Posts by Joan Concilio

05Apr
27

5 ways to constructively deal with your kids’ mood swings

Oh, and with a post title like that, can you tell what kind of day we had here when I wrote this post? It had its rough spots. But you know, it ended OK. Actually, it ended up pretty good, and that’s saying a lot.

I don’t often mention that Ashar has Asperger’s. She does – and ADHD, and maybe OCD, and definitely SPD, and a whole bunch of other letter-things that, at least outside the public school system, truly don’t mean much 90% of the time. The thing is, during the other 10% of our lives, when we’re in “full Aspie mode,” Chris and Kaitlyn and I become very aware that we’re not dealing with someone who thinks “like a teenage girl.” We’re dealing with someone – an incredibly special and important someone – who truly cannot process or accept the world around her. She’s in China, and we’re screaming in French. Getting louder ain’t gonna help.

That’s hard to accept, in a lot of ways. We’re still learning how to deal with Asperger’s meltdowns – which you’ve got to kind of see to believe; if you’re an autism-spectrum parent, you totally understand – but these aren’t situations where things like sending Ashar to her room or grounding her are going to have any effect whatsoever. (My amazing virtual friend Karen over at Confessions of an Asperger’s Mom does a wonderful job, through her writing, of trying to help bring an understanding to this. I’d love for you to read this post of hers, which really shows what one of “these days” is like for us.)

Dealing with Asperger's meltdowns

Looking back, I can see how the day in question went off track. And I can see what I did that helped – or didn’t help – get Ashar (and our day as a whole) back on a better course.

It’s not a miracle cure, but here’s what worked. Next time your kids are mid-meltdown…

1. Stay calm.

You are all looking at me through the computer screen like I’m the biggest, most naive idiot on the blogging block, aren’t you? I hear you, saying, “What the (expletive deleted) is this (expletive deleted) lady doing tell me to stay calm? My (expletive deleted) kid just told me she hates me, hates herself, and wants to gouge my (expletive deleted) eyeballs out with a spoon! I’ll show her calm…”

I hear you. I do. I think I probably said all that and more in the past couple of years. But today, I didn’t yell. I didn’t cry. I didn’t go into the kitchen and start slamming the dishes around. I didn’t grab Ashar’s arm and forcibly sit her little rear end down in the chair I wanted her in. I just… talked. Quietly. I can’t say I didn’t get a little weepy myself at a couple points, but not the crazy crying mess that I sometimes turn into when I’m really angry.

You know that your kids know how to push your buttons. They do. When people are very close to you, they also know exactly how to hurt you. Whether it’s your parents, your kids, your spouse… you can’t control what those people say to you. The ONLY thing you can control is your reaction to it. Choose to bring peace to YOUR side of the equation, at least. (The wonderful Shawn over at Abundant Mama has a great post on choosing peace that I encourage you to check out.)

This is true no matter what your situation, but I find it especially true when you’re talking about kids on the autism spectrum, or with mood-related issues. Some days, I just have to “bring the calm” enough for both of us, because Ashar just can’t get there on her own, but she can catch my vibe almost instinctively.

2. Inventory the basic needs first.

This sounds silly, but as Ashar and I were going a solid three rounds about talking respectfully, lying, helping and all that good stuff, it never occurred to me that she was exhausted. Tired Ashar is never a recipe for awesome behavior, and she admitted at lunch that she was pretty drained. That in itself is incredibly unusual – yet I didn’t pick up on it. So when World War S broke out, starting with the battle cry of “I’m bored and NO ONE EVER GIVES ME ANYTHING TO DO,” some of my first suggestions were things that would take a lot of energy. Not to mention, I just kept giving her more sensory input – the last thing she wants when she’s sleepy. Not bright, Mom.

Later, after things had settled down, we went to our 4-H club meeting. Mid-meeting, while we were electing officers, Ashar pretty vocally tried to hurry up the proceedings to get to snack time, telling everyone she’s hungry. Turning to her dad, I joked, “I do feed the kid,” and he goes, “What did she have for dinner?”

Guess what? I hadn’t fed her dinner. We’d dealt with every issue under the sun, it seemed, but by the time things were copacetic again, I’d just plain forgotten that we hadn’t eaten yet. Good grief.

First things first. Again, this is especially true in our Asperger’s situation, but it applies to everyone. Before you start addressing things like respectful attitudes, get everyone’s simple needs met. You’ll be amazed at how many times “bored” or “cranky” really translate into “hungry” or “tired” or “not feeling well.”

3. Stick to one issue.

This day’s arguments in our house touched on a good number of topics – boredom, lying, anger, responsibilities – but there was one central issue, which was Ashar’s tone of voice in response to some things I’d said to her. So, yes, part of the problem was that she’d lied to me, but that wasn’t what we were truly “fighting” about. If, when I’d caught her in a lie, she’d basically ‘fessed up – even sulkily – it could’ve ended there.

Instead, I got “FINE – I’M A HUGE LIAR AND I NEVER TELL YOU THE TRUTH AND I’M A HORRIBLE PERSON – ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?” (Confession: I got sarcastic. “Oh, yeah, I’m super happy to be yelled at like that.” That never works, by the way. So don’t do that one.)

