I have been wanting to share more detail in how I am adapting Pookie’s curriculum to be something he is able to accomplish. So, with that in mind, I am going to share a bit of what we are currently working on. I want to apologize for the lack of pictures. My smart phone crashed and the new one I am using temporarily doesn’t take good quality pictures.
I decided to make Pookie a homeschool binder, just as Little Miss has. Little Miss has her notebook divided up by subjects. Pookie, on the other hand, will have his divided up by unit studies with extra sections for Math skills and home therapy notes. The binder is a simple 3-ring binder that is about 2” thick. I will upgrade to a larger one later if necessary.
The My Father’s World Kindergarten program begins with a 2-week long unit study about the Creation story in the Bible. One of the activities in the unit is to make a Creation book using the supplied page elements. The items for each page are included in the curriculum for the kids to color, cut and paste into the book. Well, Pookie has difficulty coloring. Without aid, his grip on crayons is very loose and he has little control. Basically, it is a scribble at best. Most of the time, he doesn’t put enough pressure on the crayon to transfer the color to the paper. He also is still learning to cut and while he can close the scissors as he cuts, he cannot open them as well. Pasting is another exercise in motor control that he is having to learn. So, how are we doing his book project? We are scrapbooking!
Pookie loves to paint, so each day, he is painting a background that matches the theme for that day. For example, on the day that the trees were created, he will be making a tree. The tree itself is made by painting his forearm brown and pressing it to the paper. His hand will be painted green to make the leaves. This will also make a great activity to help with his sensory issues for things sticky!
I found additional hands-on activities by purchasing “And He Saw That It Was Good – A Unit Study on Creation” by Grace Bound Books. The owner of Grace Bound Books is a homeschooling mother of an autistic son. Finding this unit study was a great blessing. It added more activities and broke them up by school subject. Each day’s lessons were choke full of ideas to choose from. I may not use everything in the unit study, but if I chose to do so, the unit study is a stand alone thematic unit that needs no other additions. For now, I just used a few of the elements from the study, mostly the crafts.
There are some subjects in the MFW-K curriculum that he cannot do on account of his developmental delays. So, I am finding alternative ways to present them. One of the best I found for phonics is the Letter of the Week curriculum on the Confessions of a Homeschooler blog. Erica put a great curriculum together that is totally hands-on! Yippee!!!!! Something that Pookie can manage with little assistance. I am printing out the letters using the order given for the MFW-K curriculum. This way, he will be learning the letters in the same order, just using different materials that better fit his ability levels.
I am still doing the history and readers from Heart of Dakota’s Little Hearts for His Glory program. These are the readers for the 5-7 year age group. I want to introduce the stories to Pookie that are with this program. It is too convenient and easy to fall back onto the emergent readers. Instead, I want to expand his language base by reading the books to him that come with this program. The emergent readers will be fine for our other story times. For homeschool, I want to do something more challenging.
Eventually, Pookie will be able to do more of the Heart of Dakota program. For now though, the history and possibly science is all that he will do for this year. Certainly, he will be doing the program again next term and adding anything that matches where he developmental skills are at that time.
Wherever possible, we will be making some type of scrapbook page to add to his notebook. The pages will be for any of the subjects he is learning. For example, Little Miss is working on a Christopher Columbus unit. I had found a compass rose worksheet in both the basic 4 directions as well as another version that included 8 directions. I printed out both versions. Pookie cut out with assistance the names of the 4 primary directions and after I applied the glue stick to the paper, he placed the direction name labels in the correct spots. This will go in the section for his Christopher Columbus unit that he will be starting closer to Thanksgiving. We did it now since Little Miss was working on hers and he showed so much interest.
I know that to many, the way we are teaching Pookie may sound confusing and taking a lot of extra work. For me, it just is a part of our daily homeschool experience with Pookie. If he cannot learn one way, I have to find another. That is all that I am doing. Often in homeschooling families, if they are using a purchased curriculum, the curriculum gets tweaked. One subject materials are substituted with another. This is very common. I have simply done the same thing, but in a different manner.
I hope to be able to add pictures in the very near future. I know that there are some who would like to see a visual of what I am talking about. Early in this post, I mentioned that I am recording home therapy notes. In my next blog post, I will share what type of information I am tracking and how I do it.
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