Not Wanting to Write

Well the holidays are almost over and it's time to start working on the next semester courses.  One thing I have noticed is Joshua does not like to write he has no confidence in his own writing skills and he thinks people are going to be critical of his writing.  I feel there are many other things we can work on and improve and at the same time build Joshua's confidence in his own writing skills.  What I have ended up doing is ordering the Acrobat Adobe because I can make type in papers for Joshua to do since he does not mind typing.  In The Hands Of A Child, which you can order online at CurrClick and get instantly I will post a link after this blog, has lapbook programs you can get with the type in option which is nice.  I'm sure there are others out there that have this option but I have only used In The Hands Of A Child and I like thier items they are complete and ready to go.  I have also gotten Joshua the Spongebob Typing program which I was amazed how he has gotten along with learning how to type properly he will go back and forth typing his way and learning the proper way to type.  I'm having to learn to be patient with Joshua and let him do it his way and he usually always suprises me.  I hate to say that I think this first year for the most part is learning how Joshua learns and what fits him the best.  All things will come in time.

Nathan and the Military

Today we had a visit from the recruiters with the Army.  My son Nathan will be 18 on Christmas Day and has talked about being in the military since he was very young being raised by a Marine and having a Grandfather that was a Marine besides other family members that have been Marine's. This is very tough for a mother especially in this day and age you don't thing the day will ever actually come but here it is. My heart and prayers go out to all the mother's who have suffered the ultimate loss and I have to say I am selfish and don't want to take the chance at the same loss. On the other hand you have to be proud of what your child wants to do and be honorable he has to grow up and make his own choices and this is something he has talked about since he was a youngster. I have to give him credit that he went to all the services to see what they have to offer and didn't just sign up for the first service he walked in the door to.  He has not signed up yet because he cannot at this point he has to graduate first so I still have time before I may have to face this. I also have to say the Army has a lot to offer my son for the type of career he wants and the collage benefits are unbeatable. There is a lot of good with joining the Army accept all of mom's worries but I do believe this is the best choice for him. Nathan just has this Marine thing going on because of what other family members choices were I have had to talk to him that he needs to do what is best for him and not follow in anyone's footsteps. Another concern is that we are not sure how Joshua will handle this. Joshua is very close to Nathan and he knows what could happen and we have already had a problem after he discussed this with Nathan. We also don't know how we are going to handle this because Nathan is really good with Joshua and helps us a lot but like my husband said Nathan has to live his life and we will take care of Joshua.  

Hannah's Pie

I asked the kids what they wanted to have for Thanksgiving dinner and Hannah was telling me about a pie she wanted to make so I looked up the pie on the internet and we made a few changes and we made Hannah's pie. This pie turned out pretty good so here's what we did if you would like to try it yourself or if you make any changes just share it with us on the comment section.

HANNAH'S PIE

This reciepe made two 10 inch pies.

Graham cracker crust.

(We made ours or you can buy pre-made crust.)

You will also need

flour

butter

cool whip

milk

cream cheese

powdered sugar

1 small box each vanilla pudding and chocolate pudding

chopped pecans

Filling for pie crust

First layer:  Combine 4 ounces cool whip, 8 ounces cream cheese, 1 cup powdered sugar and 1 cup chopped pecans.  Blend well and spread over crust.

Secons layer:  Combine 1 small box each of instant vanilla pudding and instant chocolate pudding with 3 cups of milk.  Blend and spread over first layer.

Third layer:  Spread another 4 ounces of cool whip on top and sprinkle with your remaining pecans.  Refrigerate your pie.

Enjoy!

This is my Hannah!