Same problem with not working neatly on something she was doing for me. If I’d have realized she was just too tired to work on it effectively (Tip 2), or if she’d told me either nicely or at least not with fire coming out of her mouth that she really wasn’t in a frame of mind to do it, then that would’ve been mildly unpleasant but basically, I’d have dropped it. Instead, I got “ALL YOU CARE ABOUT ANY MORE IS PUNISHING ME AND MAKING ME DO STUPID THINGS.” So in both cases, I actually ignored the earlier issue and dealt with the “problem theme” instead. Do I care about lying? Of course I do. But you can’t win a war on two fronts, as it were.

Again, this works with your spouse, your parents, your kids, your friends. Agree to fight right. Stick to the issue that’s most pressing, and leave other stuff out of it. It doesn’t mean you’ll never go back to it, but don’t pile on right then.

Specifically to the autism spectrum issue here, I think required reading should be How To Stop Confusing Your Asperger’s Child. The most salient point there is the third one. When you’re trying to reason with your kids, especially about behavior issues, it’s natural to try to add more and more explanation when you feel they’re not “getting it.” In an incredibly humbling (to me) statement, though, that article says: “If language is the problem in the first place, adding more language probably isn’t going to help.”

Duh. I need to work more on that, but it’s stuck with me.

4. Focus and refocus.

As part of the issue in question, Ashar was just adamant that she was bored, that everything was boring, that there was NO INFORMATION ON DINOSAURS ON THE WHOLE INTERNET, that she has nothing that she ever enjoys doing… you know the drill. That was a tangent I didn’t want to go down, but at the same time, I saw a way to use it constructively: After being (rudely) shut down at everything I suggested she might like to do, I said, “You know what would help? I’d like you to make me a list of 10 things you can do if you’re bored, so that I know what to suggest in the future.”

This does a few things. First, you acknowledge the issue, but you don’t turn it into “the big problem.” So I didn’t get into a “How can you be bored?” debate, but I addressed her feeling of boredom. Then, I refocused it onto what I wanted, which was basically for Ashar to stop thinking “angry thoughts” and think of things that would bring her back into a more peaceful frame of mind. Making a list of things she enjoys is a good way of doing this, without being quite as heavy-handed as “Let’s talk about happy things now,” you know?

I will add: Our first go-round at this list was less than successful in its original intent. It included wonders like “Never talk” and “Go upstairs and be sad.” Again, focus and refocus. That’s where I said, “OK, it’s totally fine for you to get this on paper and get all the anger out. But let’s try to make another list, of NICE and FUN things you like to do if you’re bored.” I didn’t get into some of the issues brought up by her list – not the least of which was what I’m pretty sure was her trying to pass a profanity off as a misspelling – but I acknowledged where we were and where I was hoping to refocus toward.

On “take 2,” I made another change – I asked Ashar to dictate her items to me, and I’d write them down. Again – she’s tired. She doesn’t love writing by hand at any point, so add tired to the mix and it’s kind of a train wreck. So I kind of evolved the system, and she ended up dictating to me a pretty nice list, including things like “Watch the birds,” “Go outside and look for animals” and “Give hugs.”

All this list-making had another purpose, too – when Ashar had something to focus on doing, a task at hand, it gave her time to calm down and let the situation de-escalate. And it worked – by the time the second list was done, she had apologized, hugged me, and found some things to do. She was even excited to get ready to go to 4-H; we gave her the option to skip it, if she wasn’t feeling like it’d be good, but she wanted to go and had a great time.

5. Move on.

Don’t hold a grudge. That’s one I struggle with a lot, especially because Ashar’s mood can change on a dime and sometimes she’s all hearts and flowers again while I’m still clenching my fists and biting my tongue. But you know what? It doesn’t help. She truly doesn’t “get” why you’re still mad, especially if she’s apologized, and in our house, holding on to those bad feelings just creates a bad situation all over again.

We got through it. “This, too, shall pass,” and all that. I feel like I ran a marathon, but I’ve had worse.

And on this rough day, Ashar chose to run and was re-elected as historian of her 4-H club – a role for which she won the countywide award last year.

And she gave me a big hug and kiss before bed.

So, yeah, it ended up being a good day.

Read more

If you’re interested in reading more about our life with Asperger’s and SPD, check out this post that shows what sensory processing disorder is like and this post that describes our journey to an autism spectrum diagnosis.

04Apr
8

Alert: Stegosauruses are roaming the earth again

Today’s story begins with one family’s adventure making creatures out of their recycling. When intrepid homeschooling mom Joan of York, PA, reported the project’s success to the MAKEDO company, the company responded by suggesting the Conciliottoman family check out its Facebook page.

There, beset by tons of inspiring images, young Ashar Otto, 12, sighted this creature:

MAKEDO dinosaur out of recycled boxes

While the animal is purported to be a crocodile by its creatress in Hong Kong, young Ms. Otto believed it to bear a striking resemblance to an extinct creature, the stegosaurus. Mysteriously, a similar creature was soon after spotted atop the Conciliottoman family’s piano.

The seemingly friendly creature was dubbed a stegosaurus after all, and a romantic one at that, as the beast was seen carrying a flower in its mouth. It did also seem to eat a paper airplane with a cocktail umbrella protruding from it, but details on that are unclear.

MAKEDO dinosaur out of recycled boxes

The stegosaurus then took to the roads, being spotted in a forest bearing a striking resemblance to a stock image on the art website Deviantart, but purportedly in York County, PA.

MAKEDO dinosaur out of recycled boxes, Photoshopped into a forest

While intrepid reporters across the county (or at least one home therein) began following the story, other sightings were reported from the shores of Lake Michigan (on the Wisconsin side), where a similar monster, perhaps bearing a striking resemblance to the one of Facebook fame, appeared on a frighteningly stock-image-like lakeshore.

