Victory!

My youngest son has dysgraphia.    

I noticed when he was a preschooler that he wanted nothing to do with drawing, coloring or the pretend writing that little kids do.  He never drew anything at all until he was 4 and we got a new van and he drew a picture of it.  The other 2 kids I had would draw and write all the time at those ages, so I sensed something was different.  In kindergarten, his teacher said that he might be dyslexic.  I had read that with certain kids it is normal to read at about 10 and write quite a bit later so we took it kind of easy with him and sure enough, he did read at 10.  He went from Dr. Suess to reading JK Rowling that year.  He has a very impressive vocabulary (which is reportedly important for life success).

As for the dysgraphia, success has come more slowly.   To address this, we have done a variety of things.  We had him assessed by an occupational therapist who did therapy with him for a few months.  She discovered that because his right arm had been broken by falling out of the bunk bed when he was 4, it was quite a bit weaker than the left so she gave him strengthening exercises for this and worked with him for a while, then she released him and said that he just needed practice.  But he still couldn't write.  He was reversing letters and his writing was illegible.  I have had him doing copywork for the past 2 years and if he reverses a letter, he has to do the whole thing over.  This seems to be working, although I really don't know if it's just maturity or if copywork has made any difference.  I was very excited when he wrote me a note this week and then when he was playing with his friend the other day after 4H, he voluntarily wrote some game notes down. This is huge people!  Huge!

About 3 years ago (someone else wrote the numbers, either me or his sister.)

It says "do not wake me up.  I did not sleep well."  Please!.  PS if it is 3:00 p.m., wake me up." Every word is spelled correctly.  They are mostly legible.  Only one S is reversed. 

Winding down.

We've only got 20 some-odd days of school left and we've run out of a few things.  I had to make the decision to order more notebooking pages from Curr-Click ($1.00) or just let those 20 something days go to waste, so I ordered them, but now I can't print them.  I'm going to have to consult our home network administrator, but he's at work.  It is convenient having a tech person who lives with you and we've got 2, the senior administrator and the apprentice.  I asked the apprentice yesterday, but he couldn't figure out why the printer won't print so I'll need to ask the big guy to take a look at it.  It's probably something simple, but I went through that help menu the computer has, for why your printer won't work, and I didn't accomplish anything.

In the back of my mind, I'm working on adventure and work lists for the summer and I have actually made a few decisions (okay, one!)  regarding curriculum for next year.  I'm going to get the Brain Integration Therapy Manual  by Dianne Craft for my youngest who is dysgraphic (problems with writing) but I am waiting for my Swag Bucks to build up a little before I get it since it costs 60 dollars and I don't think I'll start using it until August.  I get a 5 dollar Amazon card, about every 10 days with Swag Bucks and they come in handy.  :-)  If you want to join up and get paid for searching see the side bar.  I don't let the kids search with Swag Bucks because their safe search options are not as good as Google and I sometimes end up seeing things in the search that I don't want the kids to see.  (I'm talking words, not pictures, because I never use Swag Bucks for image searches).  I use Swag Bucks to search for Google and then use Google to search for what I need to search for if it is an image.  I also use Swag Bucks for work and I search every day for things like Facebook and Gmail and sometimes I get paid for going to my regular sites.

Sorry, this wasn't supposed to be an ad for Swag Bucks.  I got off on a tangent there.

Anyway, have a nice Sunday!

A random act of blogging.

Often, my thoughts do not gel into any kind of a coherent blog post idea.  I have a very random brain.  I work with it.  Anyway.  Here are some of my extremely random thoughts of today.

The snow is melting.  We stayed home today and the kids got to sleigh ride a tiny bit last night and for about an hour this morning.  They got to break in their new Christmas sleds so that's good.  I was afraid we'd jinxed them for no snow this winter by getting them sleds for Christmas.  :-)  Now they are back in drinking hot chocolate with whipped cream.

I've been doing housework today, which I think I should call Random Acts of Housework, because that's what it is.  I do a bit here and a bit there.  My mom used to call it "a lick and a promise" but I call it "a lick and no promises" cause, you know, I'm pretty random.

Here's a question I ask myself.  I'm watching "The Proposal"  and I wonder why in films people carry around empty coffee cups?  Okay, I can understand the potential for spillage and ruining nice movie sets and clothes, but couldn't they weight them down so they would at least look like they had something in them?   Here's another question, when the people are casting a movie do they pay any attention at all to the actor's ages when they cast them? 

And finally, there's a really interesting article on Psychology Today about Cognitive Outlaws, basically people who have learning disabilities and have learned to work around them and become very successful.  It's fascinating. 

Finally, a homeschooling post!

I have mentioned that my youngest son has some trouble with spelling.  He's extremely smart and creative and just like a lot of smart, creative boys, he has trouble with spelling and writing.  He reads well, so it's not dyslexia.  I think he would be categorized as having dysgraphia and I don't know what the spelling issue is called, maybe dys-spell-ia?  Anyway.   Over the years we've tried various strategies to help him compensate.  He's learning to type.  He's working on writing in cursive because some people say it is easier.  We enrolled him in occupational therapy last year for 3 or 4 months until the therapist said that she had done all she could.  We've tried Sequential Spelling which worked very well for my daughter, but did not work for him (although it is something we may come back to at some point) and we tried All About Spelling.  Then, I read this article on Dianne Craft's website and I have been using her method since August and IT IS WORKING!