Beyond Homeschooling Autism

Now that our time as a true homeschool family is coming to a close, I have had more time to reflect on the ups and downs, victories and failures, and lessons learned.  With Caroline going back into public middle school this fall, our homeschool will once again, be just Jackson and me.  And while I love and miss our special one-on-one dynamic, there will be a huge hole in our hearts without her here, because the biggest take away I got from this year, regarding both my kids, is that quantity of time always trumps quality of time  with children, especially adolescents. A great analogy for this truth is the dreaded power outage.  I spent the past two days fretting over losing power during the latest derecho warnings in the D.C. area.  We lose power at the drop of a hat in our neighborhood, as it is filled with large, old trees and overhead power lines.  But as I reflect on the times we have lost power for extended periods (blizzards, hurricanes, tornadoe...

So what have we been up to the past few months?  Not blogging apparently...  The addition of my 5th grade daughter to our homeschool day has made for very little writing time!  And thanks to my husband's Christmas gift of an Ikea chaise lounge for our bedroom, any down time I get, I find myself curled up on there with a cup of tea and a good book...this introverted mama needs some alone time after all:) As spring desperatly tries to bloom here in Virginia, I find myself watching Jackson grow into a man before my very eyes.  He just turned 14 a few weeks ago and seems older and wiser with each passing day.  He is tall, strong, handsome and charming.  He is funny, gregarious, extroverted and friendly.  He is musical, athletic, comedic, and techy.  He is moody, loud, disruptive and angry.  He loves YouTube, Netflix, Sports Center and The Colbert Report.  He is 14 and acts more "neuro-typical" everyday...for better or worse.   H...

I have two very different children that always seem to surprise me with how similar they are! Today I gave my 11 yr old daughter only one assignment for the entire day...Make an iMovie about the North Korean rocket launch.  This event has meaning to her because she has shown an interest in this region and conflict since she was a little girl.  I remember checking out DVDs from the library when she was in 2nd grade about the Korean War and she has followed the Kim regime ever since.  She has similar fascinations with other countries like Peru, Saudi Arabia and Cuba.  I might have the future Secretary of State on my hands...she does love her some Condi Rice too:) I sent her away at 9:30 with no instructions besides, "Make a 2-4 minute iMovie on the rocket launch." She sprawled out on my bed with the laptop, snacks and the dog, and at 2:30 she emerged with this: She layed out her process for me afterwards which included: 1.  Internet research from: ...

After my first 6 weeks of homeschooling both Jackson (7th - Autism) and Caroline (5th - Gifted), I can honestly say that it was the best decision we have ever made for our family.  And while I clearly have no time to blog about it, there has been no shortage of monumental breakthroughs and good old-fashioned fun in our house...both of which we rarely experienced while they were in public schools. As you scroll through the some of the photos I took on my phone, you get a great visual picture of the beginning our of school year - and by the looks of it, you might be concerned that we are having too much fun with too little learning! All of these were taken during our "school day" which goes from 8:30-3:00ish.  We go on a lot of outings and spend a lot of our time outside doing experiments, reading, hiking, and wrestling apparently:)  When we are working inside, we have a mixed bag of learning styles, Jackson likes to...

I had a wonderful opportunity to write a guest blog for Think Inclusive this week!  I was asked to discuss the reasons why we decided to homeschool Jackson.  I loved the idea since I know most of the readers of this particular site are educators seeking information and support for special education inclusion.  Since I have already wrote about this topic on my blog, I decided to give the subject a twist and use an analogy to explain it!  For those of you who know me best, you'll appreciate my comparison of autism education to BigAgra business vs. local organic family farms. Check out my post here: My Decision to Homeschool My Son With Autism Follow me on Twitter:    https: //twitter.com/#!/hometeachautism Like the Facebook Page:  Homeschooling Autism

Many people have asked me how I plan to manage the needs of my two very differently-abled children this year.  Jackson needs a tremendous amount of structure and one-on-one teaching to maximize his learning potential, while Caroline needs more freedom and independence to spread her wings and push the boundaries of what she can accomplish.  That puts me in a tough spot...right in the middle!  My way to bridge the gap is to rely on a very unique scheduling system that allows for both the detail J needs, and the flexibility C craves.  Each form that I have shown has a link to a Goggle Document if you want to explore them in-depthly. And it all starts with...  Their very own clipboards, which Caroline so thoughtfully, and boldly, decorated for me yesterday:)   Jackson's clipboard always has 2 pieces of paper on it: a  Daily Schedule and a Daily Work sheet. The daily schedule is broken down in 15 min increments from 8am-8pm, with clear label...

There is one reason and one reason only:  Because I can Now, of course, that is a loaded answer, but it is the truth at the core of our whole debate in regards to Caroline's 5th grade year.  After we unexpectedly pulled Jackson out of the public middle school's autism program last fall, we scrambled to put together an academic program to meet all his needs.  Thankfully, it was a tremendously smooth transition considering the circumstances.  Over the course of the following few months, I spent a lot of time continuing my research into middle grade academics and discovered a huge body of work on educational reform for this age group.  What I came across time and time again, as the only solution to our nation's growing educational crisis, was the call for more individualized education. The concept of individualized education is very familiar to me for obvious reasons - autism education is based around the IEP (Individualized Education Plan), so I have s...