MAKEDO dinosaur out of recycled boxes, Photoshopped beside a lake

Armed with credible reports nationwide, the enterprising Conciliottoman family, known for its journalistic background, set to work sharing the latest news on these creatures with the residents of their town via a hastily-produced two-page special edition of the local newspaper, produced with the most cutting-edge news design program around – PowerPoint.

Homeschool newspaper project

Homeschool newspaper project

The family asks that you stay tuned. Further updates will be shared as information comes to light about these mysterious creatures, one of which appears to be sleeping now atop a bookcase also containing a small winter white hamster. Sources close to the scene suggest the larger animal appears in no way carnivorous, and the small hamster, while unwilling to offer comment for the record, appeared relieved.

01Apr
1

Two recent projects: Nesting materials for the birds, and facts about Vikings

Busy day today in the Conciliottoman family! We’ve been inspired by the Homeschool Makeover series on Hodgepodge (and by the somewhat frightening collection of things on top of my piano) to start trying to move SOME of our “living” into the finished basement family room. It tends to be a home for miscellaneous junk, but it’s a nice room and I’ll be glad to see it turned into a place where we’re all happy to hang out. Before-and-after shots will be coming, but in the meantime, here’s a quick look at two of our recent projects.

We were hoping at some time this week to get around to making a “nesting materials box” for our backyard birds. We got the idea here, and used some of our old dryer lint, a suet feeder we picked up for about $2 at Walmart, and some yarn (29 cents a ball at the Rescue Mission store) to put it together midweek. Homeschooling on the Cheap friends: This makes a great low-cost (and fun!) project!

Here’s the finished product, hanging in our ornamental pear tree near Ashar’s birdhouse.

Making a nesting materials box for birds to use

Can’t wait to see some prettily-colored nests in our yard!

On another topic altogether, I mentioned yesterday that one of the events Ashar put on our timeline was the first recorded Viking raid in 787. Kind of an odd thing to include, right?

Well, not really. Ashar got the idea from a project she worked on with Chris. We’re not even sure where this interest started, but Ashar has a figurine of a little Viking named Olaf, which came from Chris’ mom, and she wanted to draw a Viking ship to make him feel at home. So here’s what she worked with my mom and me to create:

Drawing of a viking ship

Well, all that happened back in January (read more on my husband’s blog, Papergreat, here), and a while later, she and Chris had a “Daddy day” and decided to create a Viking project. Ashar LOVES research projects, which I realize is an odd sentence to write, but she likes to collect facts and sort them out and write them down. Normally, she’s not one to “do” anything with all her facts – she’s not going to write you a report – but things like Powerpoints, lists, etc., are pretty common.

So they took another poster-sized sheet of paper, the same as the one the ship is on, and came up with everything from a “List of Viking Names” to “Viking Food” to “Viking Facts.”

Facts about vikings

Ashar loved “Gorm the Sleepy” as a name for a Viking. It’s pretty close to “Mom the Sleepy,” so I can approve. They learned how Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye got his name (from a birthmark around one of his eyes) and even what religious beliefs the Norsemen had.

More facts about vikings

Drawings are courtesy of Chris, as is the super-neat handwriting, but fun fact finding was a team effort! I can’t take any credit for this one, but I can definitely give it some props here on the blog.

What projects has your family been up to this week? What do you have planned for the week ahead?

31Mar
4

Our curriculum-fair splurge: One big timeline of history

I went to today’s curriculum fair, held by our local homeschool association, in part just to be nosey. I want to know what other homeschoolers are doing. If nothing else, I wanted to look at some of the materials and go, “Nope, that’s not for us; we’re doing the right thing.”  Today turned out to be much more than that – in a good way.

We were joined by some good friends of ours whose daughter is also taught at home. (This is the same wonderful gal who was Ashar’s sleepover guest recently.) It was just great to get to talk with them and have the girls EXCITED about learning. They stood still and listened to a man from our local historical society talk about Colonial times for, seriously, 20 minutes. That’s big for our ADHD Ladies! 🙂

Listening to a living history presentation

The girls learned from him about wampum, furs (which they much would have preferred to keep as pets!), writing with feathers and ink, how our county was important during the Revolutionary War, and a bunch of other stuff. (I’m not even sure WHAT stuff, because I was in the background chatting.)

We did sneak a peek at some of the packaged curriculum, but the prices alone were enough to send our two families (both on what I affectionately call the low-budget homeschooling plan, AKA “we have internet, and we have the library”) packing for the used-curriculum area.

Other odds-and-ends purchases included a biography of Martin Luther King Jr.; a book called “Your Rugged Constitution,” a lovely 1952 paperback explaining what, exactly, all that stuff in our Constitution means; a pretty cool book of themed word searches with facts about each puzzle’s topic included; a book called “Understanding Geography” and another called “Great Map Mysteries,” which the woman selling highly recommended to Ashar, as it works detective stories into reading maps; and another Abeka text called “Our America,” which is a history and geography basic overview. Oh, and “The National Geographic Traveler’s Map of Italy,” and a little pamphlet-sized book from 1985 called “The President.” Grand total on all that was, maybe, $10 or $15.

The splurge was TOTALLY unexpected. Ashar does like history, but she has NEVER been much for dates. I think it wasn’t until this year that she picked up on “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” So when she goes, “MOM! Look at that, it’s a huge blank timeline!!” Insert me going, “What??” Indeed, it was, as described, a huge blank timeline. Much like the ones I’d seen in some of the curriculum catalogs, and had thought, “Oh, good grief, we’d never keep up with that, and where would we even put it, and wouldn’t Ashar hate it if I made her do that?”

