I like when things work. I like when my children succeed. This week, I was able to enjoy some small successes. Perhaps the world would not bother to take notice, but I did, and chose to celebrate in my heart. This week we will be exploring the wonderful world of language arts.

Writing

I’m a writer. I love to write. I enjoy putting words together and conveying thoughts that make other people laugh or cry or change for the better. Sometimes I even write just for me. 🙂 I want my children to be able to write. They don’t need to become writers, but I do want them to be able to communicate effectively. That’s why I feel “language arts” is so important.

So I was very excited to see Naomi writing.

I have been unsure of how to proceed in this area. I didn’t know what she could do, and what I could fairly expect from her. But I decided to just let her go at it. I asked her to write two sentences about China and draw me a picture. (This after reading a chapter on ancient China in history) I told her not to worry about spelling but simply to write, and I would help her correct it. This is what she wrote:

china’ made lots’ of stuf! and the childrin! had to lrn 600 ltres.

Yeah! Great job, Naomi! Notice that she wrote complete sentences with subject and predicate, which I haven’t taught her yet. She also did a great job of sounding out the words and writing the sounds she heard. I showed her the correct spellings and had her correct them. I will stress punctuation more in future assignments. She seemed to be very excited about China, with all the exclamation points!

I am encouraged with the start we have made. I now know that I can reasonably ask her to give me two sentences about something we read aloud, along with oral narration. She is very forthcoming with narration, so I’m excited to see what she can do with writing.

Naomi is also helping me do a review of an online reading program. You can look for my review in early December.

Reading

Holly and Isaac are doing the same level of work, which makes my life easier. They are both in the middle of learning how to read. They can both sound out simple words and read short stories with simple words. They are about half way through 100 easy lessons. I could tell that they would appreciate some variety, so I was excited to see a free download at Currclick. The download consisted of phonics worksheets, conveniently right at their level. They have each done a few already, and they are doing quite well. Today they read a list of words, and were asked to put the words in the appropriate sentences. I think I will go back and purchase some of their full length materials.

Letters

Sadie is still working on letters. She loves the flashcards from our Jones’ Geniuses curriculum. Each letter is given an animal. She loves going through her cards and saying the animals, like A A Ape. However, she has not been able to write any letters. I have not even been able to teach her how to write her name. She has excellent pencil control and makes up letters, but can’t seem to reproduce a word that I write. She can trace perfectly, by the way.

One of the things I love about homeschooling is the ability to pull from several sources and put together something that works. That is what I have started doing for Sadie. I want to help her with letter recognition and the ability to write letters and improve her verbal communication. When she is frustrated, she reverts back to baby talk and pointing at objects. Here is what we are doing right now.

I took out Language Lessons for Little Ones. This book teaches the alphabet. It also uses picture study, poetry, and copywork. Sadie actually started giving me some great feedback to the paintings and a poem I read her. (Big improvement from grunts, baby talk, and barking!) When we got to the first lesson with letter A, I pulled out her flashcards. We talked about A A Ape and A A Anteater. Then I took out the alphabet copywork from notebookingpages.com and let her color in the big letter A. Then we got to the exciting part. I showed her how to write a letter A, and she wrote one, too! Well, it was crooked, but once I moved the paper to accommodate her left handed writing, they looked pretty good.

Today, I let her draw an ape and an anteater, and practice more writing. I was impressed as she said to herself, “Down, Down, and across.”

A new blog

As my wonderful faithful readers know, I have found myself in a new world. I have two people with aspergers syndrome in my house. I have been researching and reading a lot! I have also been praying. YHVH put a wonderful idea in my head. I firmly believe that Torah applies to all of life. Surely it could apply to aspergers, too. The more I research and put pieces together, the more I believe this is true.

So, I started a blog just to write about Torah and aspergers. I’m writing it mostly for me, a place for me to organize my thoughts and record our progress. But if you are in a similar situation, you are most welcome to follow along. I have a feed from my new blog, My Wonderfully Made Aspie, down at the bottom of this website.

A picture

This is all my school aged kids: Naomi, Holly, Isaac, and Sadie. We were getting ready for a little birthday get together. We don’t do much for birthdays, but we do like to have a special meal and say, “Hey! You got a year older!” Elisha turned two on Sunday, and Holly turned eight on Monday. They are amazing! (Only a homeschool family would have ABC posters hanging over the couch!)

I hope you all had a great week, and are looking forward to a restful Shabbat.

This post was shared with TOBY homeschool highlights.