Snow Day Every Day

Last week saw a blizzard rip through town, causing all of the metro schools to close for the day.  In our world, snow days don't really exist.  We have the occassional "didn't sleep the night before" day, or "don't even bother trying" day, but the actual weather doesn't actually affect our work schedule at all. 

But sometimes you don't appreciate what you have until you see what others don't have.  This last snow day, many parents had the opportunity to spend the day with their little on a typical work or school day, right smack dab in the middle of the week.  Friends rejoiced in the ability to sit down to a nice warm breakfast together, and to hang out at home all day, the city too blustery to lead them out the door.

And I felt blessed.  Like a really lucky girl.

Because everyday I sit and eat breakfast with my children. I make them a nice warm lunch every afternoon.  I get to experience first hand the joys of watching them learn (and somedays the frustrations too!)  

I get to listen in on their play, even if at times I have to rip them apart. 

I don't have to miss them.  I don't have to wonder how they're doing.  I don't have to worry about what they're hearing elsewhere. 

In the blink of an eye, their childhood days will be but a memory.  It's hard for me to believe that now, but I know it to be true.  I feel so content to spend these days with them.  The good days and the hard days, because when you smoosh them all together, it's their childhood.

And I feel beyond grateful.  Because everyday is a snow day.

A Recipe for Success



Boiled Raisin Cake

 I have always enjoyed baking, and now that I have two little ones, I find it to be an excellent rainy day activity. Yes, there are times they ask to bake, and I am just not in the mood, or have just finished cleaning the kitchen…but once we get going, I’m always glad I said yes. Why? Not only because the children really enjoy baking, but also because this time together offers me a wealth of opportunity to work on key academic, sensory and social skills.

It is often the goal of us homeschooling moms, and us autism moms to use every experience to our advantage, to merge play into learning so that our little ones find it hard to tell one from the other. And what better way to do this, than while whipping up something sweet? With baking, there is always a reward at the end.

How can you make baking work for your little ones? Here are a few tips:

Academic Skills in Baking

• Following a recipe is great practice in following directions.

• Depending on the age, or reading skills of your child, reprint your recipe with key words, so that your child can feel like they are reading alone. Or, use clip art, or your own fancy art work to make the recipe visual.

• Measurement skills: baking is a great way to learn about fractions. Use the standard measuring cups to learn basic fractions, or double or triple recipes to work on other fraction skills. Be creative, if a recipe calls for ½ a cup of sugar, ask your child how they could get this amount without using the ½ cup.

• Estimation: children can estimate how many cookies the recipe will yield, record their guesses, and count to check at the end.

• Skip counting: if you are making a larger batch, have children count the number of cookies by making groups of 5 or 10.

• Division: create story problems while baking. For example, you have 5 kids coming to a party, and 24 cookies. How many will each child get? How many will be left over.

• Patterning: for roll out cookies, use different cookie stampers to create patterns on the baking sheet.

Social Skills in Baking:

• Turn taking: children can take turns reading from the recipe. adding ingredients, using the mixer, fetching needed ingredients or tools, etc.

• Settling disputes: Do your kids fight over who gets to crack the eggs, or lick the spoon? Before you get into the action, have children agree upon who gets to do what. Try to let them sort this through on their own, and once the baking begins, they can work on sticking to their bargain.

• Being helpful: children love to feel helpful, not only are they helping to bake, but they can help to clean up, put away ingredients, even sweeping the floor!

• Conversation: talk about what you’re doing, ask lots of questions, reflect upon the activity, what was your favourite part?

• Paying compliments: have children compliment each other on their hard work. Maybe take turns saying what everybody did best!

Sensory Opportunities in Baking:

• Hard work of stirring stiff dough

• Rolling out dough using roller, or their bare hands.

• Kneading dough

• Get their fingers dirty! Baking has oodles of opportunities to get your child’s hands into something soft and icky.

• Lots of smelling! Experiment with calming scents (almond extract, apple, banana, butter, cinnamon, vanilla extract) or arousing scents (chocolate, coffee, lemon, orange, mint)

• Tasting



And if all this doesn’t give you enough incentive to whip out your apron and preheat the oven….perhaps the thoughts of some delicious baked goods will do the trick

School Schmool

Was shopping with Aiden today, saw this bear and cracked up!

I started this blog, initially, partly as a way to keep record of the one year I planned on homeschooling.  I have come to learn that many people enter homeschooling as some sort of temporary arrangement, but quickly fall into its charm and many merits.  I no longer preface my homeschooling choice with a disclaimer of its intended duration.  I no longer feel the need to seperate myself from whom I had imagined most homeschooling moms to be. (Sorry ladies....) 

I am more comfortable in our choice, mainly because I have been blessed enough to have access to a local support group, filled with lovely women, and their beautiful children.  Finding others who share your normal makes all the difference.  A few months ago, I started arranging monthly meetings for those of us within the group who are homeschooling children with special needs.  This has been a great source of encouragement and support to me, like I have learned so often since Aiden's diagnosis, none of us are alone in our challenges.  For some reason, that is one lesson I keep on learning.

Knowing that this is the right educational choice for us doesn't mean it's an easy one.  There have been days that have been just plain tortorous.  Seriously, painful.  But there have also been many, many days that have been highly successful.  Sometimes I look through all of the work we have accomplished, and I can't help but feel proud.  Today Aiden started work on a "Cleaning up on Grade One" booklet I made him, with relish he dipped into his janitorial themed math problems.  Where else could he recieve such individualized, motivational materials?  He carefully drew and recorded the changes in his caterpillars, anxiously awaiting the formation of a chrysalis... engaged, excited learning.  In a regular classroom, he would be too distracted and distressed to benefit from such a science project.

I've had a paradigm shift with my attitude towards homeschooling.  Initially it was begun out of necessity, and our sheer terror of facing the public school system.  Now, I see its discovery as yet one more gift discovered by our family since we started calling Aiden's autism by name.

Shine!

Our little artist participated in our second annual homeschool Creativity Fair last night.   We sorted through the reams of paper containing his artwork, and chose some of his favourites for his display board.

I just love this event. Because our children are homeschooled, they don't always get opportunities to share their school work, their big projects, unit studies or artistic endeavors with a large group.  And let's be honest, many kids are exhibitionists at heart.  Another component of this even is a contest for an art project and creative writing.  Last year Aiden won in his age category for his drawing of a track crane, and this year he won first prize for his drawing of "Daddy's Guitars" and also an honourable mention for his poem, "Ducks."

I cannot express in words (although admittedly I am trying) how beyond proud we are of him. This is truly his opportunity to let his little light shine.  So often his abilities can go unseen in the blur or his energy and perpetual motion, but his art stands still for all to see.

Sure his display depicted many things not typically drawn by six year olds, but who needs typical..give me his drawings of bathroom carts, buckets on wheels, stand up dustpans, and chairs any day!

So allow me this.  My pride.  And probably way more pictures than necessary.

Rubbermaid!

Aiden and Margaret