Well. After some negotiation, I am pleased to report that for somewhere in the range of $8 to $10, we are now ALSO the proud owners of the laminated Mark-It Timeline of History, which is now proudly taking up most of the door to my basement. In biggest news, it is no longer blank, because Ashar spent FOUR HOURS tonight filling in her choice of what ended up being 28 events from 4000 BC to present. Why four hours? Well…

To this point, we have, among other things:

  • 100 AD: The wheelbarrow appears in China (which led to a discussion later using a map and globe about how the wheelbarrow eventually came to North America, via China to India to Britain to the colonies)
  • 300 AD: Mayan civilization at its high point
  • 419 AD: Attila the Hun was born
  • 787 AD: First known Viking raid (more on Vikings to come tomorrow, from another Chris-and-Ashar project)

Detailed view of a timeline for homeschooling history

  • 1000 AD: Mountain lions roamed North America
  • 1452 AD: Leonardo da Vinci was born
  • 1485 AD: Da Vinci makes Vitruvian Man drawing (this led to an explanation on my part on what the Vitruvian Man is – a measure of ideal proportions – and to illustrate, we got out the tape measure and measured each other to see if we meet the “perfect” proportions – the same from fingertip to fingertip as from head to toe)
  • 1492 AD: Columbus sailed the ocean blue
  • 1542 AD: Kingdom of Ireland formed
  • 1550 AD: Bison came to North America
  • 1600 AD: Mitts (polydactyl cat) first found in North America (Mitts is OUR polydactyl cat, seen at the bottom of this post, and Ashar wanted to clearly reflect him on our timeline)
  • 1680 AD: Blackbeard the pirate was born
  • 1776 AD: The Declaration of Independence was signed
  • 1788 AD: Australia was founded
  • 1853 AD: Vincent van Gogh was born
  • 1888 AD: National Geographic was founded
  • 1899 AD: First German Shepherds bred
  • 1935 AD: My Mommom was born; Elvis Presley was born
  • 1970 AD: My dad was born; winter white hamsters introduced
  • 1982 AD: My mom was born
  • 1992 AD: Golden doodles first recognized
  • 2000 AD: I was born

Honestly? By the time it got to be about 11:30 p.m., MOM was the one too tired to continue. I think she’d have been at it another hour if I’d had the energy. As it is, I feel like we not only covered about a year’s worth of history lessons, but we put them in more context than I ever remember from history classes. No, it’s not an exhaustive look at the history of the world. But it took things Ashar already knew about or was interested in and put them in perspective, and I’m pretty sure she’s going to want to keep filling it in as we go.

But now I need a nap.

More great history resources

Unschool Rules: Part of the iHomeschool Network Massive Guide to Homeschooling HistoryThis post is part of the iHomeschool Network Massive Guide to Homeschooling History.

Make sure to check it out for tons of other great history resources, including links to a dozen more Unschool Rules posts!

30Mar
2

Making robots out of recycling… and Legos!

We’ve been on a robot rampage in our house since early March. Reading about robots (nonfiction)… making Lego robots… drawing robots… looking up pictures of robots… brainstorming what we’d do if we HAD a robot… reading about robots (fiction)… and the list goes on.

This is a perfect example of why I’m convinced the best education for Ashar is (a) individual and (b) flexible. She had an interest, and when given the time and the freedom, she not only pursued it, she really owned the topic and all sorts of things that came with it. If someone had told her in December, “OK, we’re going to study robots this week, and we’re going to write a report about how robots are used,” I guarantee she would remember nothing by now. But, as it stands, she’s followed this interest for a full month, probably knows more than me about robots and how they work, and has had a good time doing it.

I’d mentioned the Lego robots (non-“functional” because we can’t afford the $300 working robot kit from Lego) before. The thing with these is, Ashar was very specific with each of them about where their sensors are, what they’re used for, where they’re effective, and all sorts of other details.

Building robots out of LEGO bricks

These are just a few of the smaller ones. She’s got moon and Mars rovers and some other larger ones she designed up in her room, but they’re not terribly portable for Mom’s photo shoots. Of these, her favorite is the little monopod in the front center (we learned that monopod means “one foot”). She would tell you that the two in the middle row at right are from the same factory; you can tell by their round front sensors. Many of these are household robots – used for things like cleaning, amusing pets (so they’re not lonely while you’re at work), cooking and more. The one in the middle row at left has a trap door on the back; that’s where it puts the litter it picks up.

Speaking of being environmentally friendly, Chris had found, a few weeks ago, a kit from a company called MAKEDO that gives you reusable connectors designed to help you turn your recyclables into things like dogs or robots. We’d been saving up boxes of various sizes, and Ashar bought a little bag of wheels and washers at our local Rescue Mission store for about 50 cents, so today we put those things together and made some recycled “friends.”

Originally, she wanted to make all robots, but her creativity as she was putting some of the pieces together led her in other directions.

MAKEDO recycled car

I had mentioned before that cars – especially race cars – are now an interest of Ashar’s too. No surprise, then, that a car was the first MAKEDO creation she built. Those blue pieces are called “re-clips” and work kind of like reusable zip ties. They’re made of nylon, too, again in keeping with the whole environmentally friendly thing. (Ashar LOVED that concept, so we talked a lot about it.) She liked using her wheels and washers from the Rescue Mission store, one of my Mary Kay boxes, and some of the stickers from the robot kit.

