couple people work better in quiet, so this will accommodate everyone (he may or may not be receiving his own mp3 player for Christmas, but you did not hear that from me!).  I have also given him a new "desk ball" to use.  This is a squishy palm sized ball that he can play with at his desk.  He likes to hold on to something while he's working, and this makes no noise.  It is also something he can squeeze hard without hurting himself, and it "pushes back" to give him some tactile pressure.

He used to sit on an exercise ball instead of a chair, but he has outgrown the old exercise ball and I have yet to purchase a bigger one.  That will be the next thing.

He also still responds well to a set routine, with predictable meal times and bedtimes (and lots and lots of snacks!).  As noted earlier, he tends not to transition well, so if I can give him lots of warning and lots of time to move to the next thing, he does much better.

My job as teacher/mom is often tricky, as I work to give him the appropriate tools for success, while also holding his feet to the fire and requiring him to do the work, turn things in on time, finish things completely, etc.  I pray constantly for wisdom, and am so thankful that God has promised to give it!

Son G also asked for block scheduling, so I have switched them both over to this type of daily routine.  I am letting the block schedule play out for another week or so, and if it proves to be helpful I will then take about 27 blank copies back to FedEx/Kinkos and have a new book of assignment charts made up.  Hey, it is only $5 so we didn't waste too much with the first book now going unused!

Live and learn.  :0)

(and as before, feel free to email and request a copy of the new block schedule.  If my family has to do this any more times, chances are good that one of our schedules will work for YOU!)

An Unexpected Blessing - How SPD became part of our lives

Many people have asked me for more information about Sensory Processing Disorder, and how we came to know that our son L would be living with this. Since he was identified as having SPD 2 years ago, I have wondered how much to share publicly about his struggles and successes, since it is ultimately his story to tell. I have worked so hard to build a relationship of trust with him, and I would never want to do anything that he perceives as breaking that trust. But to the extent that SPD also affects me and our entire family, it is my/our story to tell as well, and since so many have asked about it I have finally decided to share in a little more detail (you can find previous posts about SPD by clicking on the SPD label in my right sidebar).

In typing this out I realized it was too long for one blog post, so I’m going to split it up in two. This post will deal with what SPD is, and how we began to know it would be a part of our lives. In a second post I will share about how SPD has contributed to our family’s unique dynamic, and some of the challenges we face as we all learn more about it.

Sensory Processing Disorder (or Sensory Integration Dysfunction) is an umbrella term for a wide spectrum of behaviors and processing glitches that can occur to a mild degree or a severe degree. It is often misunderstood because two people with SPD can act or react very differently, and have completely different processing difficulties. Ultimately, what all children with SPD have in common, is difficulty processing information they receive through one or more of their senses. There are the “basic 5” that we all learn in elementary school ~ sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. But there are several others that are lesser known, such as the proprioceptive sense (a system in our joints and muscles that provides information about how we are moving or how hard/soft we are touching/pushing/pulling), and the vestibular sense (in the inner ear, it provides information that contributes to our sense of balance and spatial orientation).

Some children with SPD have multiple glitches, while others struggle in only one area. Some are sensory seekers, daredevils who need to jump, swing, even fall on purpose in order for their brains to receive adequate input to process their surroundings appropriately. Others are sensory avoiders who shy away from playdough and sand, fingerpainting and certain food textures, or rough edges on their clothing. Some SPD behaviors mimic Attention Deficit Disorder, and even some autistic spectrum behaviors, so it is often difficult to identify with accuracy. To make it even more challenging, SPD has not yet been included in the Official Big Book of Diagnoses that medical doctors use (there is a 10 year timeline I believe, of very strict protocols for testing and research in order to fulfill the requirements of a “diagnosis” and SPD is very close. I am hopeful it can be an official medical diagnosis soon.) It is usually identified by an occupational therapist, not a pediatrician.

The exact causes of SPD are not known, although it is believed that birth trauma may sometimes play a role. Our son L did experience some trauma at birth and there was a time during his first year that I feared he may have cerebral palsy. He was very late to sit up, or bear any weight at all on his legs. So much so that he was referred by our pediatrician to our state’s special ed program for infants. He was evaluated and qualified, at 10 months of age, for the program, but the professionals and I felt comfortable waiting one more month to see if he improved significantly and then making a determination. During that extra month he finally began to sit up and to try to bear weight. Once he began pulling up and standing, my fears subsided and I focused on mothering him and the other two very young children we had at the time. As time went on and he developed more into the person God made him to be, I noticed that he definitely marched to the beat of a different drum, and as a mom I simply accepted him for who he was and how God made him. I never went looking for a label, in fact quite the opposite.

