This week I’ve been training on a new position (with earlier hours, urgh, but more of them and with slightly better pay) for my inbound customer service job, as well as finishing up Shorty’s two unit studies on the US Constitution and Mr. Popper’s Penguins/ Polar Animals this week to correspond with our WinterPromise units. We’ve been doing a lot of lapbooking and notebooking this year, the combination of which has seemed to really help Shorty with retaining the information, as opposed to the prior year’s format of me reading and him forgetting instantly.

Shorty’s polar animals lapbook (with notebooking), on which he’s been working for a month, has come out spectacularly – I’ll post pictures this weekend – and the US Constitution lapbook, while not as extensive, helped him learn a lot about civics, researching and fact-finding. We used Wikepedia, the White House for Kids site, and a few library books.  For the next two weeks, we’ll be taking a break from Animals and their World/ American Story 1 and be doing a unit study on the 2008 Presidential Elections with its corresponding lapbook, and a lighter, more fun one on the history and symbols of Halloween.  But it’s been a pretty intense week, academics-wise, as well as having judo twice this week.

Yesterday we had a field trip yesterday with our local homeschooling group to see the EXCELLENT production of the musical 1776 at the Actor’s Playhouse in Coral Gables. If you’re in the Miami area either this weekend or next, and you like musicals, you neeeeeeed to see this production. I’m a huge fan of the movie, and being a hopeless Trekkie, I love the original cast recording of the 1990s revival starring Brent Spiner, but this production far exceeded my expectations and is easily one of the best professional theater productions I’ve ever seen. There was not a weak link among the cast in terms of singing or acting; the costumes were spectacular; the staging was polished and visually arresting. Even the usually dramatic aspects of the show were pulled off seamlessly – the young man who sang “Mama, Look Sharp,” my least favorite song, had a gorgeous, mesmerizing tenor. I was just honestly blown away.

It’s a great show on its own – with a libretto written by a historian, it brings these historical figures to (larger than) life, wars and all, while illustrating the very human struggle that went into founding our nation, and how very self-aware the various characters were in how tenuous that founding was.  Even though we know how it ends, you can’t help feeling suspense at how they’re going to manage to get there against all odds. I am hard pressed to wonder how this musical fares outside of the US. As an American, it’s a show that makes you feel like history’s figures were fighting for you, even if they didn’t know it at the time.

Our group went to see it on a “school day,” meaning we were surrounded by public school elementary and high school kids, and they all loved it. The acting and singing and production values of this show were so good in this production that even usually jaded Miami teenagers could not contain their swelling applause and cheering by the time the delegates all signed at the end. A few kids even whooped righteously during the song, “The Egg,” in which Ben Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson sing: “And just as Tom here has written /Though the egg may belong to Great Britain / The eagle inside belongs to us!” It’s so cool to hear kids’ genuine enthusiasm inspired by a history lesson cleverly disguised as an engaging musical.

Anyway, if you can’t see the play, rent the movie – it’s on Netflix and it’s really terrific.

Today I work a few hours in the morning, then Shorty and I are going to go see High School Musical 3, about which I am easily much more excited than he is. I bought daytime tickets hoping to avoid the hoards of children that will inevitably congregate to the movie this weekend, but it backfired – turns out, today is a school holiday for Dade County public schools. OOPS. Then more judo (sparring match tonight!) Then possible eventual collapse at octogenarian hours later tonight.  Being an adult sure is tiring sometimes!

I’m clearing off space in my bookshelf and am listing the following items for sale. I take PayPal, credit cards and personal checks. Shipping via media mail is $2.50 for the first book, $1 per each additional unless otherwise noted. If it’s scratched out, it means it’s no longer available.

Science Books
Many of these are from WinterPromise’s Animals and their World theme, or helpful to it. All only read once. $3 each or $15 for all 6 titles.

• Socks by Beverly Cleary
• Ereth’s Birthday by Avi
• Tarantula in My Purse
• Mr. Popper’s Penguins by Richard Atwater
• Coyote Autumn (never read)
• Grizzly Bear Family Book (never read)

Other WP Animals and Their World Books:

• Lost in the Woods – Carl R. Sams II and Jean Stoick – hardcover, never used – $8
• Richard Scarry’ Storybook – hardcover, like new, $6
• Glow-in-the-Dark Fish – hardocver, like new, $6
• The Animal Kingdom (God’s Design Series) – softcover, never used – $10

Animal Behavior series:

• Animals and Their Young
• Animal Defenses
• Animal Senses
  
• Animal Talk
  
• Animals at Work
  

Each of these has only been read once, look new, and are $3.50 each, or $15 for all 5 titles.

