Yard Work can be family time

This week as we set down to plan the schedule of lessons and check the calendar for doctor and therapy appointments I realized how thankful I am that my child is in a school system that allows me to flex his lessons to meet his needs.  First of all this week, we have Dad out of town for part of it which always causes issues, along with 2 Test, a Doctor appointment and this month’s occupational therapy visit oh and if that was not enough we also have a belt testing graduation this week for Kempo karate.

This is why I set down on Sunday’s and make the schedule for the week.  Typically we follow much along the lines of a ‘normal’ school day.  Our school day starts at 9am, we have a morning break at 10:30 am, Lunch at 12 noon, afternoon break at 2:30pm and most days are finished with school by 4pm.  However this flexes based on what work we have to do, or what live lessons are scheduled.  Today the schedule is not real full so school will be done early which means free reading time! (This is a big deal to our child)  The school year is winding down so I am also balancing the remaining lessons with the fact that he must attend school through May 23^rd this year.  I love that I have the chance to show him nature and work in the moment however having as autistic son means in the moment is not as spur of the moment as you might think.  For example I knew he would be done fairly early today but I also realized that he knew this and was planning on getting to read on a book from the library for awhile.  I had to allow him time to read before I could ‘spur of the moment’ get him outside to enjoy nature.  We actually spent an hour of fitness time outside pulling weeds, raking, and trimming trees.  How many kids can say that for PE they did yard work?  It may seem a little strange but it is a great way to teach kids that you can be active just doing what needs to get done.  It makes sense to me to

work on this yard work during the week as we have time left at the end of the school day rather than spending a huge part of our weekend tied up in the yard.  I am trying to teach the lesson of working on ‘chores’ a little each day spreads the burden rather than scarifies an entire day on the weekend.  Teaching a child how to manage household maintenance chores now is going to make life easier.  I am also a firm believer in a child helping around the house as this is our home and that means that we can all help take care of it.

 

Opportunity to teach

So it is Friday which means it is payday of the fictitious type around here.  Our son gets his weekly packet today outlining that he has earned a paycheck of $300 for the week, along with an opportunity card, a meal plan, and shopping chart.

This week his opportunity card read as follows…..

Opportunity

You took a load off your mind, but you did not have the facility to handle the load so therefore after plunging for what seemed like hours and breaking the handle on your plunger you had to call a plumber in to snake the toilet line, this cost $100 thankful you had a coupon for this price.  Oh and don’t forget you now have to buy a new plunger

We have talked with him about sometimes you do not have a choice you have to call a plumber or other repairman that means that you need to budget and keep a little bit of money back for an emergency.  No one plans on breaking their toilet or ever having to call a plumber but those are the times that you are going to have the bad luck to need a plumber.  I think what husband and I have realized is that after this project we also have the opportunity to teach about the home maintenance that no one else is going to teach him.  Not that I want him to be the one fixing the broken things but I feel like he should have enough of a basic knowledge to at least not be taken advantage of by the repair people. 

Once again we found an opportunity to teach a life lesson.

We also have figured out that if we tap into adolescent humor it makes teaching a lesson more exciting for our son, so bathroom humor is always welcome.  We have several scenarios such as the one above preprinted and folded into cards that we have our son draw one each week.  Then we also have Karma cards that are positives that we award when he has done something exceptional in the week.  For example took a survey for the cable TV people and they gave you a 10% for taking the time to help them.  The fun interactive ways that we can teach our children about money is endless.

Value of a Dollar

 

Recently we started a new extracurricular project with our 14 year old son.  The mission to teach him the value of a dollar.

  

This seems like a relatively easy thing to do until you stop and think that if America was still taught the value of a dollar then would the rate of bankruptcy and foreclosures being headline news in the local papers.  This took about a month of hubby and talking and deciding what we wanted him to learn.  The goal of this mission is for our son to learn how to budget his bills with his income coming in the door, along with how to write checks out.  To get this started first I ordered a set of play checks, check registry, and deposit slips off of Amazon to work with him on the actual mechanics of writing checks to pay bills.

The fun part was coming up with a story for him.  Basically what we decided was that he ‘earned’ $60 for each day of school completed.  So he is paid $300 a week, to begin with we are not worrying about taxes and all that we told him to budget for bring home pay of $300 a week.  Each Friday he is given an envelope with a sheet telling him that his EFT has been made for X amount (The amount can very is school is short week), along with a menu planning sheet, a shopping list, and any bills such as Rent, Water, Electric, TV/Internet, etc.  Then each week he has to draw what we call an opportunity card, and we have karma cards that we award as earned.  Opportunity cards are for unexpected expenses such as having to caller a plumber, and karma cards are for things that are positives such as Mom and Dad upgraded their living room furniture and let you have the old set.

We are now finishing up the second month of this project and we are really getting into it, our son is paying more attention how much things cost at the grocery, and not asking for near as much stuff.  I think one of the quickest changes we seen was the lights going off around the house, it doesn’t matter if he is just leaving a room for a minute he shuts the light off without prompting now.

