Christmas break fun

Well, I actually found a gingerbread house kit that is dairy free at Sam's club so we built a gingerbread house monday!  The kids had a blast, although Little Guy was more interested in eating all the gumdrops.  It was messy but fun.

Yesterday, we went outside to build a snowman which was super fun of course.

  We are having a good Christmas break and I find it interesting to see the projects that my eldest begins on his own when we are not "doing school".  Today he wrote a song complete with musical notes.  Just pretend notes mind you, he's no Beethoven or anything.  It was really cute though, and I had to hang it up.  This will probably be my last post before Christmas, so Merry Christmas!

Making Candy and Tae Kwon Do update

Well, after two weeks of trying to get my eldest son to talk about WHY he didn't want to go back to his Tae Kwon Do class, we finally got out of him that the outfit was bugging him.  Now this is the first time really that his sensory issues have caused a clothing problem unless you count preferring to sleep in jeans than jammies which I think is just weird.  Anyways, we found out we were tying the belt too tight for him and he was uncomfortable.  Now why he couldn't tell us that two weeks ago don't ask me.  Anyways, he did agree to go back but ONLY if mommy takes it with him, lucky me!  So anyways, I have had two lessons this week, and he seems to be thorally enjoying it.  I on the other hand feel a little silly being the only adult in the class at this time, but oh well.  I was informed that parents are more than welcome to join in and they weren't too hard on me.  I now know front stance, front kick, and down block.  So don't come mug me in the alleys I might just have to kick you!  LOL!

I am happy though, because he needs something extra to occupy his time besides video games.  Plus talk about learning discipline, my little man is the politest most respectful little guy in the class.  He even said, "Nice one, sir." to the instructor after he demonstrated a kick. lol  I think he threw in more "sir"s than was required like he has over-generalized that rule in class but it was super cute.

Okay, yesterday was candy making day in my house.  We made fancy dipped pretzel rods, the fatter pretzel twists and dipped ritz crackers with PB.  My eldest helped with some of the dipping and all of the sprinkling.  In fact, I think he over-sprinkled just a tad!  I should have took pictures to post.  I meant to but I forgot.

Also, I really need to give my eldest more open-ended homeschool projects.  Today was our last day of school before we take a break for Christmas so I decided to go easy on him.  I just told him he could make me a book and could take the whole weekend to do it.  I think he is about done.  I told him it could be about anything Christmas related.  He decided to make a book called "Santa and his Sleigh" and he went to work.  I stapled some pages together with green poster-board for the cover, and told him to go at it.  He made six pages just this afternoon complete with sentences and illustrations.  I was very proud of him.  You see, he has fine motor delays that make writing very time consuming and hard for him, but man when I just let him go at it on his own, he just showed me how much he can shine.  He hates copy work so much that I thought this would be hard for him, but he did awesome!

Haircuts, Tae Kwan do, and the Maccabeats

Well, we started the day off with a totally "fun" haircut for my eldest little guy.  You see usually we go over to Grandma's house and Grandpa holds him while Grandma buzzes his hair off.  We cut it as short as possible so we don't need to do it often.  He has hated haircuts hmmm well his whole life.  Well the past few times he handled them pretty well, so since Grandma is busy this week and with Christmas fast approaching, I talked him into letting me do it this time.  Well talk about flashbacks.  We had a screaming meltdown with him insisting that the hair falling on him hurts and spitting all over my floor because he got some hair in his face.  He was also clawing at his neck and arms to the point where daddy had to hold his arms down while I finished.  And I am sure I missed a few spots.  Um yeah, autism and haircuts are just NOT a good mix.  But we survived and his hair doesn't look too bad lol.  

Another recent thing is that my eldest was taking is taking Tae Kwon Do through the YMCA.  Well, he a couple of weeks ago started refusing to go and we couldn't figure out why.  It is starting to come out that he is having some sensory issues with it.  One thing he brought up today was not liking the uniform  which makes sense since we had only had it a week when he quit wanting to go.  So now I need to figure out if I can find a more sensory friendly martial arts uniform.  I am sure there are probably other sensory issues at play that he is unable to express but I am trying to talk him into giving it another try and maybe brainstorming with his instructor some.

