Kindergarten Here We Come!

September 1, 2013

As the air fills me with the sense that seasons are marching on – we are gearing up for our first official week of homeschool Kindergarten! It has been quite an emotional roller coaster getting to this week, but I’m happy to say I’m feeling grateful that I can educate my son in a way that is challenging, in an environment where he feels safe and communicated with and can enjoy this beautiful time together and yes even the hard days! Even on the hardest days (I know there will be many more) there are countless moments of JOY and moments that I would not trade for anything in this world! I feel blessed for this opportunity and feel good that God is with us each step of the way!

Isaiah 41:10

“Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed for I am your God. I will strengthen you. Yes I will help you. I will uphold you with my gracious right hand.”

August went my in a such a rush! In August for our summer homeschool we studied the themes of Africa, the great outdoors and safety. We read The Pledge of Allegiance, waved our flags and listened to Born in the USA by none other than Bruce Springsteen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZD4ezDbbu4 . We practiced cleaning up after ourselves and signing help when needed. We talked about Jonah being a “nice boy” and being kind and using gentle hands. Jonah is very much a BOY, very aggressive, with lots of wrestling, tackle and chasing energy! We need to continue to work on control of his body as he doesn’t understand his own strength!!! We talked about the letter C for camping and did a workbook pages about this letter and also about the number 5. Jonah can follow along and can count to 10 by pointing and he is really trying to coordinate his hands to count (now can show 1, 5 and 10, but the others are a bit hard for him due to fine motor difficulties). We continue to practice signing simple sentences and reading our matching books. Jonah loves his verbs video by Teach2Talk and the other videos we have from this series. He loves acting out all the verbs along with the show! We practiced up/down and began a new stretching break stretching UP! UP! UP! And Down, Down, Down. Jonah is non-verbal and we continue to work on new sounds and really like the sound flashcards we have from DownsEd International, but we should be doing these more often. We played some matching games practicing taking turns, stringing toys, and doing puzzles. We are working on signing “My name is Jonah!” and “I am 5 years old!” We are trying to teach Jonah to sign “I want” instead of just signing the word that he wants. Jonah can now sign “frustrated” which is great because he gets frustrated often poor guy.  Poor mom and dad as he does a lot of yelling! For some reason it has been hard for Jonah to point to his nose so we worked on this body part and he is getting closer (he does great with most other body parts, just had a hard time finding center on his face, still kind of touches to the side of his nose, but we are almost there! We listend to “My God is SO BIG” and practiced the bible verse Philippians 4:13 “I can do all this through him who gives me strength.” And talked about how Jesus made him strong! We sign “Jesus loves me and I love Jesus” and he is doing good with that! We colored a map of Africa and put animal stickers on the map, colored a lion, painted a lion sun catcher, and listened and danced to African music (Putumayo African children’s songs, children’s choir http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1iJPaKRhPI and other beautiful African Music). I tried to get Jonah to beat on  his drums to the music, but basically mama was the entertainment! We made it down to the World Beat Center in Baloba park for an African drumming class, but Jonah was not into it and was acting out. At one point I held him during the drumming class and  he seemed better for a moment and waved his hands to the music. Before class we did get a chance to walk around (before others arrived) to look at the cool murals of animals and paintings and looked at all the colors in the flags hanging from the ceiling. We got out Jonah’s tent and he loved playing in the tent and with his new sleeping bag! We didn’t make it out of the house yet for some real camping (still working on daddy to go)! We looked at pictures of animals in the forest and Jonah did great learning some new animals he didn’t know before and by the end of the month could point to them all correctly. We watched Open Season and Jonah watched a few parts of it, which is progress (he hardly wants to watching anything but his usual shows of Elmo, Teach2Talk and Signing Times). We played a computer game about forest animals http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/preschool/animals/forest/animalforestmovie.htm and continue to work on learning the different parts of the computer. Jonah loves watching the phonic videos on YouTube and of course his other favorites there too! We watched a video from RockNLearn getting ready for Kindergarten and a few others for reading/phonics and he is watching some and getting used to these slowly! We practiced some more self-care like washing himself in the bath a little more and brushing his teeth, but this is coming along slowly. Jonah helped mommy wash his cups in the sink for the first time and he was inpatient, but at least gave it a try. Jonah can sign Fireman really well and we read a book about the Fireman, watched Elmo’s Visit to the Firehouse, and looked at pictures about what Firemen do, about the fire truck, etc. We talked about measuring, we counted the numbers on the clock, looked at different types of clocks, talked about days of the week, months, seasons, weather, and the color green! Jonah’s favorite thing in the world is to swim so we really enjoyed some fun days at the pool and he is doing great with kicking and starting to use his arms more at the same time (with a life vest and swim tube). He can sure get around the pool well it is amazing! We enjoyed a mini-vacation to the Coronado Navy Lodge and had such a fun time together! We also had a really fun day at Legoland with some of our Down Syndrome friends and had another fun day together at the San Diego Zoo with our buddies! All in all a great summer!

I went to our homeschool class orientation (we will be going to a class one time per week with other homeschool children/families). At this orientation someone brought up a book I believe was called Educating the Whole Hearted Child and the mother described a bit about what was in the book and it honestly it was an “Aha moment” for me. In my anxiousness, my self-doubting, it was all the sudden as clear as day to me as to why I plan to homeschool my son – For His Heart! I want his heart to be filled with faith, love, encouragement, the joy of learning, feeling safe and secure, feeling acknowledged by being communicated with in sign-language and any way he can express himself. I choose this for his heart and in making this choice ironically this choice also fills my heart!

OK so here we go - Kindergarten! This mama/teacher is excited and hopeful!

Blessings to you all in the school year!

Sharice