Animals of the World Jigsaw Puzzle Book – 6 beautiful full-color 13″x 9″puzzles corresponding to most of the WP AW units, never used – $6

Usborne Book of the Earth – Earth Science encyclopedia, out of print, full color and beautiful, 250+ pages, never used – $5

History Books
These are in WinterPromise’s American Story/ American Crossing I and Hideaways in History themes.

The following are $3 apiece:

• Can’t You Make Them Behave, King George? – Jean Fritz
• And Then What Happened, Paul Revere? – Jean Fritz
• If You Were There When They Signed The Constitution
• If You Lived At the Time of the American Revolution
• Discovery of the Americas – Betty Maestro
• Exploration and Conquest – Betty Maestro
• Colonial Times – Betty Maestro
• Liberty! How the Revolutionary War Began – Lucille Recht Penner
• George Washington – Cheryl Harness
• How the US Government Works
• The US Constitution and You

Other History books:

• Easy Make and Learn Projects: Colonial Times - $5- like new
• Story of the World Vol 3 (very good cond.) and 4 (new never used) – Susan Wise Bauer. $8 each or $15 for the pair. I will throw in for free a half-used Activity book for Vol 3 – half the sheets are used but the activity book is intact.

Magic Treehouse Sets
These are all in very good/ like new condition. Each set is $6 and includes the fictional story plus the research guide. Will sell all six sets for $30.

• Pirates Past Noon/Pirates
• Knights at Dawn/ Knights
• Mummies in the Morning/Mummies and Pyramids
• Revolutionary War on Tuesday/ American Revolution
• Dinosaurs before Dark/ Dinosaurs
• Thanksgiving on Thursday/ Pilgrims

Math and Language Arts

• Rod and Staff Math Grade 4 set - $25 REDUCED – includes the two teacher’s manuals, student text, text booklet and drill book. Drill book is missing the first 3 drills, otherwise it is in immaculate condition. Shipping on this is included in price. Retails for nearly $50 so this is quite a savings.
• Rod and Staff English 4 – Building with Diligence – student text only, used but intact – $4
• Handwriting Without Tears – Cursive Success – never used new student book + package of unused handwriting paper – $8

Please email me at info(at)alrpros dot com or just leave me a comment on this form if you have any questions (be sure to leave an email where I can reach you!). I will ship within 48 hours of receiving your payment and provide you a tracking number as well. I prefer PayPal. And if you can’t use any of these, feel free to spread the link around to any groups or forums you may know of, in case someone can.

When I lived in New England, it used to be the sight and scent of fallen leaves, and the pleasantly crisp turn of the weather. But here in Miami we don’t get any of that, so for me now it would have to be the smell of baked cinnamon wafting through the house.

Pumpkin bread.

Apple oats cobbler.

Everything is 100% organic and from scratch. Mmmm.

I thought this was a cool article and they give permission for reprint as long as we give credit, so here it is:

Do’s & Don’t for Lapbooking Success

By Katie Kubesh

How do you do lapbooks? Are there any things you should and should not do? Hmmm.. this is a question I am asked frequently. I usually tell people the fun thing about lapbooks is that it allows you and your student to be creative – there really are no do’s and don’ts. Then I started thinking… maybe there are. Maybe, just maybe, we get so caught up in the do’s and don’ts and the process of lapbooking that we forget the true purpose of lapbooking. Maybe if we just follow a few simple “rules” we can truly focus on the topic of study and the hands-on fun!

Here are some Do’s & Don’ts for Lapbooking Success:

1. DO focus on the lapbook as a tool for learning. Lapbooking is not what your student is studying. Your student is studying astronomy, geography, history, etc. The lapbook is simply a tool to help your student do that.

2. DON’T let the planning and process of making a lapbook make you lose sight of your educational goals.

3. DO allow your student to take ownership and express his or her creativity.

4. DON”T focus on following your plans to a “T”.

5. DO guide your student as he or she completes the lapbook.

6. DON’T wear yourself out trying to plan the entire process.

7. DO focus on the process of learning and being creative.

8. DON’T focus on making the finished project look perfect.

9. DO encourage your student to have fun and try new things.

10. DON’T force or insist your child complete a lapbook.

11. DO try the Quarterly freebie at In the Hands of a Child if you are a 1st time lapbooker (or a veteran). Even if you are not planning to study that topic right away, look it over for ideas or save it for the time when you might decide to study that topic.