Now you are probably wondering about the Maccabeats being in my title.  Well my littlest guy is obsessed with the video "Candlelight" by the Maccabeats.  To the point where he watches it on the computer over and over and has a meltdown when I turn it off.  I find it quite cute but seriously that song is now stuck in my head.  But seriously my little guy is obsessed with the video and he actually makes sounds trying to sing it and anything that helps him be more verbal is really great, so I am singing it with him and bouncing around trying to get him to try to sing.  It's so awesome to see him really try to sing that I don't mind listening to it over and over and over like twenty times a day.  I guess it has been more like ten today, but still totally stuck in my head.  I tried to get him to watch a few other videos and he likes some okay, but Candlelight is by far his fav. I have found it calms a meltdown within seconds which is awesome. 

Easter Seals and new eating low

Well, today has been an interesting one.  I got a call from Easter Seals, and my little guys referral process is finally going through.  He will be receiving a comprehensive evaluation for autism sometime in the Spring or Summer of next year.  There is a waiting list unfortunately.  But they said the diagnostic scales that they use are not accurate on children under the age of 2 anyways so it should throw him into the right time-frame for that.  I have heard raving reviews from our therapists about Easter Seals so hopefully this works out for us.

The second interesting event of the day has been my little girl's new eating low.  She has SPD and has had eating problems her whole life but today was a low point for sure.  She so far today has consumed a bite of peanut butter, a couple of animal crackers and liquids.  No amount of bribing or threatening will get her to eat today.  I was lucky to get the little bit of pb in her.  She won't starve as we always have pediasure on hand for such days, but it is so frustrating to see her backslide in the eating department.  She was doing so good a few months ago.  I have to believe that she will come out of this and eat more soon, as it has happened with her before.

Time4Learning review

Well, it has been a few months of us using Time4Learning.com as a main curriculum for homeschooling for my eldest little man.  So far, I am highly impressed.  The LA and math sections are very comprehensive and even seem a little advanced for grade levels compared to the books we have anyway.  Basically it uses characters, games, and book-like tutorials online to teach the materials.  My son finds the games very engaging.  The tutorials are a little less "fun" but he seems to learn from them just fine.  Quizzes and tests are integrated into the system and there are also additional worksheets you can print off in just about every section.  The best part about it is the record keeping system.  It records EVERYTHING your kid does on there and their scores.  When you look at the records, you can generate reports in PDF format that you can print or save to your computer.  Plus since I let him work independently some, I can see where he has struggled and repeat lessons with him as needed.

Like I said, I am hugely impressed and I do plan on signing my daughter up next year for kindergarten.  I do still supplement with extra reading materials, science kits, and we use a lot of folder games just because my little guy loves folder games.

For more information on the program please visit www.time4learning.com.

Christmas Fun has begun

Well, Monday we sat up the Christmas tree and decorated.  To be honest, while our pictures made it look all fluffy and wonderful, the day was pretty chaotic.  Whenever we set up the tree, I like to dress the kids up, do their hair and try to get lots of good Christmas pictures.  So I got them all up and started that process.  My husband had worked third shift the night before, so I let him sleep in a bit.  By the time he was up and around and we got started, my littlest guy was starting to get cranky.  We had a horrible time trying to get all three of my kids in a picture without one of the three of them in tears.  Here's one of just him before he got cranky, I should have gotten all three over there at that time, cuz this one turned out so cutie cute!

And here's the other two who were being very photogenic without little guy!

We finally succeeded by giving them pepermint sticks which fit with the Christmas theme anyways.

  Then we started setting up the tree which threw little guy off even more.  Ya see, he hates change, so I had to hold him the whole time my husband and my eldest son put the tree together.  Then I decided to break out the gingerbread people to keep him happy.  Peperidge Farms ginger bread people collection are dairy free FYI.  After the tree was all in place, little guy calmed down and decided to check out some of the stuff.  

He LOVED the tinkerbell musical snowglobe that we had bought my daughter when she was about that age.  Too bad she still loves it too so that caused a few issues.  Also, we had issues with the lights on the tree that took FOREVER to resolve, so I ended up putting little guy to bed anyways.  The other kids, and my neice that I baby sit put up the mini-try on the stage while we were waiting on the big one to be ready.  They loved that, because they got to do pretty much everything by themselves for that one including putting on the ornaments that they made out of craft foam last year.

The other kids had a great time decorating, and when little guy woke up, I let him put on a couple of ornaments I had saved for him. 

