The Only Tolerable Form of Behaviorism (in My Humble Opinion)

Everyone has biases: the key is whether or not you admit to them. If you want ideas about behavior modification or Applied Behavior Analysis, feel free to meander to another blog or website! I admit that I am prejudiced against these forms of treating autism, but those of you who swear by it might feel better if I admit to using one branch of this philosophy of education: Positive Behavior Support (PBS), when firmly grounded in respect for personhood (which I define as the opportunity to accept or reject ideas), natural consequences and payoffs (rather than artificial rewards), both nonverbal and verbal communication, and scaffolding within the child’s zone of proximal development.

Using PBS, we study why a child expresses frustration through challenging behaviors and brainstorm positive and proactive ways to address the underlying issues by changing something in the environment, coming to a share understanding, scaffolding the child better, etc. The goal is to improve quality of life in the naturalistic setting in a way that respects all people involved. PBS dovetails nicely with RDI when parents carefully and thoughtfully apply it in guiding their children.

Lest you fear I have turned my back against a Charlotte Mason philosophy, I have not. I plan to demonstrate my point through a case study Charlotte Mason wrote on a imaginary boy named Guy Belmont, whose meltdowns remind me very much of what children in the autism spectrum do today. If you do not believe me, check out either the original story suited for the Victorian ear, or the brilliant Leslie Laurio's modern paraphrase.

Mr. and Mrs. Belmont noticed that young Guy had developed a major problem with unpredictable, raging temper tantrums (the little tyrant even bit into and ripped his mother's dress in one fit). Mr. Belmont assessed the negative cycle by weighing his own observations with those of his wife and his son's nurse. He figured out what happened before, during, and after the outbreaks and developed a theory about how to prevent them.

Before
While many unpredictable situations set off Guy, several observable, physical signs or pending meltdown consistently appear right before the tantrum started. "If you notice––no matter what the cause––flushed cheeks, pouting lips, flashing eye, frowning forehead, with two little upright lines between the eyebrows, limbs held stiffly, hands, perhaps, closed, head thrown slightly back; if you notice any or all of these signs, the boy is on the verge of an outbreak."

During
Guy paid attention to his mother's reactions: "He eyed his mother askance through his tumbled, yellow hair, but her presence seemed only to aggravate the demon in possession."

His mother's calmness helped somewhat: "'Did you hear me, Guy?' in tones of enforced calmness. The uproar subsided a little."

Physically forcing Guy to behave made him worse: "When Mrs. Belmont laid her hand on his shoulder to raise him, the boy sprang to his feet, ran into her head-foremost, like a young bull, kicked her, beat her with his fists, tore her dress with his teeth."

Putting Guy in a timeout did not alter his behavior. "Once in [his room], the key was turned upon him, and Guy was left to 'subside at his leisure' said his father . . . Meantime, two closed doors and the wide space between the rooms hardly served to dull the ear-torturing sounds that came from the prisoner."

Novelty captured his attention and calmed him down. "All at once there was a lull, a sudden and complete cessation of sound . . . What was her surprise to see Guy with composed features contemplating himself in the glass! He held in his hand a proof of his own photograph which had just come from the photographers. The boy had been greatly interested in the process; and here was the picture arrived, and Guy was solemnly comparing it with that image of himself which the looking-glass presented."

After
As soon as his temper had ended, Guy was free to leave his time-out and acted as if nothing happened. "Guy was released, and allowed to return to the nursery for his breakfast, which his mother found him eating in much content and with the sweetest face in the world . . . You would have thought he had been trying to make up for the morning's fracas, had he not looked quite unconscious of wrong-doing."

Hypothesis

Mr. Belmont brainstormed with his friend Dr. Weissall one evening. He explained their theory to his wife and the nurse the next day. Mr. Belmont did not develop any strategies directed toward the trigger of tantrums because he found no consistent pattern. He planned to prevent them by acting the moment his son showed physical signs of mounting frustraiton. He thought that Guy was young enough to be distracted from exploding, so the goal was to guide him in changing his thoughts. "Do not stop to ask questions, or soothe him, or make peace, or threaten. Change his thoughts."