When L was 4 years old our fifth child, Little Man, was born (child number 4 was 2 years old at the time, and our older ones were 5 and 7). From the beginning Little Man had difficulty latching on properly. Nursing him to 9 months was a difficult process that required lots of patience and effort (and is a whole other story!). When he was old enough for big people food, he demonstrated several severe food aversions that gave me pause. My friend Laurie, no stranger to SPD, suggested I read the book The Out of Sync Child, with Little Man in mind. I realized about 3 pages into the book that this was describing son L perfectly. I will always be grateful to Laurie for her book recommendation, and to the Lord for using Little Man’s struggles to make me aware of L’s. Little Man, it turns out, just had a huge independent streak that showed itself early. :-)

I devoured the book, prayed, cried, searched the internet for information, grieved, wondered about his future, worked through feelings of guilt and anger, prayed some more, read some more, came to a place of acceptance, and my practical nature kicked in. My husband and I found an occupational therapy clinic near our home that specialized in SPD. We called and made an appointment. Filled out an extensive questionnaire, took him in for an evaluation, spoke at length to his therapist, and came away with a basic understanding of how SPD was affecting him, and what our plan of action should be. All within less than a month! After that he received weekly therapy for 6 months, until our money ran out, and I met regularly with his therapist to discuss therapies we could do at home, and specific ways to target his problem areas. At the same time, I continued reading parenting books and the Bible, praying, and asking God to fill up what I was lacking and make me the mom L needed. It has been quite a roller coaster ride, and I am deeply grateful not only for our son, but also for God’s faithfulness to us as we began and now continue the ride.

Specifically, L’s biggest problem area is in auditory processing, which means he has a hard time processing what he hears. His ears work just fine. He can hear. But between his ears and his brain there is something like a traffic jam (which is how we explained it to him) and the messages just can’t get through efficiently. So multiple step directions are very hard for him, still to this day. For instance, getting ready for bed requires me to give him each step separately. In a noisy environment with competing voices, he has a harder time than most distinguishing “important” noise (ie, someone calling him) from “unimportant” noise (ie the sound of basketballs bouncing on a gym floor). And if I say to the air, “everyone wash your hands and come to the table for lunch”, everyone else goes running to the sink but L may or may not hear me. I have better success if I go to where he is, have him look me in the eye, speak the command directly to him in a soft, normal tone and then have him repeat it back to me.

During his first 7 years of life, when he wouldn’t come when called, or when he was still looking for his shoes and everyone else was already seat belted in the van, this was usually interpreted as disobedience or disrespect, or just general dilly dallying, and caused lots of frustration among his siblings (and, honestly, to me too). Therefore, he became accustomed to being “yelled at”. We try very hard not to actually yell at each other, but he would interpret his siblings’ comments (you’re not ready YET? What have you been doing?) as “yelling”. Over time his self esteem really took a beating. This was one of the things I felt guilty about after I learned he was living with SPD.

He also has some vestibular deficits, and is a sensory seeker, so he loves to swing, to hang upside down, to flop, and to constantly be holding some small thing as if that helps him feel “grounded”. He is almost continuously moving, which some have interpreted as ADD, but in reality is his sensory seeking nature (along with the fact that he is a typical boy!). Even the air on his skin when he moves provides useful feedback to his brain.

I found a great little squishy ball that is his “approved” school table toy. He may hold it and play with it all he wants while at the table doing school, and it has no removable parts (like legos) nor does it make noise. He also sat on an exercise ball for school, until he poked a pencil in it one day to see what would happen and it deflated. That is actually material for a whole other post! (some day!) So now he sits on a chair while saving his money to buy a new exercise ball. The constant corrections that his core makes in order to keep himself straight on the ball, provide continuous feedback to his brain about how his body is positioned. When his brain has adequate input to correctly process information, it frees him up to concentrate on the thing he’s supposed to be doing. So the exercise ball and the squishy hand ball are a great help to him during school. These are just a couple of ways we have been able to tailor his school experience specifically to his needs. Knowing about his SPD, and then learning ways to help him create detours around the traffic jam, have helped all of us so much! It has also alleviated a lot of frustration to know that there are certain things he simply cannot help. He is (usually) doing his best, even when his best looks different than his siblings’ best.

