Back to the beginning…

T. has always had to have me help guide him through each of the four math processes step by step.  Not able to problem solve on his own at all.  This has become such an overwhelming issue that he has now lost his ability to count.  SERIOUSLY!!  It is just gone.  So I am bringing us back to the very beginning of learning simple foundational math.  We will continue to advance with ever more complicated processes, but I will have an ongoing task of remedial math to work on with him.

Today, I decided to try Flash cards.  Now, Flash cards don’t teach, they access and when used creatively can help in the process of educating.  I figured I would start with a very simple 0-9 addition to 2 problems.  I really want to incorperate a little more geography into our lessons, so I created a game about destinations.  We chose 10 places as the route including the start and end locations from the world map.  I wrote each destination on an individual little slip of paper.  I asked T. to choose the route we were going to take to get to our final destination and we lined up our slips of paper to reflect the sequence.

I had the cards from the deck in sequential order.  I would lay down the 2+0 card and ask him “if our plane took off from the airport on time?”, then he would give me the solution to the card and if he got it correct I would lay down the next card under the next slip of paper and destination upon it; 2+1, “Did our plane land safely?” “Did we make our next flight to so and so?” “Adding geological and current  issues was interesting, Iraq, Baghdad  for instance, “Did our plane make it through enemy fire?”, India, Delhi: “Did we make it over the mountains?” etc etc for each sequential card.  As he got stronger with his skill of finding the pattern, we mixed up destinations and flight patterns, then I began to mix up the sequence of the cards.  If he couldn’t answer it, I woudl give a hint, but if after that he still couldn’t figure it out we started again with the same sequence.

T. got frustrated easily with the rules, but he did enjoy embellishing on the story line for each place we went to.  He distracted himself by doing so.  So, I realized pretty quickly how disorganized his thoughts were and the severity in lacking addition skills he is at currently.  Weird, how he has had a major drop in IQ.  Math was not something he has ever had a big issue with, but now I re-teach everything.  Huh.

Anyway, thought I would share this idea of making addition facts an interesting game.

Some of Life’s Lessons

Lessons of Life: (found in various locations amoungst the internet)

1. Life isn’t Fair, but it’s still good.
2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.
3. Life is too short to waste time hating someone.
4. Your job won’t take care of you when you are sick.  Your friends and parents will.  Stay in touch.
5. Pay off your credit cards every month.
6. You don’t have to win every argument.  Agree to disagree.
7. Cry with someone.  It’s more healing than crying alone.
8. It’s OK to get angry with the world.  It can take it.
9. Save for retirement starting with your first pay check.
10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
11. Make peace with your past so it won’t screw up the present.
12. It’s OK to let your children see you cry.
13. Don’t compare your life to others.  You have no idea what their journey is all about.
14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn’t be in it.
15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye.  But don’t worry, change just adds new adventures.
16. Take a deep breath.  It calms the mind.
17. Get rid of anything that isn’t useful, bountiful or joyful.
18. Whatever doesn’t kill you really does make you stronger.
19. It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.  But the second one is up to you and no one else.
20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don’t take no for an answer.
21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the nice clothes.  Don’t save it for a special occasion.  Today is Special!
22. Over Prepare, then go with the Flow.
23. Be eccentric now.  Don’t wait for old age to enjoy yourself and be bold.
24. The most important sex organ is the brain.
25. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.
26. Frame every disaster with the words, “In five years, will this matter?”
27. The Choice is yours to make. No one else’s.
28. Forgive everyone everything.
29. What other people think of you is none of your business.
30. Time heals almost everything.  Give time, time.
31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
32. Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
33. Everything is a miracle.
34. You are loved for who you are, not for anything you did or didn’t do.
35. Don’t audit life.  Show up and make the most of it now.
36. Growing old beats the alternative – dying young.
37. Children only get one childhood.
38. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
39. Get outside every day.  You will never regret it.
40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d grab ours back.
41. Envy is a waste of time.  You already have all you need.
42. The best is yet to come.
43. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
44. Yield.
45. Life isn’t tied with a bow, but it’s still a gift.

I am may not always live life following these lessons, but its good to know they are there to return to.

Menu Planning

I don’t choose the days I will make these meals.  I don’t want to be stuck feeling pressure to make one or another, I just want the available food choices, for this particular week.  I have found that planning out my meals keeps costs down, usually, for the grocery shopping each week.

