Wordless Halloween!

A Potpourri of Pictures and People

The antidote to yesterday's rant is something positive. Here are the obligatory Halloween photos. Pamela and I made her wizard cap (plus the fairy wand we made six weeks ago) and adapted the costume of a senator to that of a wizard. If you click on the photos, you will see larger versions of them. David reprised his role as the hippie, except that this year he decided he was too mature for candy. He was there to look out for Pamela . . . sigh . . . my baby is too old to beg for candy. . . sniff.

Yesterday reminded me of the positive impact of the Internet upon our life as a homeschooling family. Queen Mum over at Growing Fruit turned me onto the Hearing Journey, which has FREE weekly activities to promote language. Pamela and I read together a cute story about making a witch's house. We really needed construction paper, but I did not feel like going shopping. When Mom is lazy, we improvise! We took a sheet of the 24lb paper Steve keeps for special occasions and painted both sides orange (waiting for it to dry in between sides, of course). While reading the story, Pamela folded and cut the orange paper as instructed. This activity afforded many opportunities for referencing to resolve uncertainty. When finished, Pamela opened up the "house" and realized she had made a pumpkin!

Robyn reminded me in her recent post of the pecan trees in our yard and what a wonderful activity it would be for Pamela and I to harvest some home-grown pecans. We will be busy for at least a week, or two, just picking them. Next, we will have to work together to shell them. Then, we will have the opportunity to do something with the like bake a pecan pie or pumpkin pie, just in time for Thanksgiving.

I cannot remember who turned me onto paper toys, but I thank that anonymous blogger anyway. To date, we have made fairy wand, secret windows as thank-you cards, the animal menagerie (pictured below), and Pamela's best thoughts (on the right--her collection of poems and memories is still in the works until she fills up all sixteen cards).

A friendly email exchange back in February 2007 with Sonya from Simply Charlotte Mason, also the mother of an autism spectrum daughter, led me to consider experimenting with RDI. Then, I learned that my longtime cyber fellow blogger and friend Mary was working with an RDI consultant.

Since then, I have gotten to know blogging and non-blogging Moms doing RDI: Nifferco, Jamberry, Poohder, and others I am getting to know. In the photos below, Pamela and I talked about the animals in her menagerie. We had a delightful conversation in which she communicated verbally and nonverbally. What RDI did for her was to help understand why looking at someone's face is useful: because people send additional messages throught body language and that she can learn to decode it.

Email exchanges with other homeschooling friends inspired me with a story about the importance of thinking out loud with my children and the beauty of adoption. Then there is the FREE curriculum I use at Ambleside Online and the email lists to which I subscribe, especially Aut-2B-Home with people there that I have "known" for years! And, how can I forget the kindred spirits I met at the Childlight Conferences: Amber, Bonnie, Carroll and Andy, Cheri (listmom of AOwithLDKids), Dawn, Leslie, and Megan.

If I have forgotten anyone worthy of recognition, I am so sorry for having developed a premature case of Momheimers (when the gray stuff inside the brain leaks and alters your hair color).

New Blogring and Happy Halloween

I wanted to join a blogring on the topic of homeschooling children in the autism spectrum and discovered none! Today, I launched a new blogring, Aut-2B-Home, to link together the blogs of families homeschooling spectrum children. You do not have to be part of the Aut-2B-Home email list, but are welcome to join. A link to the blogring is in the sidebar to the right after the topical index. If you wish to join, click here! If you need help joining the blogring, leave a comment and I will be glad to help you out.



Yesterday was Halloween. My kids, Pamela (17) and David (14), are never too old to dress up and go trick-or-treating. Pamela dressed up as a cute, cuddly white cat, while David was a modern-day hippie, asking folks to sign a petition for "whirled peas" and "peas on earth." Many people got the joke and signed the petition. Others wanted nothing to do with it, and David casually replied, "That's cool, man." We saw many neat costumes and a live tarantula--yes, live!

It counted as P.E. because my "two cool cats" and I walked for an hour in a neighborhood with houses spread far apart. This neighborhood must be a favorite trick-or-treating haunt because cars and golf carts lined the streets. Walking was actually faster! It counted as art for David for he learned how to tie-dye a T-shirt yesterday (as did I).