In addition to The Out of Sync Child, other resources I have found helpful are:

The Out of Sync Child Has Fun, by Carol Kranowitz

Raising a Sensory Smart Child by Lindsey Biel and Nancy Peske

Teaching the Right Brain Child by Dianne Craft (awesome dvd seminar!!)

The Brain Integration Therapy Manual by Dianne Craft (fun, 5 minute therapies our whole family can do!)

The Biology of Behavior by Dianne Craft (an audio CD discussing the biological component to behavior issues)

Coming soon, The Heart of the Matter ~ How SPD has challenged and changed our family dynamic

My Heart is Singing.....

We've had a couple of hard days with our son L, who lives with SPD. The relaxed summer schedule (ie, late nights), the need to go grocery shopping (ie, a bit of hunger), and the change in routine are probably not helping this particular boy. So those are things for me to work on. But the fact is, regardless of other circumstances, he is easily frustrated and has a hard time dealing with frustration appropriately. It is hard on all of us when he has an especially difficult day ~ and he has had several difficult days in a row. My mother's heart has been heavy for him. Does he know he is loved, in spite of everything?

My husband and I laid in bed this morning before getting up and prayed for him. That we would show him love today in ways that matter to him, and that he would be able to exercise self control and remember some of the coping skills we've been working on. Challenging situations occurred today ~ ample opportunity to practice. Limited success. I did find several moments during the day to demonstrate love, but by bedtime I was exhausted.

What a sweet reward it was to hear these words during his bedtime prayer: "thankyou that I'm mommy's son and thankyou for creating me." He couldn't see my tears, there in the dark, but God saw them. And God heard my heart singing.

Workboxes - An Organizational Tool for School

Several months ago I heard mention of something called "workboxes" and immediately dismissed it as a preschool thing, similar to preschool activities in a bag. It wasn't until ladies on my Tapestry of Grace yahoo group began raving about this system that I sat up and took notice. After reading their emails about how well this was working in their homes, and looking at pictures on homeschool moms' blogs who use this sytem, I was convinced it could really help our son with Sensory Processing Disorder to focus better on each task, finish everything in a timely manner, and have more independence in his schoolwork. So I ordered this book by Sue Patrick, creator of the workbox system, and set to work setting it up in our home.

This is not a curriculum to add to your already full schedule, but a way to organize the curriculum you already have in a way that helps each student visually see exactly what needs to be done each day, in what order, know when they are done, and allows you to use games and other fun things that typically get shoved in the back of our cupboards. Sue Patrick emphasizes in her book the use of games for review. Her book was very easy to read and I urge anyone thinking about trying workboxes to get her book first and read the "why" behind this system. It was $20 very well spent! (and you all know how carefully we spend our money right now!) One, of many, beautiful things about this system is that it can work with daily chores as well, or with the process of learning to get dressed, or learning anything that requires sequential steps. It's not just for homeschooling. What versatility!

In very basic terms, this system uses a shoe rack and clear plastic tubs for each student. In each tub you place everything needed for one school task. Students work through their tubs throughout the day, and when all their work is finished they have an empty shoe rack and a stack of tubs on the floor. You can put a "fun" activity immediately following some work that was hard for that particular child, and the child can see this coming (since the tubs are clear) and it motivates him to get through the hard task in order to get to the fun one! He can also see his shoe rack emptying throughout the day and be encouraged to keep working because he's almost done. I LOVE the way Sue has set this up. But because of very limited funds and space, I decided to use this system as originally designed only for our son with SPD and use large tubs with tall envelopes for everyone else. The individual school tasks are put into envelopes rather than into clear plastic tubs, and the children work through their envelopes in order the same as they would if they had a tub for each task.

I first used this with all 5 children 3 weeks ago. Here is a pic of the boys working at our school table. You can see some of the envelopes lying there.



This was Little Man's tub one day ~ the cookie sheet was the working surface for the tub of magnetic letters. He also had dot markers in his last envelope. The ones inbetween were filled with books to read with mom, picture cards that said, "run around the house 5 times" and "get a snack from mom" and "special time with _____".


Here he is working at his own special school table! You can see his tub with envelopes in the lower right corner.


On the front of each tub, I put a grid with velcro filled squares, which corresponds to small numbered and velcroed squares on each envelope. As they work through each envelope, they take the velcro number off the envelope and put it on their grid. At the end of the day they can see their grid is filled but their tub is empty. This may not be necessary for the older children, but it really helps the younger ones!


The grids are color coded according to our family color code which we have had for years. Here is son C's tub. You can see he is about to start task 6 (of 8 total).


