A Sensory Diet Super Win

This picture captures something absolutely amazing.

It seems simple, right? A cat-lovin' boy and his pet cat sharing a friendly hello. But this? It would not have happened even a week ago. Little G has some sensory avoidance issues, but overall he is a sensory seeker. This means that he is always jumping, spinning, speaking loudly, putting things in his mouth, squealing, humming, intentionally bumping into walls and furniture, and handling things - and pets - roughly. Because of this, I incorporate a lot of proprioceptive input into Little G's sensory diet.

For those not in the know about sensory processing disorder, a sensory diet is simply a list of things a person can do to give them the sensory nourishment they need to function at their best. Just as children need proper nutrition from food to be healthy and grow, they also need a proper sensory diet to be healthy. Some children have greater sensory needs than others, as my son does. Because of this, I use all kinds of sensory diet suggestions and invent a few of our own to meet these additional sensory needs. Some of the activities in his sensory diet are designed to give him extra input to help calm him, while other activities are meant to desensitize his system so he can handle typical sensory information (sounds, foods, etc.) in a way similar to how most people do.

For Little G, I make up a lot of games that involve jumping, clapping, or running. We have a cool game called "push mama" where we put our hands together and he pushes me backward around the house, the yard, or wherever we happen to be, which gives his muscles and joints lots of "input" and helps him to relax, or seek input less. His sensory diet is long and ever-changing, and I would love to blog more in depth about it, but for now I want to discuss the incredible success with our cat.

Little G loves cats. He has endless books about cats, cat toys, cat coloring books, and often plays dress-up as a cat. The fact that our cat, usually tolerant of anything, runs from him has always been a source of pain and frustration for Little G. I have explained to him, talked about what cats like us humans to behave like, shown him how to pet the cat gently and without being scary to Sticky. But nothing really worked. So, with the hope that my little guy would one day be able to enjoy his pet cat as much as the rest of us do, I started putting together a sensory diet plan specifically for getting him to relax enough to be gentle with our cat. I implemented my plan for approximately three weeks, frequently discussing the topic of building trust with the cat by behaving in certain ways and by giving him a book on cats to read. I remained hopeful, but not extremely optimistic. Had any hope of Sticky ever trusting Little G been too damaged to repair?

Imagine my complete and utter shock the other night when I saw the scene I captured in the photo above with my cell phone. It's blurry from my quick movements, grainy from the poor lighting, but still one of the most beautiful things I have ever witnessed; my son, my sweet cat-loving little boy, finally got to pet his beloved pet cat. She didn't shrug and shimmy away, she didn't run, she didn't swat; she simply nuzzled up to his hand and enjoyed the attention.

These are the moments that bring me the greatest joy in life.

Our Happy Monday

Our happy Monday was a busy Monday. I discovered the joys of coffee yesterday, at wits end with this constant exhaustion I feel due to my inability to sleep like a normal person. So today I tried it again, and discovered (or should I say rediscovered?) the joy of heart palpitations. Caffeine and I don't get along. I knew it 15 years ago, but somehow I thought that exhaustion might trump caffeine intolerance. Nope. So, on to my next plan to feel less zombie-like during our school days. You know, once I figure out what that is.

One of the many things I am enjoying about homeschooling is the flexibility of both scheduling and curriculum content. I'm always supplementing with something, and I find that the internet truly is a wonderful resource. A History lesson about the 7 continents and their well-known landmarks, geography, and climate are much more interesting with the aid of YouTube videos. When I was in school, we basically had one or two pictures in a textbook (sometimes) and our imaginations. Videos about the Great Barrier Reef (Australia), the Great Wall of China (Asia), castles (Europe), The Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, and Mt. Rushmore (North America, obviously), penguins (Antarctica), rainforests and macaws (South America), and giraffes (Africa) kept both of the kids engaged and interested. Better yet? They were talking about it for the rest of the day. Good stuff.

For art class, while discussing how Joan Miro lived in Barcelona, Spain and went to study art in Paris, France, we used Google Maps (including street view) to find out what both places look like and how far away from home he went to study (roughly 11 hours by today's travel, in case you were wondering). Reezle decided she would like to visit Barcelona and Paris, especially after we visited the Eiffel Tower via Google's street view. And today, we looked at various images of the earth while we studied the earth's poles and the equator.