MAKEDO recycled bird

This guy is a bird. (Or an airplane. But probably a bird.) He’s got the MAKEDO hinge pieces for wings and re-clips for feet and a beak. The re-clips are also holding on two large white washers for eyes. His body is a breadcrumb container.

MAKEDO recycled monster

This is a “monster.” A friendly one, though. He’s made from a Mary Kay box and a Silpada jewelry box (and a mouth cut from one of our spaghetti boxes. His “eyebrows” and “mustache” were a completely great Ashar idea: Squeeze together the padding that was inside the box for the jewelry, and glue them on. She also figured out how to punch the eyes out, and how to fit the mouth in place where she wanted them.

MAKEDO recycled submarine or tank

This is some kind of tank or submarine with a periscope. (Or, as Ashar tried to describe it, “the military thing with the spy place on top.”) Waffle box, another breadcrumb container, and the lid off a used-up can of spray paint. Two neat things here: First, the periscope piece spins all the way around, because of how we used the re-clip to attach it. And second, when we tried to punch a hole in the top of the spray-paint can lid, it punched it out too big, but Ashar was quick to say, “Oh, we can just put a washer there!”

MAKEDO recycled flower or windmill

The last creation was a simple one with some of our remaining parts – it’s either a flower or a windmill (you can tell that Ashar likes to leave her options open!) That’s the lid from the jewelry box the monster’s head was made out of, and, you guessed it, a toilet-paper roll, attached by a re-clip.

Other than providing some help punching holes, I tried to completely stay “out” of the planning stages for these and just see where Ashar wanted to go.

She had a great time, though I fear I’m going to have to buy more of the MAKEDO kits because she’s not going to want to take these apart to make more stuff, and we’ve used all our pieces. It’s a shame I didn’t know that BEFORE her birthday last weekend, but, hey, there’s always Christmas.

A few other bits of random learning today:

  • Ashar worked more on her Jimmie Johnson fan fiction story.
  • Around 10:30 p.m., I was browsing through some free printable ideas and worksheets at Teachers Pay Teachers, just to see what’s available, and Ashar looks over my shoulder and says, “Does that say the Declaration of Independence???!” as if I’d suddenly discovered the Holy Grail. We got an easy-to-read copy there, but she wanted to see what a signed copy looked like, so we found one of those and printed it out as well. Then, she found this website from ushistory.org, which lists the signers by state (as well as a ton of other stuff; very useful). THEN, Chris says, “Hey, Ashar, if you’re interested in who signed it, I think I have a little book of all the people.” Sure enough, he comes upstairs with a, like, 1950s booklet put out by Prudential Insurance, listing all the signers. (Benefits of having an ephemera hideout?!) Ashar sat and read from that – aloud – for about a half-hour, complete with phrases like “a special committee be appointed to draft a declaration dissolving allegiance with the mother country.” I have a feeling we’ll be hearing more on this topic tomorrow.
  • Ashar and I took another walk around the former golf course; two miles in almost exactly an hour. We found a huge spread of wild-growing mint, which smelled great; examined the cattails and saw some fish and frogs around the pond (Ashar was able to come home and correctly identify the fish, which were bluegills.)

Tomorrow is our homeschool association’s curriculum fair. I can’t wait to meet some other local homeschoolers, but I go making this vow: I will not buy the shiny curriculum. Even if it’s used and cheap. I can’t promise I won’t pick up books here and there, but I will strive to do so ONLY if they catch Ashar’s interest. (Or, if, being a mom, I just can’t resist thinking, “But I know she’ll love that!”)

As we browse, I’m going to try to remember today, and all the awesome things Ashar decided to discover on her own, and hopefully I’ll walk out with only the things that will help meet that goal I mentioned earlier of individual and flexible learning! One of the things I’ve learned already is that those traits aren’t a given in homeschooling. There are plenty of inflexible or “mass-market” homeschooling solutions out there, the same as there are in public or private school. I can’t and won’t say that any of those are bad, but I can say they’re not what we need. Now wish me luck sticking to that!

29Mar
0

Family Reading Roundup: World records, the Titanic and middle-school horror stories

Well, if you’ve been reading along since our last reading roundup, you would have to guess that some of Ashar’s top choices in the past week have been about the Titanic.

Here’s a look at what she’s been reading:

 

I have to highlight that Ashar is a HUGE Guinness Book fan, and randomly disappeared upstairs today for about an hour to read from this year’s.

She’s received an edition every Christmas for the past three years, and with her own money at her former school’s book fair, she bought the “Gamer’s Edition” of the book.

These are the perfect type of book for her – written engagingly, but also at a high level of comprehension; visually engaging; and able to be “browsed” without having to follow a plotline for hours.

Along with those, today she picked up her copies of Middle School, the Worst Years of My Life and Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules and read for a good while. She’s read them both – or had them read aloud to her – before, but still enjoys them, especially the sketched pictures. They both combine a comic book style with more of a standard novel, and that’s another thing that’s a good fit!

I’m reading a historical romance called “The Secret Diary” by Martha Kirkland, and Chris is reading The Pinball Effect by James Burke. May I point out that this roundup each week serves to remind me how lowbrow my reading material is compared with the rest of my family’s? (Case in point: Chris’s book has the subtitle “How Renaissance water gardens made the carburetor possible,” while mine has a picture of a guy in a cravat.)

So what are you and your family reading this week?