This week:

Dinners

Baked Ham, with  Baked Potatoes and Fruit Salad

Sliced Ham, with Baked Beans and Potato Salad

Roast Beef with Rice and Steamed Broccoli

Mexican Chicken with Spanish Rice

Breakfast

Eggs Benedict(S. will make this on the weekend before grocery shopping or as a Dinner this week)

Pancakes and Bacon

Cereal

Cheesy Eggs and Toast

Lunch

Cresent Creation Calzone

English muffin Pizzas

Hot Dogs with Buns

Salmon and Rice sandwich wrap

As you can see I only plan for four meals, as I know there is at least one day during the week we are eating leftovers and other days we are too lazy busy to make anything.  It has worked so far.  Planning out the meals has been really time consuming, but I hope afterwhile that time will be reduced as I get used to being organized once again.

PS- I am not really blogging all that much since, I can’t really stand listening to the noise my laptop makes all the time.  It is very distracting and creates great annoyance.  I will try to work through it as much as I can, since I really do like blogging, but it will still be sparse until I can get this problem fixed which won’t be for a very long time.  Love trying to sell a house and rent one across the country at the same time.  It does wonders to your budget.    Can you hear the sarcasm?  I am not sure that came across clear enough.  ;P

Iowa Sheep and Wool Festival

http://www.iowasheep.com/festival.php

6th Annual Iowa Sheep & Wool Festival 

June 12 – 13, 2010

Dallas County Fairgrounds, Adel, Iowa

I found a cheap little motel 6 miles away from the Fair Grounds.  Closer than staying all the way in Des Moines area.  Who wants to join me!!!??

Tid Bits

So, I haven’t posted in a long while.  I can’t say I have been super busy or productive, but I have been adjusting to my new surroundings.

My days have consisted of coffee or hot chocolate, checking out email, facebook, regular blog reads, and finding local resources.  After a couple hours, I move downstairs to get T. going with school work.  After he gets through his work, I break out my knitting or head out to run errands.  I have been very fortunate to have found a kindred spirit here in IA, who lives close enough to visit with very frequently and has homeschooled children that enjoy similar hobbies as my children.  Getting together with her and her family is always such a joy.  Since I have moved here, I have been out twice by myself to a Mom’s Night Out with several other independant homeschooling mothers.  I really enjoy this social time.  I feel so refreshed from being able to get out and just hang with adults and no children interuptions. 

I am beginning to get my ducks in a row, too.  I have begun the process of setting T. up with his therapist and psychiatrist.  I have found B. a fabulous classical/spanish guitar instructor.  I am meeting with a TaeKwonDo master this week to see if this dojo suites our needs.  I am purchasing many items for 5th and 10th grade resources.  I am not going to use Keystone National Highschool for Bradley’s main subjects next year.  It has just been too glitchy.  I have tons of resources for history next year and chemistry.  Math is probably going to be Teaching Textbooks.  Haven’t quite figured out English/Language Arts yet.  I just got T. some great Steve Spangler Test Tube experiements he can do anytime and I am purchasing him MCP Spelling for next year.  He will continue his Math 4 from Teaching Textbooks and use the workbooks we alwys have and continue using Melissa Neilson’s A Little Garden Flower curriculum as our base.

In the last two weeks, T. has been having an incredibly difficult time, and really it started getting bad a year and half ago, but I digress.  I am not going to purchase or schedule much in the way for him, as I am not sure he will be with us for much longer.  I am seriously considering placing him in an institution for mental health.  After meetings next week, I will be able to discuss this option with the facility itself for the first time.  We’ll see from there what happens.  It is getting just that bad.