Overall as crazy as it was, we all had fun in the end and I actually got some decent pictures in the whole mix of it.  The kids topped the day off with some classic Christmas cartoons on netflix instant play and I think everyone had a good time.

Holiday Craziness

Well, my eldest son's autistic behaviors are shinning through today like you wouldn't believe.  Just when you think things are getting better with him, the holidays have to show up to throw him off.  He can't keeps his body to himself for the life of him today and ended up grounded from the Wii which is his favorite thing in the whole wide world.  He always gets this way when we have something going on out of the norm.  He senses it and all his autistic symptoms go into overdrive.  He's bouncing, stimming, and unfortunately crashing into his sibling.  He also had a huge meltdown about Tae-kwon-do practice and refused to go.  He was in tears about it, so I didn't make him go.  I am hoping next week after the holiday craziness has worn off, maybe he will give it another try.  But with Christmas on the way, I don't know.  I just got his uniform a couple of weeks ago, and he is only half-way through the session we just paid for so I wish he would at least finish up the session.

Good news though, my tiny guy has decided he likes sweet potatoes which is awesome given that will be a popular food this week.  He's not too keen on turkey but loves the stuffing and sweet potatoes.  I am planning on making him more dairy free pumpkin pie pudding too.  I also found some dairy free honey buns at the dollar general, so he can have something special for breakfast on thanksgiving when the other two have their powdered donuts I bought them.

However crazy the kids get over this holiday season, I am thankful that they are my super smart, totally awesome kids!

Soft Clothing Giveaway

As a mom of three kids with varying degrees Sensory Processing Dissorder, I know how hard it is to find clothes that are ok.  My daughter is the worst in this aspect as she is vary picky about all of her clothes and her areas she is picky about varies from day to day it seems.  She sometimes has to change her clothes five times before she is comfortable for the day.  Now there is this online company called Soft who makes seemless socks and flat seemed clothes of soft material that looks like popular clothes kids would wear.  There are knit pants that look like Jeans and dress pants and t-shirts that have ties printed on them for boys and sun-dresses for girls. All very cute, and the bonus is they are having a give-away.  I signed up and if you have kids with sensory problems you should too.  Here's a link http://www.softclothing.net/products/sale/giveaways/, Check it out!

Thanksgiving fun has started

Well, we are gearing up for thanksgiving.  We have been talking about the meaning of thanksgiving and when I asked my niece what Thanksgiving is all about she said, "God gives us toys and food."  So I guess she grasped part of it.  I am having a hard time explaining to four year olds what being Thankful really means.  They get that they are supposed to say thank you for things but I don't think they really understand what that means.  Oh and we made paper bad "chickens"  I mean turkeys.  The kids kept calling them chickens and they don't really get why turkeys go with thanksgiving either!  :)

Here's the project.  We traced their hands and cut them out of colored construction paper. We stapled them to the bottom of a lunch sized brown bag that they decorated.  I cut out turkey heads out of paper for them to color.  They stuffed the bags with pages of an old phone book crumpled up and I stapled the end and stapled on the head.  They loved them, except my tiny little guy who was afraid of the finished product.  We had to hold it in front of him for the picture because it was too crinkly for him.  :)

I also made a couple of turkey folder games from my favorite site and I will post a link.   I made the color matching turkey one for my niece and the turkey feathers addition and subtraction game for my little girl and the harvest patterns for them to share.  Here is a link to that site.  http://www.filefolderfun.com/SubjectThanksgiving2.html

I also made one where you match the number of dots on a turkey feather to the number on the turkey.  I got that one out of a book that I copied and colored but it would be easy to hand draw and make.  My niece did really well with that one.  It is good for preschoolers working on number recognition.

I just love holidays, they work so well with themed activities and the kids just love them!  Even my eldest got really into drawing his thanksgiving dinner today with some unconventional choices like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches lol.

Doctors, Therapists, IFSPs oh my.....

