Our week: Homeschooling a Child with Autism

My son with autism prefers to do his math while lying belly down in a hammock.  Here, he's using Legos to write math sentences.

With all the educational choices, picking a good curriculum can be overwhelming.  I decided when it came to math, instead of wading through all the available curriculum, I'd simple google which country ranked highest in math. At the time, Singapore's students scored the highest in math and science. That was good enough for me; I bought the same math curriculum used in Singapore schools. We use Singapore Primary Mathematics US edition. (Okay, so some of the measurement have been adapted to include the foot and inch.) When my kids went back to public school for a year, they were ahead, so I know it works.

Since Singapore math only goes up to 6th grade, I needed something new for my oldest. This week she tried several online math curriculum lessons and decided on Teaching Textbooks. They give the first 15 lesson of any class free, so no risk to try them out.

First Week!

I knew we were in for a wild ride teaching 4 kids ages pre-k through junior high. We jumped right into learning. 

First off, history from great grandpa's very own history book. We also created a model to show how volcanic activity formed our local mountains.

We buried a balloon, connected to a straw, under a flat pile of dirt. We then slowly inflated the balloon to represent how magma would push up the earth above it. Erosion from wind and water then rounds off the top of the mountains. If the magma does break through the surface it can leave a crater, like pictured below. 

Another example of a volcanic mound, this time in sand.

Welcome to the Center of Creative Learning

Hello, welcome to the Center for Creative Learning.  I, J, will be your guide for today.  Let's meet our staff.

Here is Dragon.

Mr. Dragon

You might recognize him as our our mascot from last year. He has now been promoted to principal. He takes the safety of his students very seriously. If a pencil is too sharp, he won't let you use it. He also nibbles on our assignments to make sure the paper is made of at least 50 percent recycled material. He's environmentally conscious like that. He makes sure we students have plenty of brain breaks. If he thinks we're working too hard, he'll sit on our school work.

Here is Ms. Artemis. She's the secretary.

She likes to keep the office dark

Budget Yellowstone and Grand Teton Trip with Kids

 Our big trip this year was Yellowstone and the Tetons.  I'll be honest, if you want to do a budget trip with a large family, your two biggest ways to save money are going to be tent camping and bringing all your own food.  If you do that, just be prepared for your vehicle to be packed to the brim.

There's a child in this blurry picture somewhere

Yes, our camp site had bears passing through it everyday- but not when we were there. Our loud kids took care of that. All the food had to be locked up unless we were eating and we kept the site extra clean. Which can be hard to do with kids, but bears were a great motivation for tidiness. At our site, there were no showers and the only temperature that came out of the faucets was ice cold.  So, no, this budget part of the trip was not my favorite, but we didn't spend a whole lot of time at camp and the money we saved allowed us to do some other fun activities. Plus, by camping, we were right in the park which saved us a lot of time. That was important to us as it gave us ability to see more of the parks. We decided that was a bigger priority than more comfortable accommodations.

Summer Fun!

 Learning happens all year long.

This summer our kids did swim lessons, with the oldest on swim team. One son did gymnastics. They all had lots of time with friends. It was fun to see our son with autism progress in his social skills.

We also had plenty of family adventures, from hiking and camping to family reunions.

Beaver lodge- and in the background the beaver dam

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