Thursday, August 1, 2013

School Revamp

We homeschool year round. The kids are about a grade and a half of where they are supposed to be in pretty much everything except handwriting. They are MASSIVELY behind there - and will probably never ever catch up. They both have dysgraphia and we've even been sending The Girl to occupational therapy (OT) to learn ways to strengthen her hands, learn new ways to teach her, typing programs, and other ways to help her circumnavigate this. We've been working with  The Boy on these things as well because you can't read either of their handwriting STILL. Well, come to find out (and I had a suspicion) a couple of weeks ago as I was asking Girl some questions about what she was doing in OT because the report from her therapist had been rather vague. That "it's SO fun" but she wasn't *learning* anything we weren't already doing at home and HAD NOT been the entire time was what I gleamed from the conversation. I asked her about several aspects of things that she could be missing. Nope. She wasn't missing them. They just weren't being done. Our insurance doesn't cover OT really at all so we've been paying out of pocket for it. Which, if they are teaching her things and is beneficial, I don't mind one single bit. BUT. I do not want to pay $120 a week for a glorified babysitter to play games with my kid to teach her jack shit. I can pay myself to play with her. I love the OT we use. She has helped us a tremendous amount where it comes to The Girl's sensory issues, behavioral issues, stimulation issues. But this is clearly NOT her best work. So, as of this week, we are again therapy free. And I broke up with them over email because I am a complete and utter pansy. So, instead of leaving my house every Wednesday at 2 to get home at 4:45 to 5 for a 1 hour appointment. (Yes, 3 hours for a 1 hour appointment.) we are now freeeeeee.(And $120 per week less spent.)

Both kids have also had medication changes within the last month. The Boy has gone from not talking to *anyone* but people in the family, to most people he knows. I'll take it! He'll actually go off and play with other kids almost like a real kid now.  The Girl stopped sleeping again so we changed her sleep meds and found out she grew and out grew her dosage levels of other medications so we upped that slightly. It's only been one day on that so hopefully she won't go all wonky and turn into the Poltergeist child permanently. 

But one of the biggest changes is their school. I keep wondering if I'm leaving something out of what I've assembled for them. Whether on accident or by my own biased and preferences. So we're trying an alternating schedule of what we had been doing for the last while - just dividing the full schedule up into slightly smaller bites, not even dividing the days in half - and adding in Easy Peasy Homeschooling in too. Because the work, even at their accentuated grade levels, is too easy for them on the Easy Peasy. But, from what I've seen so far, it focuses on some folk lore, story telling, and game playing so it teaches in a different method than what I normally use. It's a religious based instruction, but since it's online we can take and leave the parts we don't want.

The Boy spend his time on the math online puzzles today instead of Lego Star Wars on the Xbox. *shrug* I figure religiously based or not, I'm ok with it. Plus, I don't feel like I'm going to be leaving SO much out if they are getting things for another source as well. It all goes back to the inadequacy we all tend to feel this time of year when people all talk about *planning* and *curriculum* and such. They do SO well with what we've got set up, I don't see a reason to screw with it much. But they LIKE the computer a lot I figured we would give this a go. I don't want all their stuff on the computer. That seems... like a bad idea.. but if they'll do MORE because some of it's on there.. Ok.