Well little guy has been being seen by early intervention therapists for 6 months as of yesterday and I had an IFSP (individual family service plan) meeting yesterday to decide where we go from here.  He has sensory integration problems as well as a severe expressive speech delay.  He also displays some repetitive behaviors and has had loss of speech skills which are consistent with an autism spectrum disorder.  He is however very social which has the therapists not knowing what to think.  He has been seeing the developmental therapist weekly for six months with a focus on speech.  He has not made much progress as far as speech in the past six months.  He did go from a four month speech level up to a six month speech level and has some communication skills like signing that bump his communication up to a 10 to 12 month level.  He is 18 months old by the way.  His sensory problems have worsened and are causing some serious feeding issues that the therapists are concerned about.  Anyways, they bumped his therapy up and he will now have 7 appointments with various therapists a month.  8 if you count the one where he is seeing two therapists at the same time.  He will be seeing two different developmental therapists, a nutritionist, an occupational therapist, and a speech therapist.  Thankfully half of the therapists will be coming to our home to do the therapy.  Also, they are finally sending us for diagnostic work to check for autism or any genetic conditions that may be the underlying cause of all this.  Sure I have only been wondering and worrying about it for six months but it seems like forever.  Hopefully it all goes through quickly and we get some answers.

This was meant to be an update mostly for family members but reading back over it, I realize it sounds like a rather depressing post.  I will say little guy is such a fun, happy little boy, and I enjoy his little quirks and wouldn't trade any minute of it!  He is constantly finding ways to get around his speech delays and really gets his point across in the most amusing ways.  One day he wanted me to help him put his sunglasses on, so he brought them over.  I knew what he wanted, but I thought I would tease him a bit to see what he would do.  I put them on my own head which he thought was hilarious.  He then grunted and pointed at his own eyes and then at the sunglasses.  He was so happy when I responded and helped him put them on.  He is such a sweetie pie, and I thank God every day for my little boy and all my little kids.  They are perfect just the way they are.

Trick-or-treat

Well it was chilly and it took a while to figure out the layers so everyone was comfy.  My daughter is super picky about her clothes and getting her layered and warm was a bit of a challenge.  They all three had a blast.  Little bitty guy was a pumpkin and he loved carrying his little Elmo bucket up to all the houses.  He loved it if they let him pick something out.  Little girl kept getting scared of the decorations that made noise so she skipped a few houses, but luckily most houses didn't have anything scary out.  My eldest ended up falling in a small hole in someone's yard and got soaking wet down one leg.  He was very upset and had a full-blown meltdown, but ended up finishing up the night anyway.  He got a ton of candy and that made up for being wet and cold for the last half hour.  We finished off the night by heading over to Grandma's house for Halloween cookies and a little rough housing with Grandpa.  Then today I picked through the mountain of candy and made sure little bitty guy had nothing with milk in his bucket, and little girl had stuff that she likes since she is so picky even with candy.  My big boy likes everything that is called candy, so he ended up with a bunch that no one else likes or can have. Oh and Mommy had to have her share too,  haha not like I need it!  Hope everyone had a happy and safe Halloween!

Boo at the Zoo

We went trick-or-treating at the zoo yesterday which I have to say was absolute chaos, but the kids had fun.  The lines were horrible.  And the crowds bothered the kids' sensory problems to some degree.  My eldest kept yelling randomly at things like the goose that was on the path that startled him and the wind that bothered him but it was so loud there, I don't think anyone noticed.  My daughter was all quiet and shy and I had to grab candy for her a lot.  Little guy on the other hand loved it and got a huge kick out of putting stuff in his bucket and walking around looking at the animals.  Overall it was a busy tiring but fun day.  They didn't get much candy and the advertisements they gave us got really annoying not to mention the crowds, so I doubt we will be going back next year.  However, they did enjoy it so....

Homeschool Halloween Party

Well today we had our homeschool halloween party.  Basically we played games, did lots of crafts and had cupcakes.  For lunch I made Jack-o-lantern grilled cheese which is pretty much self explanatory but here's a picture.

Unfortunately the "sensory" kids didn't like it at all but my eldest did try it which is better than he would have done a year ago.  My daughter wouldn't even try it.  So they had one of their "safe" foods, bologna.  I love doing fun kid things with the food, but my kids aren't too receptive to people making their food look different even if it is a food that they like.  Tomorrow we are going to be making monster mouths out of marshmallows and apples.  Hopefully that will go better with them wanting to eat it.

Craft wise we made pipe cleaner spiders which I had to help them a lot with.  Apparently it was a little over their head.  And they colored haunted houses and stuck monster stickers all over it for decoration.