I am excited about a new resource that is going to make a big difference in grocery shopping for my family.  Going out, lately for anything has ended with screaming and hitting, so to avoid that I looked up grocery shopping online.  OMG!!  My local grocery store provides that service.  For real!!  I ordered all my groceries very excitedly and picked them up for $15 extra dollars.  Next time, I will dish out another $5 for them to DELIVER them!!  I am in paradise for mothers avoiding the grocery shopping scenes!  It worked pretty well for my first time and I only had a couple little issues but all in all it was a great experience.  Especially since the roads are really horrible in the winter, I just don’t want to go out there, so this will really keep my household from starving.  LOL

I have found knitting and spinning friends locally, which is wonderful.  I have  a local fiber and yarn shop and another half an hour away.  Sweet!!  I have begun socks!!  Two at a Time on Magic Loop.  Began that way anyway.  Then after not being able to get fully around one of them, I switched them off onto their own needles.  I will post a pic when they are done.  Before Valentine’s day.  That is a hint as to the color spectrum they fall under.  I also started another pair of socks using my friends Lorna Lace sport.  Again pictures soon to come.  No deadline for the second pair yet though.  I am spinning up some soft silver pygora on my wheel.  Only a little at a time though, as My back has not found a chair in the house comfortable enough to spin in yet.

The house has had interesting complications, such as storage areas with out and shelving, leaking water from the freezer, clogged pipes from garbage disposal,  challenges in bringing wood to furnace, screen door handle coming off and not shutting, garage door not automatically opening, etc.  No biggies that we haven’t been able to handle.  I still really like the house.  I still feel as if I am home.  Get a little “homesick” now and then, but mostly this is my HOME.  I have never felt so comfortable in such a big move before.  Even though the weather has been absolutely horrible this year and I have had many changes to deal with, for the most part I am happy and comfortable.

It’s all good, well not all, but you get what I mean.  Looking forward to warmer weather and exploring my new area. 

Looking back…Saying goodbye

Here are a couple pictures from our last playdate in NY.  Before we left, I was truly Blessed by the universe in giving both myself and my dear friend Paula increased stamina and stronger constitutions to handle one last playdate before we needed leave for Iowa.  Ben and T. got a chance to play for a really long time and say goodbye.  Me and Paula got to play and say goodbye, too.

We will miss them dearly.  Hugs!!

Our first holiday in Iowa

Since we aren’t really totally unpacked or recovered from the rather expensive move and house sale prep, I had decided we were not going to be having any celebrations for our Winter Solstice.  It was a rather strong internal struggle to have to put our Advent activities and our Solstice stories aside and to keep our tree and decorations in storage.  I really begin my winters inner work through this process and this year, my shift inwards has been skipped over and I am not sure when I will settle into winter work.  As for now, I must work outwardly and get my house in order.

The Solstice passed by with my chin held high and no observations enacted.  But T. has always been a strong believer in Father Winter and Santa and he expressed serious faith that they were going to find us, even though we moved.  My guilt became rather overwhelming that I had not put anything together for the boys to celebrate and keep the faith alive.  Our relationship with the boys, as of late, has been purely argumentative and cynical.  I began to rationalize gift giving, with thoughts that it might bring some kind of hope or at least not make things worse and crushing all spirit left in them.  So, knowing that B. needed a laptop, that was my first priority.  For T.  I was really torn.  I really wanted to give him something in equivalency to specialness and surprise, but not a laptop.  I also wanted to find him something that would help pacify him when out and about.  I know that sounds horrible and I really feel it is, but I am desperate now a days to survive each day through the explosions and such.  I did it!  I got T. a Nintendo DS lite.  He loves it and I am determined to find out how to make it really useful rather than just a play thing for the game cards.  Apparently there are all sorts of things you can do with this little machine, I just have to find out how and what.

(To make the scene clearer, we went out shopping and had to run a quick errand at Best Buy.  This was two days prior to Christmas.  I wasn’t thinking about holidays at this point and didn’t realize that this store wasn’t going to be as simple to maneuver around in as in the Hole Depot we had been to prior that day.  After what seemed forever, hemming and hawing over whether I should go ahead and purchase these spontaneous gifts for the boys, we had a hard time getting service, then the laptop we had asked for was out of stock, then we saw the one and only line.  It wrapped around the front of the store , down the furthest isle, then almost all the way to the back of the store.  We strolled outta of there with no purchases and a little frustrated.  I simply saw it as a sign of my stupidity and that it was not meant to be this year.  Wednesday(i think) S. went out and purchased all the items we picked out by himself.  I was surprised, pleasantly so. )

I have let the boys have total free access to their new electronics since opening them on Christmas, but that will soon slow down and become more monitored.  My guilt has not been totally subverted since I did end up giving them items I normally would not condone for children, but I am trying to meet my needs and the children’s needs with a more open mind and more hope and trust in the boys.  This is hard for me considering it’s me and they are they.  LOL    Anyway, it was good to see them happy upon waking to gifts wrapped upon the couch laid out for them.  No Chocolate or candy, just some gum, DVD’s, B.’s Laptop and a pc game and T.’s DS and two games.