An abstract drawing R made for Art using shapes and lines.

With week four of homeschool underway, we're all still loving it. Little G had his assessment yesterday and, like his sister and just as we expected, he scored well above and received the same recommendations as R. Officially, he will be starting some first grade curriculum, probably later this week. He is very excited and keeps asking me to check the OLS (online school) to see if it is there yet, even though I told him it probably won't be until later in the week or possible even next week. He finished his Kindergarten Math book tonight after dinner, so it will be mostly Study Island and working through the remaining Kindergarten lessons in the OLS to keep him busy while we wait for the new curriculum to update on the site.

Reezle will also be starting curriculum for the next grade level because she is assessing out of Math and Language Arts; I'm just waiting to hear back from our second grade teacher on when. I'm just happy that both of them are so interested in learning. Or, um, all three of them if you count the cat; she hasn't missed a lesson yet.

Fall is definitely in the air, with cool nights that bring thoughts of changing leaves, Halloween, squash soup and cups of cocoa to mind. This is my favorite season, the only downside of which is the fact that my least favorite season follows. For now, we enjoy. I hope to make some homemade applesauce with the kids, and we will be making apple shirts soon, which I can hardly wait to post about!

Language Arts and Science

For Language Arts today, R's assignment included reading aloud. She could choose a passage from a book she enjoys, a poem she memorized, or something she had written herself. She chose to read an entire (short) book and a story she wrote about our cat. I was thoroughly impressed with how well she did! She started with the story she wrote, standing straight and tall, making great eye contact with her audience (me and Little G), speaking clearly and with expression (smiles) and feeling, holding her composition book low so we could see her sweet little face, and she had both of us smiling through the whole thing. Afterward, she read Harry The Dirty Dog with he same great enthusiasm, lots of smiles, and tons of great eye contact.

As for G, the boy starts his mornings by hugging his beloved Math workbook. Now, I've never witnessed that kind of enthusiasm from kids in bricks and mortar schools. One of the things that bothered me most about sending my kids to school was the concern that they would lose the love of learning they both have.

Even our cat has something to say about traditional schools...

Or, okay, maybe she was just yawning instead of acting all ferocious and scary. Sticky is probably the calmest, most tolerant cat on the face of the planet.

R also enjoyed some Science experiments today. We discussed bouncy balls and which would bounce higher and why. She did trials and recorded what happened each time, dropping them from different heights. She also compared how an empty water bottle versus her bear's brush compared in "bounciness". The water bottle won, in case you're wondering. It won big. The brush just sort of hit the floor like a brick.

We also did an experiment to learn whether salt would dissolve more quickly in hot versus cold water. Hot won, of course, and we discussed why and what other things hot water is used for dissolving (dirt on our clothes in the washing machine, messes on the table after dinner, and so forth). The salt-in-water experiment is a fun one, which is more fascinating for kids than you might expect. We did this years ago when she was in preschool, though she doesn't remember. I recommend it! For our next Science lesson, I think we're going to cook up something extra fun...but I'm keeping it a secret for now.

And last, but certainly not least, we have a really fun new game that counts for Phonics and PE. I was having difficulty helping Little G grasp the concept of syllables. He reads well and has mastered spelling and grammar surprisingly well for his age, but syllables were just not getting through because of his speech issues. I never even considered that, but it makes sense. His words are sometimes broken up into extra syllables that don't exist. Another homeschooling parent on one of the groups I belong to suggested that boys sometimes like more full body movements, and so jumping might be better than clapping. What a wonderful suggestion this turned out to be! Little G loves to jump (it was one of his first words, actually), so we tried it. It was magic, let me tell you! Within about 10 jumps, he knew exactly what syllables meant. Clapping did nothing of the sort for him. We did our new jumping game for about 20 minutes and he loved every single smiling jump.

On Monday, I am going to add continents in. We can toss our inflatable globe to each other while saying the continents as we jump and figuring out how many syllables are in each one. Phonics, PE, and History all in one!