My eldest wanted the day off from doing actual school and I told him he could if he did extra work tomorrow but then he got so goofy and silly like he always does when he is anticipating something that he was driving me crazy bouncing around the house.  I decided to talk him back into doing some work and he actually got a lot done on the computer especially in math, but he loves math so that was easy to talk him into.   My little man is adding and subtracting money with decimals right now and multiplying two digit by two digit numbers.  Gotta brag on him a little bit, he's such a smart little dude.  

Oreo Spiders

For snack today, we made oreo spiders.  This is by no means a novel idea in the world of preschool cooking projects but I thought I would post it anyway.  We took halloween oreos and I had the kids stick pretzel sticks in the creme to make legs.  We then used decorating gel to stick m&m eyes on the spiders.  The kids needed some help if their spiders started to fall apart but for the most part, they did the "cooking" themselves.  Here's a picture of the finished product.

This is my little girl's spider.  She has sensory issues and is weird about novel foods, so she refused to eat hers.   She rarely eats our cooking projects.  But she made one and fed it to Daddy.  I gave her a plain oreo instead.  Both my older two children have always been weird about making food projects and eating them.  This is the first year my eldest boy has really gotten into this kind of thing and he really seems to be enjoying it now.  Just FYI to make this project milk free for little guy, we just omit the m&ms and use sweet tarts for eyes.  The oreos and pretzels are milk free.

I Love You

Even though my little one is now 18 months old, he was recently evaluated to have the speech of a nine month old.  It is hard especially after having two early talkers to have a little guy who can't say I love you, and can't even give real kisses yet.  Sign language however has been a life saver and if you have a child who is showing signs of developmental and speech delays, I suggest starting signing as early as possible.  We started when little guy was about 12 months old and still wasn't really babbling much yet.  I just looked up signs online and printed off pictures.  We are up to about 15 signs now, and the newest one is my favorite.  I just recently taught him the sign for I love you and he loves to sign it back to me at bedtime.  It just melts my heart.  Even though he doesn't quite get it right and it looks more like he is just pointing, it is so great to have that little moment with him.  And he gets so excited about it too!  He just loves it when he makes a sign and you know what he is trying to say.  He also recently learned the sign for cookie which of course is his favorite.  :)  He also likes the sign for shoes because it means we are going bye bye.  I am thinking about ordering some sign language dvds for him if he doesn't pick up some more words soon.  He has been attempting words but they don't really sound close to what they are supposed to be yet.  Like every word sounds like a variation of dada or babap.  Thank goodness for signs so we can figure out what on earth he wants lol.

The Strawberry

Now my youngest has a little problem with biting.  Not just biting other people mind you but biting everything.  When he gets mad or frustrated, he takes it out on the closest thing.  Unfortunately that is usually himself.  He has bitten his own arm to the point of leaving bruises and has chewed sores on his little fingers.  We talked to the occupational therapist yesterday and she gave him a chewy tube which is just a rubbery thing to bite on, and she recommended a vibrating teething toy which you can get at walmart.  So off go to walmart to search for this toy.  After scouring the baby section, I find this thing that looks like a strawberry.  It cost six dollars which a thought was a little steep for a teether and it was huge for a teether.  I am not sure a six month old could get their mouth over it, but my little dude has a pretty good size set of chompers so I thought I would give it a go.  If it will save my little guy's arms from bruises it will be well worth the six bucks and I will probably spring for a few more for spares.  

Anyways, I bring the thing home and show little guy what it does and he was hugely impressed.  It vibrates when you bite on it and is supposed to soothe teething pain.  We were hoping it would give him some needed sensory input in his mouth.  He even slept with the thing last night and has been dragging it everywhere.  He did seem to bite less today, but that could be a coincidence and weird thing is he started hitting his head on the floor again.  Which I had just told the therapists he had stopped doing that.  Hmmm...little guy is a puzzler sometimes.  We haven't tried out the chewy tube yet since he was so impressed with the vibrating strawberry but I intend on keeping it in the diaper bag for when we are out.

Hokey Pokey

We were reading a book for preschool and it mentioned the hokey pokey which the girls of course thought was a hilarious name for a dance.  So I of course had to show them how to do the Hokey Pokey which made for a good break from the norm.  And that lead to all sorts of movement games like Simon Says, Ring around the Rosie and follow the leader.  It overall made for an interesting fun day and the bonus was they weren't dragging a bunch of toys all over the place or fighting.  It made me really want to try to remember more of those games we all played when we were little that kids just don't play anymore to teach to my kids.  Unfortunately my memory isn't the greatest, so comment if you read this and have any ideas!