I look forward to Monday, when we begin to get back to schoolwork.  It’s been weeks since we have been able to focus on any school work and B. has some major catching up and T. too!!  We missed having out family close by as in NY, but we were able to phone family and friends.  It was very low key.  We cooked a lovely turkey for dinner.  I was a little nervous as to how it would come out, since I had not cooked one in this oven before.

I hope everyone is having a lovely Holiday Season!

Chores

Drat!  As soon as we got here, we needed to unpack and do laundry.  We have decided to leave our washer and dryer in New York to sell with the house.  This means we currently have no means of laundering our clothing at the house.  We found a very nice laundry mat a few minutes away and enjoyed a very yummy pizza at a restaurant named Tomaso’s.  Very good pizza, that is all they do!!  Nothing else on the menu.  Better be good, huh?

It was was a flashback for us.  It has been about 8 years since we have needed to use the local laundry mat.  We have had to go to the laundry mat three times now and we have ordered our new washer and dryer from Home Depot, to be delivered sometime this week.  Novelty hasn’t completely worn off, since we found a laundry mat that resides next to a very yummy Indian Food Restaurant.  One of our favorite types of food and the Tahjamahal is quality inexpensive food!  I am also excited that the restaurant is also a small Indian grocer, so I can find all sorts of the yummies I need to cook at home and my favorite soap!

As you can tell we are beginning to settle in and find our way around now.  I am really enjoying this area and for some reason I am not freaking out about the move and being in a new area.  I have no idea why and I hope its not a delayed reaction soon to come.  I feel really comfortable being here and am not scared of the new.  Weird!!!  I am anxiety woman, you know!  Happy!!

On the Way

These are just two pics from the hotel we stayed in on the way to Iowa.  Nothing exciting.

The boys enjoyed the hotel.  It had cable!   We stayed in Sandusky. (sp?)  The next day we were supposed to stop after about 350 miles to check in to another hotel but I just couldn’t stop while it was still daylight, so I pushed through.  It hurt my entire body to drive that far, but it was worth finally being home.

Currently residing in Iowa!

We arrived a day early, by way of lots of painful pushing through the drive to have it be done with.
I have no pictures yet, only due to being overwhelmed by boxes and boxes to be unpacked and places for it all to be placed.
I am really glad to be back with S. I hated being so far a way for such a long time. Yes! A week is a long time in my book!
There is so much to do! We need shelving units and such to help in the unpacking process, so while I rip through boxes unloading stuff everywhere to see what I have and what storage space I need, we are also learning how to get around to find our local hardware stores.
Little by little it is coming along and we are settling in to the new house. This house we are renting, but the lovely landlord has given us permission to do most anything to make it our own. The house is big and has lots of room for the kids to play and hide. They are just happy there is a finished basement that includes a pool table.
I look forward to starting up our routine and getting some school work done. Only then will I feel I am truly settled in.
We are already making lots of friends! I have met a wonderful family that homeschools and lives nearby. I look forward to meeting up with several other homeschooling moms for a Moms-Night-Out shortly after the 25th. I plan on meeting up with several spinners and knitters in the near future. There are four yarn/fiber stores that I get to check out. I am super excited.
Major drawback to the move, is that I have no built in support system ie. babysitters, like I had in NY. My parents were so integral to my sanity and I am going to miss that. There is nothing that could ever replace what my parents gave me.
Hopefully we will soon find the appropriate services for T. so our family can live slightly more peaceful lives.
The snow has come down pretty often this December and I do hope that will slow down. Roads are not cleared well around my neighborhood and many others like my rural area. It makes travel challenging and a little scary sometimes. I think I will have to be more attentive to the weather here and begin purchasing food and such for the likelihood of hibernation during the winter months as it seems most folks do around here. Since, I am well practiced at that, I don’t think it will be too different from what I have done in the past, just upscaled a little.
Well, it’s getting late, not that I can figure out the time change thing so am not sure what the actual time is, but I have to get moving and unpacking and making phone calls galore.
We are here! I live in Iowa now!!!