28Mar
6

Family day: Inside fun with Monopoly; outside fun with a ‘backyard’ hike

Today was Chris’s day off… which ALWAYS makes Ashar happy! She calls these “Daddy days,” and she is just not interested in doing anything unless he’s involved.

Thankfully, Chris is an amazingly great dad who doesn’t mind giving up most of his day off to the whims of a 12-year-old girl. Today, her first request was that the three of us play Monopoly, which was a birthday present from her Grandma. She very specifically wanted the classic edition, which was certainly a relief to me – no electronic banking to figure out, and the rules were mostly just as I remembered.

Homeschoolers playing Monopoly

This had to have been the best game of Monopoly I’ve ever played. Ashar was the banker (VOLUNTARILY, once I told her the banker gets to go first!) and we taught her how to make deals. Interesting deals. Early on, we all started off pretty even, but later, Chris got ahead, drifted toward usury (which allowed us to learn a new vocabulary word, in addition to all our it-doesn’t-even-seem-like-math math fun!) and Ashar and I started colluding to stay afloat. By colluding, I mean things like Ashar gave me $17. Just because I’m nice. I ended up with Park Place and Boardwalk (with houses), Ashar had all 4 railroads, the yellows and the reds, and Chris had… everything else. I mean everything. We left no property unpurchased!

And when Chris put 3 houses on Pennsylvania Avenue, which Ashar landed on, I basically bought him off by giving him all I had left, bequeathing my properties to Ashar, and allowing the two of them to continue the game.

Best trade, though, was when Chris (in a moment of generosity, as we were talking about charity), told Ashar he’d give her $100 for a kiss on the cheek. She did. I was, at that point, just about broke, but I offered her $1 for a hug and kiss, and she kindly accepted.

This was a two-hour game, and we finally ended with another deal: Ashar would be declared the winner IF she let Chris pick two stories of his choosing to read at bedtime. Win-win!

It thundered and poured very briefly during our game, but it quickly dried out, and we left to run errands. Among our stops was the library, where Ashar was slightly dismayed by the lack of books on either the Titanic or the kingfisher bird family, but we found what we could.

Driving home, Ashar had a wonderful idea: “Let’s take the dog to the golf course!” We are lucky enough to live almost adjacent to a former golf course, eventually to be the site of a local hospital, but for now home to a wonderful mix of wildlife and walking trails provided by the former golf-cart paths, open to the public each day from dawn to dusk.

Exercising with the dog

We all set off, with Ashar walking Coby, and took an almost two-mile, hour-and-a-half hike over rolling hills and abandoned putting greens.  It’s amazing to see how nature is taking over; in fact, while a couple years ago, the golf course layout was pretty recognizable, now, we were only able to really identify one green.

Red-winged blackbird in Pennsylvania

We saw red-winged blackbirds (which Ashar was the first to correctly identify).

Petting our goldendoodle

Ashar was SO nice to the dog. He’s a little on the older side (he’ll turn 10 this year), and he wasn’t exactly a speed demon. But Ashar encouraged him, telling him what a good job he was doing keeping up, and calling him a nice boy. She even asked Chris to “help” Coby climb up on the rocks with her here, and praised him like crazy for “almost making it on his own.”

Unschooler school picture

I can’t believe we don’t spend time here more often. It’s beautiful – wonderful scenery, very relaxing, a great workout (thanks to all the hills) and literally in our neighborhood’s backyard. We love being outside, and as far as I’m concerned, even despite my somewhat accident-prone nature, I’d love it if the hospital project were delayed so we could enjoy this spot a bit longer.

27Mar
13

What NOT to do when you start homeschooling: 5 things I learned

I had planned today to write about “5 things I learned in our first month of homeschooling.” Yes, a month already!

Then, I saw a writing prompt for this week about “What curriculum or resource just didn’t work for your family?” And I thought… why not look at what I’ve learned by way of what NOT to do when you start homeschooling?!

Again, these are all just what’s not working for us. You might have a wonderful son or daughter who LOVES schedules, workbooks, getting up early, lesson plans and days “off” – and that’s OK. In fact, it’s so OK that I’ll be at your house tomorrow to hang out for a while. 🙂

For us, here are the top five cautionary rules.

1. Don’t overplan or overschedule. I’m a list-maker. I love to make lists of what I “have to do” each day. I’m almost sick in my enjoyment of crossing things off. (Yes, I write things down I’ve already done… just to cross them off.) But our new “learning lifestyle” works best when there’s unstructured time for whatever catches Ashar’s interest. As I looked back over our best days so far, they were completely wrapped up in a particular activity or topic that we took the time to really explore and enjoy – NASCAR racing, rainbow rice, a 1920s geography book, the Titanic. Not surprisingly, these were days when we had the least on our family calendar and the most time to just explore.

2. Don’t overorganize. We tend to keep a pretty neat house – everything nicely put away as often as possible – but some of the best chances to get Ashar interested in learning have been the times when we’ve had stuff strewn about. I didn’t even know strewing was an official “thing” until this month, but imagine that – it’s the conscious choice to put things that encourage discovery in the path of your child. We find that some well-placed books and papers and art supplies masquerading as clutter have made a big difference for us – and, yes, Mom just has to get over the piles of stuff that seem to multiply on her piano. (Minor grumble on my part.) 