Sensory issues with online learning

Well, we just started using Time4Learning.com which is an online curriculum with interactive tutorials and games.  I will post an actual review after we have used it for a while since today is our first day.  Anyways, my eldest has always had "issues" with the song "Happy Birthday" literally his whole life.  When he was little we had to whisper the song at birthday parties or listen to him scream bloody murder.  This was actually one of our first clues that he might have autism.  Now for about two years now, he has been able to tolerate the singing at parties and even has started to sing along within the past year.

Now here comes this interactive tutorial about President's Day....The tutorial starts off by loudly singing guess what?  "Happy Birthday" to the presidents.  Having that song sung unexpectedly threw my big guy into a meltdown.  He turned the laptop around and yelled at it in tears.  Thankfully none of the other music or animation on the site has bothered him thus far, and he did calm down after it was over and I gave him a hug and turned down the volume.  We will see how it goes from here on out.  He seems to enjoy the other parts of the program.  It's just a reminder that he might be getting better at managing certain issues related to his diagnosis, but they are still there lingering in the background waiting to catch him off guard.  It is also a reminder to take your child's sensory issues into consideration when choosing a program or curriculum.  Bright characters and colors might look fun but may be too much for your child to process all at once.  However, I do think this program looks awesome, and he does seem to like most of it.  We also may be able to adapt using the mute button on such occasions in the future.

Dairy free Slow Cooker Pumpkin Pie Pudding

Here is my Slow cooker Pumkin Pie Pudding recipe.  It is completely milk(casein)free.  To make it gluten free as well, I think you would just omit the biscuit mix.  After going out of the way to make this recipe milk free, my little lactose intolerant dude doesn't like the texture at least today.  We will try again tomorrow.  And the other two won't even try it, but that didn't surprise me.  Seriously though, this recipe is awesome, and if your picky eaters won't eat it, then more for mom!

Ingredients

• 1 (15 ounce) can solid pack pumpkin
• 1 (12 ounce) can coconut milk
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup biscuit/baking mix
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 2 tablespoons butter or margarine, melted
• 2 1/2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Combine all ingredients and transfer into a greased slow cooker and cook on low for about four hours.  

It's Pumpkin Time

Well we had our first experience carving a Jackolantern.  Now it all went pretty well, except I managed to delete some of the cute pictures I took thinking they copied to my computer.  Apparently only some of them were transfered.  Darn!  Anyways, we decided to go outside to take more and this is when all hell broke loose.  My little one's "issues" were in full swing when he decided he for sure did not want to sit by that pumpkin for the life of him!  Here he is on my shoulder while I was taking cute pics of the other two.  :( 

I finally got him to sit by the pumpkin if it was in the wagon moving.  He loves the wagon!

Here's the other two with their pumpkin family!

All in all it was stressful to try to get them all in on the fun, but it was worth it!  We have had to compromise with halloween for years now.  When my eldest son was little, we couldn't get him to wear a costume so we had to settle for sweatshirts that kinda looked like a costume.  My daughter was the same way, we had to stick to outfits that kinda looked like costumes, but last year they both did better.  We had a Clone Trooper, R2D2 and baby Yoda!  It was so fun to see them all dressed up!  Hopefully this year goes just as smoothly.  My daughter has changed her mind on costumes about a million times and my son is sticking with the Star Wars theme as he has a problem with change and is literally obsessed with Star Wars (it's an aspie thing).  Now little guy is going to be a little pumpkin and my husband and I are dressing up to match!  It will be so much fun!  

Math for Fine Motor Delays

As I have said before, my son is somewhere between third and fourth grade when it comes to most subjects, and math is the biggie that he is most ahead in.  He is currently doing multiple digit multiplication, like 4567 times 53.  The problems is, he is fine-motor delayed and has the handwriting of a preschooler, maybe a kindergartener on his good days, and he simply can't write small and neat enough to complete his worksheets.  Now, I was shopping at Target and saw these peel and stick dry erase boards.  They are like wall stickers that you can write on.  I came up with the idea of mounting one directly to the top of his desk.  It worked wonders and even has the large lines on it like a kindergarten writing notebook.  So I write each problem out for him larger and use another colored marker to draw columns so he keeps everything lined up easier.  He does so much better this way and I can even re-use the worksheets if I want to.  Next thing to conquer--Long Division.