12. DO, DO, DO put laughter and learning together in the hands of your child!

Katie Kubesh is co-owner and writer/researcher for In the Hands of a Child. Recognizing that hands-on projects are essential to the learning experience, In the Hands of a Child has created Project Packs that go beyond the hands-on aspect. They have taken the preparation time out of the parent/teacher job description with Complete Ready to Assemble Lapbook-style units that are available in Ebook, Printed Book, and CD formats. Please visit their website.

Since our slow, leisurely take on Winter Promise’s American Story 1 – with a month-long divergence in the study of the Constitution and another 3 weeks studying the current Presidential election – is going to leave us with about six weeks at the end of the year with nothing to do, I decided it would be a good time for us to do a unit study on the state of Florida in which we live. Typically kids in the public schools do state history in fourth or fifth grade, so the time is right.

We’ll do another lap-n-note unit (lapbook plus concurrent notebook), take some field trips, do a week of studying the Seminoles, etc. I’ve printed out nearly 50 pages.

It turns out About.com has whole sections dedicated to enabling homeschooling parents to do a state unit study with their kids.

Here’s Florida’s: http://homeschooling.about.com/cs/unitssubjgeog/a/susfl.htm

It’s an amazing resource, complete with printables, notebooking pages, coloring, lesson plans, web sites, book suggestions and more. All you have to do to get it for your state is to change the last two letters of the URL to your state’s abbreviation. For example, if you live in California, yours would be http://homeschooling.about.com/cs/unitssubjgeog/a/susca.htm instead of susfl.htm.

Perfect! Now to organize it all…

It’s been a while since I posted one of these, and this picture deserves a little back story.

One of the homeschooling families brought this in to our local park group. This vine had repeatedly grown behind a drain pipe and wrapped itself around the various wires and exterior cables of a home, as vines are wont to do. And every so often, the dad in the family would go out and hack the vine down so that it wouldn’t ruin anything electrical, but he was never able to really reach its roots, so it always grew back.

This went on for quite some time, with the vine growing back and the dad cutting it down…

… until the vine outsmarted him.

Click to enlarge.

That’s right. It grew IN A KNOT around the electrical wiring. Take that, chop-happy Dad! As is obvious by the photo, the Dad had the last word, but he was so in awe that he brought it for all of the children to ooh and ahh over at the park.

You really do kind of have to admire its tenacity, am I right?

A few weeks ago I got a “Vegetarian Starter Kit” in the mail from PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) – an organization which I don’t support for many reasons. I prefer instead to support the ASPCA, but I digress. I’m assuming my mom had it sent to me because she’s a PETA supporter. The “starter kit” is really just a brochure with, I felt, some fairly misleading articles. For example, there’s an article about why it’s inhumane to eat eggs and dairy due to the conditions in which most animals in the industry live; they don’t mention cage-free eggs or the increasing number of dairy farmers committed to treating their cows well. I’ve bought milk, eggs and butter from people committed to humane animal treatment for years and have no intention of stopping.

They do have a point about how a diet lower in animal products does appear to have many health benefits, especially for people for whom there is a strong family history of cancer, hypertension and heart disease like in my family. Though most of the celebrity advocates in the brochure were pretty inane, there was one celebrity quote that got me thinking, and that was Alicia Silverstone, who said that veganism had opened up her palate to international cuisine and had introduced her to a huge variety of foods. I envied her just then, because living with Shorty, I can’t see myself having those kinds of options any time soon.

Shorty has sensory integration dysfunction. What this means is, he does not process sensory information the way other people do. Some (most) people with SID are what’s known as hypersensitive; these are the folks who are overly sensitive to sensory stimulus.  Most people with autism have SID; most peopl with SID are not autistic. My grandma does not have autism but she does have SID. She watches television with the colors dimmed and on very low volume; wearing bright colors makes her physically uncomfortable; she cooks very blandly and has very sensitive food tastes; many clothes make her itchy; she has to wear shoes bigger than her actual size; she cannot tolerate seeing movies in a theater at all, etc etc etc.

Shorty is rare and is hyposensitive. The way it was explained to me by his former occupational therapist is, he lives life like he’s wearing a wetsuit, sunglasses and earplugs. He does not feel his body in space very well – he spills everything, trips over his own feet, bumps into walls, touches the wall whenever we are walking down a hallway, never seems to feel any pain. He’s one of those kids that could have a gaping wound on his head and he’d be like “It doesn’t hurt!” He likes loud music, bright colors, strong smells and tastes.