I made up some "work with mom" labels that I can velcro to those envelopes which contain work we need to do together. Once you buy the Sue Patrick book you can download these little labels (and tons more stuff!) from her website, but I just made up my own.


Here is son L's shoe rack. It very nicely fits 12 workboxes. I got the shoe rack at Target for $14.99, and the clear tubs there for a dollar each. So his was the most "expensive" to set up, but well worth it. It has been working great! The activity on the floor under the shoe rack was his activity to do with Little Man, and it wouldn't fit in the workbox.


He puts the first tub on the table, takes out the work, completes it, and then puts the finished work back in and stacks it on the floor. Each workbox contains everything he will need for that task (even down to a pencil!) so there are less interruptions, fewer distractions, and less wasted time. (as an aside fyi, we were given an exercise ball from a generous friend for L to sit on while doing schoolwork. This helps him with posture and core strength [issues related to SPD]. He just happens to be not using it in this picture. We are very thankful for it though!)

I stopped making a tub for Little Man because I hit on the fabulous idea to put his work in his siblings' boxes along with cards that say "spend time with Little Man". So now they each get time with him throughout the day, he is happily occupied all day long, and I am using all our fun preschool things in a way that would not be possible all by myself! More on this in another post.

As the 3 children who are using envelopes finish their tasks, they put them in my "teacher" tub behind their color coded cardstock. This makes it easy in the evenings (or even during the day) for me to go through their envelopes in order, correct work I need to correct, and re-fill them for the next day.


This system has already helped hold me accountable for demonstrating a good work ethic to the children (correcting work and being ready for each day) and helped them be more accountable for getting all their work done. We have gotton more done, with less complaining, and had more fun in the last 3 weeks than we have in a long time! I am excited and thankful to have found this system when I did so I can be ready in the fall with lots of fun review activities to put in their box or envelopes! I also want to make "schedule strips" to use with the workboxes/envelopes. This is another element to the system that Sue Patrick designed but which I have not utilized yet. More on that later.

I had to put some thought into how to best make this work for us, but now it is flowing along pretty smoothly and we are all loving it! After one week, my husband and I asked each of our children which they liked better, this organizational method or a paper assignment sheet. Each one of them enthusiastically said "workboxes!".

Here are some other blogs with pictures of how they use workboxes:

Joyful Mother of 6 Children - uses workboxes as originally designed by Sue Patrick

Ginger Snap Shots - tweaked the system and uses Sterilite drawer towers instead

Color Me Orange - uses tall envelopes and tubs (where I got the idea!)

Walking by the Way - uses shoe rack and plastic tubs as Sue Patrick designed

Our Lifesong - also uses shoe rack and plastic tubs

Bittersweet Moment on our life journey with SPD

"But by the grace of God, I am what I am." ~ 1 Corinthians 15:10

I witnessed a very bittersweet moment a few days ago involving our son L who lives with Sensory Processing Disorder. Having SPD go unidentified for the first 7 years of his life led to a certain dynamic among our children where L often got unduly blamed for things, or overly blamed for a minor offense (there have also been moments when he has used this to his advantage, but I have observed him being the "victim" more often than the "perp").

One of his struggles involves auditory processing, so although his ears work just fine, he will often not correctly process words he has heard me say ~ when it is a command to all the children the others get mad at him when they obey and he appears not to. He has tended to be easily frustrated and slow to use self control, so these behaviors, coupled with excessive blame by his siblings, have led to many conflicts requiring immediate intervention by me. We are striving to teach the children to treat each other with love and respect, to use words instead of hands, and to practice extending grace to others. Generally speaking, I am encouraged by the children's progress, but they are young. They have a long way to go (me too!). Read that: we are not there yet. There have been and are some very discouraging days, when I grow weary of intervening (we've been practicing this for months, shouldn't they know how to resolve this on their own by now?) , or feel sad at the emotional wounds L may bear. I am SO thankful the children are home with me all day, but nevertheless, there are moments of conflict when I am not present. Increasingly these are handled fairly well, but sometimes they are handled very poorly by the children involved. And since I cannot know which words, which actions are going to be the ones etched in L's memory, it weighs on me at times that a series of harsh responses from one of his siblings or friends (or me!) will inflict a wound he carries into adulthood. How thankful I am that I can trust L's future to God!