3. Workbooks are work. Ashar is funny: When we go to bookstores, he will OFTEN purposely pick out workbooks or worktexts and really want them. He’ll read from the worktext-style books often, and he’ll occasionally get on a kick where he’ll do a couple math pages or a geography puzzle or a vocabulary word search on his own. But our plan to supplement our day-to-day “living math” with a page a day from a workbook that Ashar chose has turned into a lot of work. He’ll do it, and mostly without complaint, but it’s clearly “here’s a thing I have to get through” and not “whoa, check out this cool thing I learned!” That said, he picked up the family bathroom crossword puzzle book this week (oh, don’t laugh, you know you have one too) and filled in a significant number of answers to clues I wouldn’t have thought he’d know, and he enjoys doing occasional puzzle pages that I print out for him. He just doesn’t like the idea of a book of work. When you think about it that way, I guess I can’t blame him; my plan moving forward is to “strew” some pages, but not use the overwhelming book o’ work concept.

What Not to DO When you Start Homeschooling or Unschooling - Unschool RULES4. We’re not morning learners. I don’t just mean we’re not early risers. (Though, in varying degrees, we’re mostly not. Chris gets a lot done in the mornings; my mom is usually up by about 9, even on days she doesn’t work; but Ashar and I alternate between rare days of 8 a.m. wakeups and lots of days of “goodness, is it really 11:30??”) Today was a good example. Ashar and I were both up by 9 a.m.; I went to our newspaper office for my at-work day, and he basically sat around in pajamas until I got home around 5 p.m. After my mom got home from work, Ashar did spend most of their lunchtime together telling “Mommom” all about the Titanic, but in general, it was mostly a “pet the cat, watch the hamster, play on the iPad” kind of day. After about 7 p.m., it was like a switch flipped. Ashar drew a picture, told me a detailed story about his new picture and some older pictures he found in the same sketchbook, made a cartoon about people playing laser tag, made up a new game to play with the cat and, when I said it was “bedtime,” sat with me on his bed and read all about insects from a textbook for at least an hour, even answering the review questions as we got to them. Know your family. If you’ve got an evening learner, it might be a tough adjustment, but I can highly vouch for making it work! (Read more on this here in a GREAT post from Rachel at Clean.)

5. Days “off” make it harder to have days “on.” Probably the only negative reaction we’ve gotten – at least openly – to our system of learning so far is that a few people have said, “Man, you’re not really giving him any days off.” The reverse of that is that it might look to some people that we’re not “doing any work.” I figure if you’ve got critiques on both sides, you must be walking the middle pretty well. We don’t have days off because our days on  are just… regular days. We’re truly trying to embrace everyday learning, and that doesn’t stop on Saturdays and Sundays. I articulated this in our first week, and I feel pretty strongly about it. I’ll also add that, because of Ashar’s personality, days where we truly are off our game, where we’re not engaged as a family in anything that stimulates us to learn or experience new things, are really hard for him. He’s kind of adrift, and he doesn’t react well to that. And, the next day, it’s really hard to get him engaged again. I think of it like a gear system – once the motor is turning, if all the gears are meshed, it’ll keep running. But when the gears are out of alignment, or when the motor stops, you just can’t get everything moving again without some work. So, for us, we’ll stick to everyday life and everyday learning and try to limit our time “off.”

Two bonus points I thought of as I was writing:

6. Don’t bring “school” home. Pennsylvania law requires your home school district to provide a copy of all the textbooks and other curricula for your child’s grade level, at your request. Well, to be on the safe side, we figured, “Let’s get a copy, just in case.” They’ve since sat in Ashar’s backpack, almost untouched. It wasn’t too big of a shocker to us, and we didn’t even plan to work out of them – just to have them for reference – but I have not found a single one even half as useful as the books on our family bookshelf. I will add, in a rare “negative review” from me, that I wholeheartedly do not recommend the “Everyday Math” and “College Preparatory Math” programs that so many schools in York County are using. Talk about overcomplicating things. Our biggest challenge is that these programs are nonlinear, and for Ashar, that’s a recipe for confusion. Interestingly, I don’t know of any homeschooler who picked up this curriculum to use after removing their child from public school, and for me, that says a lot.

7. Beware of curriculum overload. Funny, for the lady who has no curriculum right now outside her family’s own bookshelf, right? But you know how it goes. All the shiny catalogs look wonderful… and that curriculum fair will be an excellent chance to check out the latest and greatest… and the used stuff, that’s SO cheap, it can’t hurt to buy… all of it… right?

Don’t overcomplicate. Books are great. Plans are great. But you can’t follow ALL the plans, or read ALL the books. Pick what works, and let the rest go. Don’t worry. Much like those kittens my friend Rose posts on Facebook, that cute little curriculum will find a good home. 🙂

So what are some other lessons I still need to learn? Save me some heartache… comment and tell me!

26Mar
3

A great day to play outside and learn about the Titanic

Birdhouses and birdfeeders

Even though it was a little windy and just slightly chillier than I’d like, today was one of those days where I looked around our neighborhood and thought: “This is beautiful.” The ornamental pears and other trees were blooming; birds were everywhere; everyone’s grass was freshly mowed; and even the “weeds,” like dandelions near the mailboxes, were cheerful and bright.

Trees in our neighborhood

We moved our cars out of the driveway and Ashar showed me how to play “ball hockey,” the game she thought of yesterday. We used a miniature Hershey Bears hockey stick and a Phillies baseball bat as our “sticks” and had to get a combination of balls of various sizes and weights past each other’s goal lines. It incorporated some soccer and a little bit of basketball, too.

Believe it or not, it was pretty fun – and great exercise. After several rounds, made progressively more difficult by the wind, we took a break to walk the loop around our neighborhood, checking out the birds, identifying different types of garden flowers and chasing the petals of the pear trees as they fluttered around.