K-12 Curriculum

Joshua got a late start this year with school it was not until the beginning of this year did we find out the anxiety was so bad we could not get him into a school and everyone including the school thought it best to homeschool Joshua at this point.  We started with the K-12 program this program is a very good program if you are looking for a typical public school education but as we soon realized this was not a good fit for Joshua.  I will tell my experience with this program but do remember a lot of people really like this program and it does work for other children just not Joshua.  One nice thing about this program is that if you have a public school in your state that uses this program you can transfer schools and then the program is at no cost but you are under the public school system and requirements and this is the way we went.  One of the things I found odd was that they do have a K-12 community and there are group field trips but they cannot count towards any of your time requirements which is kind of funny considering the public schools have field trips during school time, this was a little frustrating to me also considering I had a son that was not getting their required time limits in so how did we have time for one of these field trips.  The public school had been advancing Joshua's grade even though he was not up to speed at the grade level as we have found out and since Joshua was advanced to 4th grade K-12 sent us 4th grade curriculum even though they had all his IEP's and STAR scores which all stated he was behind so take a child with ADHD and anxiety disorder and show him school work he dosen't understand and try to get him to do it.  We did explain this to the specials teacher but we were told to keep trying and of course as anyone knows who has worked with these type of children he was shuting down and I was going to lose every chance I had to get him to cooperate.  I kind of felt like I was banging my head against the wall like with the public school they weren't even going to do their own IEP until the middle of November, Joshua wasn't going to last that long and that's when I started to investigate our options on the internet then decided to go it on our own for Joshua's sake.  I have to say that I am also less stressed without having to meet all their requirments.  I do know that in our state this program had more then doubled in a year so our teacher was actually in another state until they could hire the teachers they needed I don't know if this is a factor in what happen with us or not but I couldn't keep going to find out.  I hate to turn everybody off to this program everybody has diffrenet situations and this program is well done computer and book but you need to keep in mind that this does follow a public school type format.
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Joshua's Story

Joshua is truly a gift that has been given back to us many times over.  When Joshua was 3 days old the easiest way to put it is my son had a stroke, was dehydrated and his blood sugar was really low the doctors said his blood just turned into sludge.  Joshua came very close to having brain surgery but due to a good doctor he held off and after a couple days the surgery was not needed as the clots were dissolving on thier own.  After sometime Joshua came home with all the medications and time schedules and we were told he may have learning problems later in life but they could not determine that at this time.  Things seemed to be going well until I noticed he was trying to rollover but he was not using his left side once again to a doctor and with some messaging he rolled over and sat by himself the first time on his first Christmas Eve.  We have several incidents since his infancy where his blood sugar dropped so low he had to hospitalized but with no reason for the blood sugar drop, thankfully we have not had a problem with this for a few years but due to the doctors telling us to always keep juice in the house Joshua's real weight problems started.  We have also had some very serious allergic reactions and they tested Joshua at the age of three which is not when they will usually do this and they didn't seem to find anything he was allergic to.  Just recently we had a detailed allergy testing done and the whole time we said he was allergic to grass which the first testing didn't show a reaction is now showing up, confusing because whenever he played in the grass without a shirt we were sure to be at the hospital.  I could go into a lot more details but I think the picture is pretty clear.  Joshua has been in the last year diagnosed with ADHD and anxiety disorder plus possible mood disorder the anxiety became so bad over this last summer that we could not get Joshua into a school because of the extreme bullying and teasing that the school insisted didn't go on but what has come out in therapy says something totally diffrenet.

This is my sweet Joshua with his dog Boomer. 

 

About Us

Searching thru the internet I discovered many blogs by homeschooling moms and I thought what a neat way to share our journey with others that have been here, are here or will be here.
 I homeschooled my oldest which will be 18 this Christmas day.  Homeschooling 13 years ago is a far cry from what it is today.  I taught Nathan for his first 3 years with not much direction or support in a homeschool unfriendly state, for me this was a scary and uncertian adventure but I could not part with my first born. I continued to school Nathan with a very ambitious little girl running around Hannah but when my third child was born there was complications with lots of doctors, medications, rehablitation and much more, at this time we decided it would not be fair to our first two not to put them in school to get a education due to the amount of time my youngest was needing.  Fast forward and here I am again Nathan is homeschooling thru the local high school, Hannah continues to stay in public school she doesn't want to come home and my Joshua is being homeschooled due to many reasons I will go into at a later time.  We now live in a homeschool friendly state and the resources, products, support and so much more are mind boggling to me.  I find myself wanting to try everything right now I have to keep reminding myself I have years to try everything I want.
My intentions for this blog is to communicate about us and our homeschooling journey also talk about the programs we have used, how they worked for us and how I felt about them.

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