When L was "diagnosed" with SPD just over a year ago (I use the word "diagnose" very loosely since it is not yet a recognized diagnosis in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual), we had a talk with our older two children. Trying to strike the balance between not making it a big deal, but understanding where L was coming from, we explained that he had something like a traffic jam in his brain. Messages couldn't get through properly. This was not something that could be "fixed" like fixing a broken traffic light would cause the traffic to flow smoothly again. We explained to them that what we and L would be working on was a detour around the traffic jam. A way to go around the jam and still get the messages through. It would take re-learning on L's part, and patience on our part, and we urged the children to pray for their brother and to have compassion for him, knowing that some of his "L-isms" were things he couldn't necessarily help.

Fast forward to last week. I had been to Sam's Club and had purchased a large box of Quaker Oats breakfast bars. The kind with frosting dribbled on top! These make a convenient food for my husband to eat in the morning while driving 45 minutes to his part time job. They are also irresistible snacks for children who have not had much convenience food lately. :-) Unbeknownst to any of us, L helped himself to 3 of them during a single afternoon. That night he let it slip that he'd had 3 bars that day. The other children began to protest, and one in particular started to really let L have it. I could see L sortof square his shoulders and prepare for the onslaught. I stopped it immediately and explained to the children that L had done nothing wrong! No need to treat him like a criminal. He was hungry and found something to eat, that was all. Then I explained to all of them that from now on these bars were to be reserved for daddy's breakfast and their snack during Friday co-op. On other days we would have other snack food. I addressed L directly and reassured him that he'd done nothing wrong. And I asked him to repeat the new rule about these bars, which he did.

Then, he cried.

Not sobbing, but quiet tears down his face. He was so sure he was going to get in trouble for eating 3 bars, that when he didn't he was overwhelmed. My heart broke knowing that he has come to expect to always be the scapegoat, but also warmed as I watched him experience grace.

"My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness." ~ 2 Corinthians 12:9

"Lord Jesus, thank you for making our son L just the way You did. Thank you for entrusting him to our care. Please give us wisdom to parent him well, and to justly distribute mercy to all of our children. Give the other children your love for their brother L, and help him to learn how to circumvent his traffic jam. Help us to parent with grace, even when we are sometimes frustrated ourselves. Thank you for always pouring out Your grace on us. You are the perfect parent. I love you. Amen."

Our Week in Review

Actually, here are the last two weeks in review. Our biggest new news is that the 4 older children have all started Tae Kwon Do! They love it and we are excited about all the positive benefits we are already beginning to see. For our son with SPD especially, anytime he can do physical activities that cause him to cross the midline (opposite hand/opposite foot) it helps his brain organize information. Their classes are in the late afternoon, after school work is completed. BIG motivation to get their work done!




One of our new acquisitions for Little Man this year was this set of alphabet magnets that are magnetized along their entire backside so that they leave an impression of the letter on a Magnadoodle. This was a big hit!! I got them from Rainbow Resource.

Found time to can 12 quarts of peaches. Wish it were more!

These are Napoleon flapbooks that the 4 older children made after we read a book about Napoleon. I asked each of them to write what they remembered, and for the 6 year old he told me what he remembered and I wrote for him. This shows our daughter G's closed book on the left, and our son G's open book on the right. Daughter G drew a map of Europe behind Napoleon to illustrate his thirst for power and conquest.

Little Man learning the concept of more/less. "Do 3 chicks weigh more or less than 2 pigs?" (great little dollar store find!)

Our son L doing math and auditory processing therapy at the same time.

I will admit, I am exhausted. This week in particular was VERY full. But I am also filled with thanks to God for His daily strength, for the privilege of teaching my children at home, and for all He supplies in order for me to do the work He has called me to, not only at home but also in MOPS and co-op. He is good!

Memorial Day Weekend

We had such a wonderful, fun weekend! It was warm enough to fill up the kiddie pool, and even the big kids had fun jumping through it. L got to try out the new super soakers he got for his birthday ~ this provided MUCH fun and changing of wet clothes. We had friends over for a barbeque on Monday evening. Our big project that took the whole weekend and still isn't quite finished was assembling our new wooden play structure! I have been praying for and dreaming of this for several years, but the money always had to be earmarked for something else. I am so thankful that this was the year to get it!! Thank you Lord, for a large federal income tax refund!

First we had to disassemble the old metal one that had died long ago. We were able to bless a young couple just starting their family with our baby swing, and we blessed the scrap metal collector with all the metal parts, so only the few plastic pieces went in the garbage (sorry, earth).
Our neighbor graciously let us use her truck to go pick up the new swing.

Whew! That was such a big purchase, it was time for cooling off.