Today was all about explaining why you have to slow down and not rush through lessons.  Our son is in love with his science teacher this year and with the curriculum so Science has perhaps been one of the easiest subjects of the year.  But this also means that he is literally flying through the material at break neck speed.  After finishing first semester Science up around thanksgiving, Mom learned a lesson herself and scheduled Science for 4 days a week rather than 5 second semester.  This automatically stretched the lessons out a little farther but still here it is April and we are in danger of finishing Science for the year even though school does not get out until the end of May.

        Today I realized that this is a conversation I was not sure I would ever have with my child, I am actually telling him to slow down to make his work last longer, and that has nothing to do with his grades.  Before if I was on the ‘slow train’ it was all about you flunked this assignment because you rushed through this assignment.  To actually see your child willing getting up and getting going on school with no hesitation because he has teachers that are inspiring him is a beautiful thing.

        I am sure next year I will have battles with taking time and learning the material, but right now this Mom is just going to set back and celebrate this victory.

My son had just started middle school when we realized how much of a problem he was having fitting in with other kids.  As parents we met with the school talked to his teachers, tried to get him involved in extra circular activities to make friends.  It just was not happening; karate class was the only place he was making friends.  We worked with the behavorialist to try to figure out what was going on then progress report time came around and we realized we had a serious problem, our son who had always made A’s and B’s in the past was suddenly making low C’s and D’s.  One of the most disturbing parts of this was the indifference his teachers showed when we expressed our concerns over his performance.  As fall progressed by work got busy I had been working for an income tax office and the fall was prep time and training of new staff.  I think being so busy with work allowed me to not see that thing we not only not improving they were getting worse for our son at school.  January 1^st I went back to work full time 6 days a week.  This was when things really got bad and we realized how much we were not prepared for this.  To begin with we had IEP meeting with the school because they were not doing the things we had asked.  As things began to escalate I started having a headache that would just not let up seems to last for days at a time.  The end of January we found ourselves in the ER with me having a mild stroke, a wakeup call as the doctor called it. 
Who knew at that time that in less than a month I would no longer be working and would pull our son out of school to homeschooled him? 
Thankfully after that first rough start with homeschooling we found a wonderful program that is the best of both worlds.  Our son is in second year with Indiana Connections Academy.  This is a virtual public school truly the best alternative to those who cannot handle the social setting of public school and need more one on one attention to succeed.  If you have thought about having your children receive their education at home then I urge you to check out http://www.connectionsacademy.com/indiana-online-school/home.aspx   I really do not know how we would be able to handle this journey without Connections Academy the flexibility to fit our daily schedule. 
The response from the teachers when we have questions or problems is amazing.  My son just finished up first semester of the school year with all A’s and a boost of confidence like he never had at a brick and mortar school.

When I first started this journey I had planned on trying to blog about the experience at least every other week.  Well since it has been so long since I posted anything you can all see how well that plan worked.  Plans well if I have learned anything about schooling your children virtually it is that you have to have a plan.  And a backup plan and another plan just in case plan A and plan B fail.  You see it is a great opportunity in a perfect world.  But as we all know we do not live in a perfect world.

        Some of the things that can just cause havoc on our weeks are the same as when we attended brick and mortar schools such as doctor appointments or repairman calls.  However what you do not think about is that the house next door is having several furniture deliveries so the dogs are barking like crazy so school is a little hard to focus on when you have Fido wanting you to let him in and out all day.  Or my favorite was at the holidays I was doing a lot of baking and my child informed me that it was not his fault he couldn’t focus it was mine for not having an exhaust fan on scents from the oven.

        So in the perfect world there are days we must have the entire house be silent for the focus to be there.  Then the most wonderful thing in the world happened at the start of 8^th grade our child fell in love with his teachers.  Gone were the battles of doing your work.  This was a joyous occasion to say the least.  We were shocked at first and kept waiting for the novelty to wear off.  Our child has ADHD so sticking with things was a new concept.  However before we knew it was Christmas time and the report card was a field of A’s.  Now don’t get me wrong I have always known my son was smart (even when he didn’t act that way) but to see the proof, tangible proof on a report card, well it just about made this mom cry. 

Life Lessons

Wow, cannot believe how long it has been since I touched this blog.  September really it is almost May now and well let’s just say it was a very busy winter in our household.

The school year is winding down and thankfully school for the most part has gone very well.  Connections Academy was truly the wonderful program they promised and we are signed up to attend again next year.  Now don’t get me wrong our son is still trying to get out of doing any work that doesn’t have to be directly viewed by the teacher.  He claims he doesn’t need to do every little thing they suggest.  I am of the mindset that unless you are making straight A’s then you do need to do every little assignment they give you.  But that is just a life lesson he will have to learn for himself.

Lessons yep he is getting ready to learn a view of those for sure. 

We set a reward out for him in December make all A’s in your core classes, i.e. Language Arts, Math, Science, and Social Studies and we would buy him an IPod touch for all of the hard work.  We have discussed this goal weekly all semester.  Every poor grade that was a result of not trying versus not understanding we discussed it again.  Now he is down to crunch time and is having to beg teachers  for extra credit work to make up for the goofing off earlier in the year.

He has told his friend that we will still get it for him because he is working so hard this last month.  Well that does not work for us, you must work hard the entire semester to get the reward, not just try the last month of school.

Guess this will just have to be the year of life lessons in the virtual public school world for our son.  But hopefully this means that next year he will do better than ever!