Shorty is, as a result, extremely orally defensive. He fits all the characteristics on that page – every single one. He likes things that are crunchy, sour, spicy things that pack a sensory “punch” because it’s easier for him to feel them in his mouth.  Mushy or mashed foods, soups, beans, grains, mixed foods like salsa or casseroles – these are all foods that he can’t feel in his mouth very well, so they slide down his throat out of his control and make him gag or, in some cases, even throw up. THAT WAS A FUN THANKSGIVING WHEN WE FOUND THAT OUT, LET ME TELL YOU.

Because many/most Aspies have OCD and my kiddo is no exception, he has developed an OCD-like attitude toward the foods that make him gag. He says he isn’t afraid of them, he just “really, really doesn’t like them,” but it looks like mild anxiety to me. Also as a result, our diet is relatively limited, but in ways that most picky children don’t self-limit. For most kids, apple sauce and mashed potatoes are staples; my child
won’t even eat foods on the same plate as them, in case they’ve been
“contaminated.” Unlike most kids, he’ll eat almost any kind of fruit or vegetable as long as it’s not mushy or mashed or covered in a sauce… but as stand-alones, not in sauces or casseroles. It took me 2 years to get him to even try pasta, and he still won’t eat it if it has tomato sauce on it because he’s afraid that the sauce has tomato chunks (or worse, other kinds of chunks, like peppers). I have to make it Mediterranean-style, with just olive oil and Parmesan cheese, and he will eat macaroni and cheese from Kraft’s or Annie’s. But he won’t touch calzones or lasagna; no soups, no rice, no beans or legumes, no grains of any kind, no mashed anything, no stuffing, no casseroles, nada.

He has improved, little by little, but mostly because his mom is such a big freaking nag. My goal has been to slowly desensitize him to as many different kinds of foods as possible. At least twice a week, I put something on his plate I KNOW he doesn’t like. A small amount. I encourage him to try it in tiny miniscule “safe” amounts. I appeal to his strong sense of logic (“You’re not going to die if you try this, dude. Your head will not explode. I promise.” It gets him giggling and often works.)  Over time, this has had a cumulative effect, in that it has expanded his repertoire of foods that he’ll eat, and also has made him… hmm. Braver? More wiling to experiment, since he is more certain now that many new foods are not disgusting at all, but may even be yummy.

I also do the “wipe his face with various textures” thing that page encourages and I think it does help. I also got him an electric toothbrush and the vibrating, I think, has made him a lot less orally defensive.

Still no rice and beans, though – my Cuban family mourns – and no soups or lasagna or casseroles. So basically, though I have been looking at ways to severely cut down on our animal product consumption, outright vegetarianism for us would be next to impossible, just like the GFCF diet recommended for children with autism was totally undoable for us; though we tried for a year, he just won’t touch many of the alternative sources of nutrients.

Also, no offense to any vegans reading this, I think American vegan diets are a wee bit creepy. The suggestions on the GoVeg.com web site seem almost preoccupied with meat substitutes, and I’m sorry, but I don’t see the benefits of a diet primarily consisting of foods with quotes in their names (“Chik’n” Nuggets, “Burger” crumbles, Breakfast “Sausages,” etc.)  Eek. I’m also leery of soy-overdosing, for many health reasons, for myself and for Shorty, and don’t like to eat processed soy products every day.

However, we are down to eating meat 3 times a week now, mostly seafood, as opposed to red meat or chicken every day, sometimes more than once a day like we were before, and I’m pretty happy with that.  I am scouring web sites for vegetarian and sometimes vegan recipes that I know he will try. It has helped Shorty be more open-minded – something he is making a concerted effort to do, as he is aware, the older he gets, that his cageyness about food limits him in many ways.

Yesterday for lunch, we had hummus and raw veggie wraps in tortillas with chips for lunch. HUMMUS IS A LEGUME, I AM SO HAPPY!!! but he just thinks it’s a tasty spread For dinner, we had roasted asparagus with a nice garlic vinaigrette (I had to make sure there was no garlic chunkiness on his, and he would only eat it after I explained the vinaigrette was a “salad dressing”); pan-grilled portobello mushrooms (mushrooms are something I got him to eat only recently, with the “encourage him to try it in tiny bites” technique; the recipe called for chopped parsley, which I omitted because it would’ve made them inedible for him) and sliced roasted red potatoes. He declared it “excellent”, which is pretty awesome if you consider that a year ago, he wouldn’t have touched any of those three dishes with a ten foot pole, much less eat them all on one plate.

Who knows? Maybe by this time next year, he’ll be trying my lasagna.