Then began the caravan ~ the boxes were too heavy to carry to the backyard, so we opened them on our driveway and carried all the pieces to the backyard a few at a time. Fortunately we had lots of helpers for this!

Step one ~ sort and count all the parts. This took, oh, about 5 hours (not kidding!).

The children were pretty impatient for actual construction to begin, but it finally did.

About 28 man hours later....... no swings up yet, but at least they can play in the fort!

Another day, and the swings are up!!!!! Still left to assemble, the rock wall, the little cafe table and counter and stools underneath the fort, and the slide.

Later this summer we plan to add a tire swing to this. It was cheaper to buy a tire swing kit online and add it ourselves than buy a whole swing set kit that included the tire swing. This will be fun for all the children, but especially for our son who lives with SPD. He loves to spin!

~

And I just have to share what a meaningful Memorial Day this was for me, personally. I have always been grateful for the freedoms we enjoy, and for the sacrifices made by others in order to grant and protect those freedoms. But our current study of the founding of America and my own reading of the book John Adams, conspired to make this Memorial Day especially significant. I sortof embarrassed myself at church on Sunday. We had lovely older ladies and gents from the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars with us during the service, and afterwards I went up to them to thank them for their service to our country. I wasn't able to stop the tears, so those poor souls had to greet a stranger who was practically sobbing. They were very gracious. :-)

~

Do you know any vets?? THANK THEM!! I have made a personal commitment to thank every single person who I learn is a veteran. At any time of the year. We owe them so much.

Today....

Painting with water (they did such a good job I could wallpaper a room with all their creations!).

See how our lima beans have grown!

A new use for our abdominal exercise machine (which had been a wonderful little valet for my clothes in our bedroom!).

Ready....set......GO! Paper airplane wars.

Here is the winning plane. Sleek, isn't it? Son G named it "Arrow Two" (apparently there is also an "Arrow One").

Our son who lives with SPD had an exceptionally good day today!! I am so very thankful. Our therapist said when we first began working with her that her goal was to get him to smile more. He has such a beautiful smile and a great sense of humor, but some days neither one shows very much. His therapist will be very happy to hear tomorrow that he smiled a LOT today and seemed like a regular, happy kid. Thank the Lord!

I am fairly certain that we are reaping benefits from his occupational therapy and listening therapy, but I also believe that concerted, fervent prayer is making an enormous difference. I'm so thankful to serve a LIVING God, who is powerful and yet personal. He is good!

Blessing Day

Yesterday was a good school day. Our son who lives with SPD (sensory processing disorder) had a good day after several really hard ones, so I was very grateful. Daughter G wrote another really good paragraph using the IEW principles. Now that I have a handle on it, I'm so excited to continue using this wonderful writing program! Son G is almost done with his Math U See workbook, and son C is almost done with his "Get Set for the Code" phonics workbook. They always LOVE to finish workbooks! I started reading a new book outloud that everyone is enjoying very much (The Matchlock Gun). We made a big Sam's Club run so now we have lots of food!

We were able to wash some large bedding at the laundromat for our "illegal" friend who is being deported soon. I was happy to do this for her, as I have been unable to help much until now. When I took the bedding to her last night, she was having a hard time getting her 2 year old to settle down to sleep. So I offered to hold the fussy newborn while she laid down with the 2 year old. For about an hour I did my "baby whisperer" thing (that's my nickname in the church nursery!) while she rested. She had had a hard night the night before with hardly any sleep and had a bad headache. Her husband is still sitting in jail, waiting for the necessary paperwork to be completed so they can be officially deported, while she is juggling the demands of two school aged children, a busy 2 year old, and a little newborn not quite one month old who is up several times in the night. Bless her heart! I found out she is just 24 years old. Definitely young enough to be my daughter (yikes!). My motherly instincts took over and I asked if I could stay the night and help her with the baby. She was much relieved. I am so grateful to my husband for giving the gift of his time, so that I could bless this family. It is doubly meaningful as he is working on a huge deadline this week. Thank you honey!

I spent the night last night either holding a precious little new boy, or sleeping on the couch 3 feet from him, or scraping my fingernail along the bottoms of his feet to keep him awake while he nursed in the night (it sounds worse than it is!). He slept very well between feedings and his mother got a solid 2-3 hours of sleep inbetween each one. But I could tell she was still exhausted this morning, so after getting her two older children off to school, I brought her 2 year old home with me for the morning so she could nap.

