The Beauty of Homeschooling

Last week was a very busy week....this week too! There are just so many appointments for some reason. We also had a very brief foster placement last week, which lost us a day of school. It is all good though, because we have lots of time to make it up. Jodi Lin is continuing to zoom through the kindergarten hooked on phonics and sometime in October will be starting the grade one. I am sure things will likely go a little slower after that as the kindergarten should be just review. She has now learned 3 memory verses and is starting on the fourth. Her handwritting looks very good for a grade one (I think). She does not space her words that well though. She always wants me to put my finger down to create her space. In math now she is learning fractions...just 1/2, 1/3 and 1/4. When she was working on addition and subtraction earlier I watched her use the abacus. If the number she needed was 7 she would leave 3 behind as opposed to counting out 7. I thought that was pretty cool, she was subtracting right there with out even knowing it. I don't think I am going to worry about the abacus much at all. She will just stop using it eventually as she gets better. We are starting to get into more detail with the clock and learning to read the minutes, I am sure this will take a little time. We are starting to learn about measuring. We started to day by measuring stuff around the house in centimeters tomorrow we will be weighing things. I am trying to bring a little bit of science into our weeks now. I have a book on science experiments and I want to spend sometime learning something about science.

I have still not figured out what is going on with Dominic and preschool. Hopefully this week we will get it all sorted out. The test Dominic had done turned out not to be what I had thought and was just a hearing test. His hearing is fine...although I already knew that. The man said he would look in to doing a brain stem test, but he didn't sound very promising. He said they don't normally do this test this young unless the hearing test comes up with something. They were also concerned about sedation and his heart...they weren't sure where they would have to do the test. I think it is all very annoying. I want them just to do it, so that I can know if auditory processing is his issue. The OT is coming here tomorrow during school time to watch him in his own environment. She says that she thinks we should go through the autism assessment although it may seem like he does not have it....he could be high on the spectrum. I don't know what I want to do about this. I feel quite strongly that Dominic does not have autism (and it is not denial). I just don't feel that he really fits into the spectrum, I think it is more sensory or at least auditory processing problems. Autism is the popular thing now....although I know it is way too common, I just feel like they want to assume it first of all and don't look enough into other disorders. I just want to make sure I know what is the best way to teach him. Anyway hopefully the diet will help with this a little. I am starting to think he has stopped his throwing. Dominic was throwing obsessively. I mean throwing random things across the room at random times with no reason....all day long. I haven't been noticing this so much lately and I am wondering if this is the diet, he doesn't seem to be empty things constantly either. I don't know though because he still can't seem to play by himself, still puts things in his mouth all the time and other sensory behaviours. Maybe the diet is helping some though. I can't really say I have noticed any differences in his speech though.

So it looks like we may have been contaminated quite a bit. I realized recently that rice milk can have gluten, it was really dumb for me not to check this out as it is something we have been drinking everyday. I was actually making Dominic drink his before he left the table and he didn't want to. We had been drinking Rice Dream and apparently it has a small amount of gluten in it, they admit it. I don't think it bothered us at all though. Last week I decided to purchase a different kind of rice milk as someone told me it was better tasting. I didn't even think to make sure it was gluten free, I was thinking more of a milk that was dairy free. Well last week I had bad cramps....as I wrote on my last update. I was also starting to feel tired more again. Dominic has had the runs for a week now. I am now assuming this is why. We have switched to soy milk and hopefully that will work much better. Already it is working better because Dominic actually likes it. Anyway we start again!

Okay I gotta go, as I was typing this update the people from child care services called and told me that Dominic will be going to a daycare on Clarence. Apparently they do Jolly phonics and handwriting without tears there. Sounds like a good one. We have to go sign some forms and figure out what we will be paying. Better get ready to go, we have to be there in a half hour.

Thanks for checking in....sorry for the long update!

Jenaia