That’s my kind of “gym class.” In fact, Ashar, who normally hates not to win at games, didn’t even mind when I scored the winning goal, because we were just having so much fun being active and being outdoors together.

Inside, her huge interest today was sparked by the April edition of National Geographic arriving. Its cover story is about the sinking of the Titanic, and we spent HOURS reading, looking at pictures, and digging deeper online.

I highly recommend this website, also from National Geographic, for an amazing (and FREE) look at the ship’s history. You can play an interactive game where you become a personality from the ship, see an interactive timeline of the construction, and view the photos and biographies of some of the architects who went down with the ship. I truly think I learned as much as Ashar, who knew some things that surprised me. For instance, we talked about the Olympic being the sister ship of the Titanic, but Ashar knew a lot about the Brittanic, another ship in the line, as well.

It also surprised me today how visually observant Ashar is. While playing the interactive game online, you “meet” various personalities like the head purser and captain, and she was able to go to Google images, search for Titanic photos, and pick out some of the crew members from seeing their likenesses in the game. Ditto with one of the online galleries – there was a passing shot of a crew working on the Olympic, and when we opened the magazine, she saw a similar image and said, “Hey, go back to that online where they showed that boat, it’s the same picture.” I’d totally missed that, but she didn’t!

This was Ashar’s favorite image from her searches today:

Titanic crew and captain

She decided she wants to create a Titanic PowerPoint, filled with facts and photos. She found a copy of the ship’s dinner menu from two days before it sank, images of newspaper front pages, all sorts of things she wants to include. She was also both fascinated and horrified at the idea of the captain and so many crew members, including the orchestra, “going down with the ship.” That was a new concept to her, and we talked a lot about it today.

Anyway, I can’t wait to share her finished PowerPoint presentation, which I’m sure will be awesome; she LOVES to make these things! For now, though, I’ll show the cover – she found an animated background, so the ocean rolls when you view it as a slideshow; you’ll have to imagine it for now.

Titanic Unsinkable homeschool PowerPoint project

The font is called “Sinking Ship,” and she found that by herself too. Who knew that existed? I’m excited to see where Ashar takes this new Titanic interest… when she gets into something to this degree, it’s usually a multi-week interest that leads all sorts of directions, and that’s one of the most exciting things to me so far about homeschooling, the ability to follow these when they happen!

Quick Mom update: My primary job is as project manager for a pretty well-known financial blogger. I’ve been working with Baker and Man Vs. Debt full time since early December, but today, I got to do something new – share my story as an introductory post on the MvD blog. If you’re interested in our not-pretty financial life and its turnaround, feel free to read more here! Our financial efforts are what’s most DIRECTLY responsible for us being able to homeschool, so it’s pretty important to me.

25Mar
0

Happy 12th birthday, Sarah! A look at last week, and a look ahead

Sarah's 12th birthday photo

So after taking yesterday entirely “off” to celebrate Ashar’s 12th birthday with her, as well as celebrating Mom’s birthday today, I think I’ve mostly slipped out of my funk from Friday, and I’m pretty excited about the week ahead.

Ashar’s birthday celebration involved me making and decorating a cookie cake (adapted from this Pinterest recipe) and taking a few of her friends out for a hibachi dinner.

Regarding the cake, mad props to Mom, who figured out how to “create” an extra H from the pack of sugar letters we bought, when we found ourselves to be short one. (Ashar promptly informed me, “You know, Mom, like when you do 01134 upside-down on the calculator.” I consider myself told.)

Birthday cookie cake

Despite our shortness of Hs, we had some extras of other letters. Like this B. Which Ashar enjoyed.

Eating a cake-decoration letter

And, finally, no birthday is complete without your friends eating out of your hand, right?

Feeding geese at a lake

Moving on from all that sugar, now here’s a look at some of the things we might do this week… of course subject to change completely!

– Ashar loves codes, and we found this spring code sheet that she wants to do tomorrow. (It’s super-simple, but she’ll still get a kick out of it.)

– Tomorrow, Ashar wants to play in the driveway a game she made up called “ball hockey,” which seems to be a type of obstacle course you need to maneuver a ball or beanbag through. As we possess zero hockey sticks, this should be interesting.

– Ashar has also been begging to make something out of a Styrofoam ball from the craft store. (Funny part: She doesn’t care what. She just wants one of the balls.) So I said I’d see if I could find something we could make. Here’s the inside of the earth.

– We have all the stuff to put out this “nesting materials box” for the birds… except for the suet feeder, as both of ours currently hold suet. So, we’ll pick one up, and make a project out of getting it all put together!

– I’d love to plant this Easter garden.

– If we get a ton of time, we picked up some more soapmaking supplies – CHEAP! – at our local Rescue Mission economy store. So it’d be cool to make some more soap.

– Would love to take a family day trip of some sort this week, or at worst, schedule one for next. We might do something as simple as one of our local factory tours, or maybe head to a park outside our normal visiting area. Who knows?

– I found a bunch of LEGO activities that Ashar said she’d like to do. Probably we wouldn’t be quite as organized as the wonderful people who created them, but still, lots of neat stuff. This is the original set of LEGO “curriculum” for a week; this is what another family did using that as a starting point; and then I found even more great LEGO ideas on Pinterest. I know, you’re shocked.

 If you’re not already, you should clearly be following me on Pinterest to see all the stuff I want to get into. It’s a problem. 🙂