Dairy Free PB and Banana smoothies

Got a picky eater?  If you have a kid with Autism or SPD I'm sure you do!  My youngest little dude who has speech and sensory problems has been getting pickier by the day and isn't gaining weight.  Now there was a simple solution when my daughter went through this at the same age--Pediasure--a meal-replacement shake for toddlers.  We also used Carnation instant breakfast added to whole milk.  Now here's the problem, my youngest is severely lactose intolerant to the point where he can't have any bit of milk product or cross-contaminated stuff.  Even though pediasure is lactose-free, it has whey in it which is a milk bi-product that he reacts to and Carnation has powdered milk in it.  So what to do when he has days of literally eating nothing?  Well, I came up with the idea of making soy smoothies.  So yesterday, I got out the blender and threw in a banana, a cup of soy milk and two tablespoons of peanut butter.  It made about two toddler servings.  He loved it, so today I added a very small amount of carrots and I hope to increase the veggie amount and vary the fruit over time.   I tasted it and didn't notice a difference with the carrots.  Awesome idea for picky eaters.  Now mind you, we did try this for my daughter and the thick texture totally turned her off, but little guy loved it and bonus is it has far fewer preservatives than pediasure anyway.

Preschool Halloween fun

Okay so we are gearing up for Halloween!  Yay!  Makes for fun activities and what not.  We are doing one letter a week with the girls for preschool and we just happened to fall on Gg this week and Gg is for Ghost.  My favorite thing we have done so far is to make hand print ghosts.  I took white paint and had them do a hand print on black paper.  After it dried, we turned it so the fingers were facing down and used black markers to draw faces on them.  They really enjoyed it and it took very little prep-work.  I also cut large and small ghosts out of white card stock and put capital letters on the big ghosts and lower case letters on the small ghosts for a literacy matching game.  For math, cut out a haunted house shape out of construction paper and made ghost counters out of felt and rubber-bands.  I then took index cards and wrote simple math problems on them and they used the ghost counters to solve the problems.  We are also working on learning the life cycle of a pumpkin with some sequence cards I printed off online.   I just love holidays because I find so many creative ideas that center around each holiday.  Next week we will be doing Hh is for Halloween so we can throw in all kinds of pumpkin and bat projects and maybe a black cat or two.

Intro To my Family

And now to introduce the crazy bunch that I love so much.  My eldest son has Asperger's syndrome and can be a real handful but he is truly brilliant.  He is seven years old but working somewhere between 3rd and 4th grade level, thus the homeschooling.  He is pretty much brilliant but quirky and really impulsive.  He kinda has the maturity level of a four year old but the intelligence of a ten year old which is really an interesting combo.  Thus we get instances of him hitting his sister or cousin because they are not playing chess correctly.  He is hugely into video games and it takes some work to balance him in those areas.  He also enjoys Tae Kwon Do and likes to watch Star Wars.

Now my daughter is four years old and has Sensory Integration Disorder.   She is the pickiest eater on the face of the planet and has been on pediasure for three years now to keep her putting on weight.  As it is she only weighs 28 lbs but she is short so the docs say she's healthy as long as she keeps gaining.  She's funny because she is starting to read but she looks like she's only two or three so I get shocked looks from strangers!  lol  She is a super tom-boy and loves super heroes and wearing boy clothes and playing with cars and trucks although she has her babies she plays with too.  

My youngest son is 18 months old and possibly on the Autism spectrum.  He has been seeing therapists through early intervention for 6 months now.  He is severely speech delayed and has some major sensory feeding issues like his sister.  However he is very social so the therapists are hesitant to put a label on him.  It feels like we are going in circles at times when it comes to figuring him out.  They have said he may have apraxia or autism, they aren't sure yet.  He is a super smart guy as well though, and is doing a good job matching up shapes and knows a bunch of baby sign language. 

Me and my husband have been married three years now.  My husband works a full time job that is weekends only so he is home a lot during the week which is fun for field trips and stuff.  I stay home and babysit my niece who is at our house all the time so it is almost like we have four kids.  I am teaching my eldest who does mostly third grade work and the girls who are in pre-school.  And that is pretty much our family.....Wait we also have a chihuahua and a cat!