He has been here nearly two hours and so far it's going very well! He and my 3 year old Little Man are confined to our living room/dining room playing with trains (thank goodness I still have baby gates!) while the rest of us are doing school at the kitchen table. We are having several interruptions, but I explained to the children this morning that this was Blessing Day. We have an opportunity to bless this family and this tired new mama in a small way today, and they are helping play with him and being very kind and gentle. My son with SPD even asked me if he could say the "jail" word to our little friend or if he shouldn't talk about it. I was so proud of him for thinking ahead like that! I love my kids.

If you feel led, please keep this family in your prayers. They are in red tape limbo, with no fixed date for when they will be reunited and able to leave the country together. We are grateful for more time to help this family get packed and ready to leave, but the longer they are here, the longer the father is separated from his family. The wife has such a wonderful attitude though! I am so proud of her, and so grateful to the Lord for helping her come so far in just a few weeks. God is good. All the time.

Life

Life has been exceptionally busy lately. You know how there's a constant busy-ness with just your own family's routine, and then sometimes outside things happen over which you have no control that make "busy" go into overdrive for awhile? That has been the last week for us.

There were 3 families in our MOPS group that needed meals (2 of them were crisis situations and the other was the birth of a new baby). This involved much phone calling, cooking, driving to deliver meals, collecting meals from others, driving some more to deliver more meals, sending emails, making more phone calls, PRAYING. In a way it's relatively easy for us to do these things since I can fit them in around our daily routine, but it is challenging at times for me to stay on top of everything mentally. In fact just this moment I realized that I forgot to make a reminder phone call this morning to someone who had asked for one. I hope they remembered to take their meal to the new baby family tonight!

I have been reminded how much I have to be thankful for this week, and how much I take for granted. My kids, their health, their hugs and kisses and smiles, the opportunity to watch them learn new things, the thrill I still get when my husband walks in the door. Life is so precious. It is a blessing to be a blessing to others during times of need. Thank you, Lord, that we are not in dire need at this moment. Thank you that when we are, for we have been and surely will be again, You will provide just what we need.

In other news, our son who has SPD (sensory processing disorder) received his body sock in the mail yesterday! This was very exciting. Unfortunately for him it is hot pink, but he has decided he wants to keep it rather than wait another week for another one to come, which may also be hot pink since you can't specify color. He loves it and has used it for long periods of time since yesterday. In fact today he fell asleep in it, curled into a little ball at the foot of our bed! He looked like a large, smooth, pink cat all curled up sleeping. I am so glad we got it!

For those of you wondering, a body sock can serve two purposes for children with spd (probably more, but I'm still learning). It creates a little space that is all their own, to go when they need time and a place to regain a feeling of self control. And it also is extremely good therapy for them to push against the resistant fabric, providing sensory input for their muscles and joints (the proprioceptive sense). Here are two pictures of him in the body sock, first the back view and then the front, showing the velcro opening.




And lastly, I am concerned about Little Man's excema. He has it really bad on his legs and some patches on his arms and trunk. He had a viral infection earlier this winter called "Molluscum Contagiosum" which are little bumps that look like warts but aren't warts. They aren't dangerous, but if they get scratched and break open, the virus will spread to whatever part of the body is touched next. The pediatrician sent us to the dermatologist, who said that he could give us medication to "burn" them off, but he could tell that Little Man's body was beginning to recognize the virus as an enemy and build an immunity to it so we were at the beginning of the end. We chose not to pursue the burning treatment.

The way he could tell this was the beginning of the end was that a rash had appeared all around the bumps, which looks extremely similar to excema. So I'm not sure if this is truly excema or the molluscum contagiosum rash that has spread to his legs. I'm going to try and email the following picture to our dermatologist tomorrow and see what he thinks. Hoping to avoid a trip to his office unless absolutely necessary! Little Man is quite bothered by it (he cries and says it hurts) but lotions seem to aggravate it so I am unsure what to do.

Tomorrow is co-op. It was cancelled last Friday due to snow, so it's been two weeks since we met. One of our sons has a cough and another one had a fever all day today. I predict that at least one of them will have to stay home tomorrow, and my wonderful hubby will have to work from home in order to accommodate them. He is so supportive of our homeschooling endeavors - truly he is a gem!

Friday Co-op

We are back at our homeschool co-op for winter session, and have had 2 weeks of it so far. The children all seem to like their classes, and I am impressed and thankful for what they are learning there that we don't cover at home. For instance, I don't do any grammar with our kindergartener, but at co-op he's in a "grammar rock" class based on the schoolhouse rock dvd's. He comes home each week so excited about nouns and verbs, and singing the little jingles from the dvd. Who knew that 5 year old's could love grammar?!

