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.

I also realized pretty quick that it was taking too long to do multiple language art lessons.  We decided to try Mia Academy for my oldest two, while I read with my youngest son.  While we have worked on his speech, part of his autism is he remembers words really well. This week he completed the first 200 fry words lists. Fry word are the 1000 most frequent words found in literature. They make up 90 percent of all written words.

K also built 2 Mel Science kits and a crunch labs kits. He loves putting things together. At the age of 3 he was doing 100 piece puzzles. By the age of 5, he could put together 1000+ piece Lego sets. Science kits are similar. He enjoys watching the video explanations of the scientific principles and then following the instructions to build something. We try our best to provided him with what he needs to pursue his interest as well as expand its scope.

Helping autistic kids pursue their interests, as long as they are safe, provides a way for them to interact in with the world in a way that makes sense to them. It also helps them live a more fulfilling life that's meaningful to them. For further reading on the benefits you can go here: https://www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/the-benefits-of-special-interests-in-autism/

With all of our work we do each week, we try to take plenty of brain breaks during the day as well as sensory breaks. Some of my son's favorite sensory actives are swinging, playing floor is lava, rolling up in a blanket, and playing with kinetic sand.

For more ideas on building your own sensory box or a even sensory room on a budget, you can check out this post: https://homebaseforlearning.blogspot.com/2023/01/bonus-building-home-sensory-room.html

I love that we have the flexibility to adjust to his needs.

Moving on to the work my other 2 kids did this week: J is taking world history on Mia Academy, and the two oldest are both taking general science.

We continue to do health and social studies together. For health, we learned how your body responds to bad bacteria, viruses, and other things that make us sick. Our immune system is pretty cool.

For our state's history, we are reading the history book written by the kids great grandpa. He was a story teller.

Here's what the kids remember most from history:

J: Everywhere is named after either a beaver trapper or something a beaver trapper did.

A: A guy and three BEARS!

We learned a lot of our oldest towns and valleys were named after early trappers who were the first white men to settle in the area. 

Grandpa also shared a story about a trapper, named MacAntosh, who shot a bear only to find she had a cub. He took the cub and raised it as a pet. The bear would follow him around while he trapped. One day the bear, now grown, protected him when a mountain lion attacked. She was wounded, and had lost an eye. She left him to nurse her wounds and he didn't see her until after hibernation was over. After the following hibernation, she returned to him, this time with two cubs. Now the trapper had three bears following him around the woods. Eventually he retired and became a preacher. The bears would sit in the pews with him, which a lot of people enjoyed, but some did not like it. They insisted he lock the bears up. Being caged caused the bears to turn mean. No longer able to care for them, MacAntosh released the bears back into the wild.

I tried to find a document online backing up this story and was unable to. I'm not sure where it came from or if it's just a legend, but there are plenty of tales of trappers raising, or selling, bear cubs after shooting the mama bear. One of the most famous bears that came out of a similar situation was Winnie, as in Winnie the Pooh.

There are so many fascinating things to learn about the world, from history to science. Science is one of my favorite subjects. We do a lot of it. First, the kids built their Hack Packs and Crunch Lab kits. 

Other planned science we did this week included continuing to study our Aqua Dragons as they grow.

And, along with other homeschoolers, we learned about the physical reaction that occurs when you mix mentos and soda pop together.

This week we had many spontaneous science lessons as well.  For example, on the Latrodectus Mactans. 

Yes, that is a black widow we found hanging out on our door frame leading into the garage. I love Google for a quick science lessons on why I killed the thing before taking theses pictures.

I also love Google Lens. While my daughter and I were out walking, we came across this little guy. I guess I should say, large guy, for a caterpillar.

A quick picture, and a google lens search later, we learned it was a two tailed swallow tail caterpillar that turns into a beautiful yellow butterfly.

Another beautiful science lesson came when we saw these rays in the east one evening.

They are anticrepuscular rays that happen opposite of the setting sun. They are actually parallel but appear to converge to a center point due to linear perspective. Rays that come from the direction of the sun are called crepuscular rays.

Our last unplanned science lesson came when were were planning on heading to the mountain for some outdoor exploring. Instead, we learned about thunderstorm cells.  We got an estimated 1-3 inches in less than an hour. Our area has had a lot of flooding lately.

But also a lot of beautiful rainbows

With all of the rain, we decided to check our crawl space for flooding. It was fine. Since we were down there anyway, and our furnace is also down there, Dad gave the kids a lesson in how to change a furnace filter.

Although PE didn't work out that day, we were able to swim earlier in the week. Now that school is back in session, we had the whole pool nearly to ourselves.

Other things we did this week was an escape room box and computer time.

 Starfall and Minecraft Education are two of my kids favorites.

Once again, homeschool allows us to tailor each child's education to their interest, and that is a beautiful thing.