8 year old G's favorite class is another science one called "Light and Prisms". He loves anything resembling science!

Our oldest is in a ceramics class which she loves, and also continued in a class called "Kids of Courage" where they learn about christian children who live in countries openly hostile to christianity. She participates in great discussions in that class, and is learning a bit about other religions of the world and what distinguishes christianity from all others. This class is based on the "Kids of Courage" magazine that is put out by Voice of the Martyrs. I highly recommend this magazine. You can sign up to receive it here.

I am teaching two classes, a drawing class for older kids and a music and movement class for younger children. In my drawing class I have 2 fifth graders, a sixth grader, and 2 eighth graders. They all want to be there and it is a joy to teach them! I have 12 wiggly younger ones in my music and movement class, and we are having a lot of fun doing activities that teach about body awareness, eye-hand coordination, teamwork, and lots of sensory experiences. As I am continuing to learn about sensory processing disorder I am incorporating some of what I learn into this class, and trying to give all the children a rich sensory "diet". It's really fun, and two of my boys are in this class with me.

Fridays are tiring, but worth it. Co-op is a such a huge blessing to our family.

Some thoughts on having a Special Needs Child

I'm not completely comfortable with this title, but I decided to use it anyway and just define it differently. :-)

What do you think of when you hear those words "special needs"? Being in the homeschool community, I hear them alot. Many of my homeschooling friends have children with special challenges that make learning difficult. I have always understood this phrase to mean needs that fall outside the loose perimeters of what "most" children need in order to learn and thrive. In thinking more about it though, don't we all have special needs in one way or another?

Four of our children are currently being schooled, with a 3 year old coming up quickly. In our little classroom of 5, it is easy to see how they all learn differently. Some are visual learners and some are auditory learners. One is a kinesthetic learner. Some like to move (need to move) while trying to memorize things, some like music or other background noise, some prefer total silence. Some work best on the floor, some at the table. You get the point. This is their "ideal" - what they need in order to learn best (which is one reason I love homeschooling so much! - the opportunity to provide for each of their special needs). So in a sense, each of my children has special needs. Needs that are uniquely theirs. Needs that perhaps only I know. Needs that God has appointed me to meet, or to find others who can meet them.

Recently one of our children was identified as having Sensory Processing Disorder (also called Sensory Integration Dysfunction), which is difficulty processing information received through the senses. It encompasses a wide range of behaviors and reactions that vary greatly from child to child, so it often goes undiagnosed and is also frequently misunderstood by observers. I am still a novice and learning much, but it has been fascinating to learn a bit more about how the brain functions, how messages are sent and received, and how a traffic jam in the brain can cause such confusion, fear, and low self esteem in children who struggle with SPD.

When this became evident I went through a wide range of emotions. Guilt (how could I not have seen this earlier?), fear (how will this affect their future?), regret (if only we had entered the Early On program when they were evaluated at 10 months old, if only we had started therapy earlier), even some anger and of course feeling overwhelmed with all the new information and what it would mean for our unique situation.

By God's grace we are through all of that and are in pro-active mode now. We were able to begin occupational therapy and listening therapy for this child almost immediately. We found a wonderful OT clinic very close to our home. Several months ago, long before I ever knew I would be needing their expertise, God had given me some new friends who have already been down this road! We can so clearly see ways in which God has prepared us for this, and even more, how He has prepared THIS for US.

Our child with SPD did experience some trauma at birth (which is one cause of SPD) that God could have prevented. In His wisdom and sovereignty He did not. Struggling with this disorder is part of who God made our child to be. We do not view it as something wrong to be fixed, but as something to learn to thrive with. It has negative aspects that must be overcome, but what a training ground for learning coping skills! And what a wonderful way to help develop a heart of compassion for others! I know that others may view it as a "special need". And truthfully, there are some pretty big ramifications for both our homeschool and our parenting. But in one sense we view this as a "special gift." What an opportunity for our child (and us) to learn more of God's grace!

Heavenly Father, thank you that You were with us before, are with us now, and will be with us in the future. Through all the unknowns, the uncertainties, and the changes You are there. Thank you for leading us down this path. Help us to help our child the best we can. Keep your loving hand upon them. Remember they are but a child. Please lead gently. Thank you for each of our precious children and for each of their special, unique needs. What a privilege it is to be the one to meet them! Give grace where we are lacking, and cover our mistakes with your mercy. May you receive glory for this journey we are on, and through the life of our child whom we place, again, in Your hands. In Jesus' name, Amen.