Intervention
Mr. Belmont suspected that novelty in both setting and events would distract Guy in the heat of the moment. He suggested to the nurse who watched his son during the day to think of something new to do every time Guy started to get flustered. "Say quite naturally and pleasantly, as if you saw nothing, 'Your father wants you to garden with him,' or, 'for a game of dominoes'; or, 'Your mother wants you to help her in the store-room,' or, 'to tidy her work-box.' Be ruled by the time of the day, and how you know we are employed. And be quite sure we do want the boy."

Nurse became convinced of the soundness of this hypothesis after she prevented a couple of outbursts. Even when the Belmonts were out, she found ingenious ways to distract Guy and change his thoughts. "Nurse was really clever in inventing expedients, in hitting instantly on something to be done novel and amusing enough to fill the child's fancy. A mistake in this direction would, experience told her, be fatal; propose what was stale, and not only would Guy decline to give up the immediate gratification of a passionate outbreak."

Altering Consequences
Nobody is perfect, and Nurse was no exception. One day, Nurse forgot herself and Guy blew up. Guy found pleasure in novelty, even if it was simply putting the house in an uproar. He did not see how his outbursts affected others. To help Guy come to a shared understanding with the rest of his family, Mr. Belmont asked his wife to become quietly mournful and withdrawn with a kind, tender spirit after an outburst. "We must, as you once suggested, consider how we ourselves are governed. Estrangement, isolation are the immediate consequences of sin, even of what may seem a small sin of harshness or selfishness . . . but he must never doubt our love. He must see and feel that it is always there, though under a cloud of sorrow which he only can break through."

Transferring Responsibility
The day after Guy blew up and received the loving, but silent treatment, Mr. Belmont and Guy brainstormed ways for Guy join them in helping to prevent tantrums. His father helped Guy learn to recognize pending tantrums by the physical signs and came up with an imaginary device--racing Mr. Cross-man--to avoid them in the future.

Mr. Belmont: "So my poor little boy had a bad day yesterday!"

Guy hung his head and said nothing.

Mr. Belmont: "Would you like me to tell you how you may help ever having quite such another bad day?"

Guy: "Oh yes, please, father; I thought I couldn't help."

Mr. Belmont: "Can you tell when the 'Cross-man' is coming?"

Guy hesitated. "Sometimes, I think. I get all hot."

Mr. Belmont: "Well, the minute you find he's coming, even if you have begun to cry, say, 'Please excuse me, Nurse,' and run downstairs, and then four times round the paddock as fast as you can, without stopping to take breath!"

Guy: "What a good way! Shall I try it now?"

Mr. Belmont: "Why, the 'Cross-man' isn't there now. But I'll tell you a secret: he always goes away if you begin to do something else as hard as you can; and if you can remember to run away from him round the garden, you'll find he won't run after you; at the very worst, he won't run after you more than once round!"

Guy: "Oh, father, I'll try! What fun! See if I don't beat him! Won't I just give Mr. 'Cross-man' a race! He shall be quite out of breath before we get round the fourth time."

My Conclusion
Charlotte Mason was a genius because she figured out a hundred years ago what some folks have yet to learn: kids prone to tantrums need more than a time-out . . .

Return of the Wayward Blogger

The Navy taught me NEVER to make excuses. Pamela and I spent eight lovely days north of the Mason-Dixon line. I was missing in action on a covert mission, uncovering the fall colors and the secret life of bees. Everything else is classified information . . . Loose lips sink ships, baby!

Last Saturday, Pamela went trick or treating. At the last minute, she ditched her plan to be a mom carrying her two babies (Baby Alive and Baby David) and decided to be a woman from Greece. Fortunately, I already had the white tunic which she wore for a wizard costume three years ago, so all I bought was a scarf for five dollars! We joined a friend and kids from their neighborhood and piled into her mini-van driven by a clown. Pamela, Tinkerbell, Minnie Mouse, Obi-One Kenobi, a cowboy, a crocodile, a superhero in black, and two friendly helpers in tall hats made the rounds together.

Pamela is still working through the trick or treating etiquette but I noticed her doing one new thing, reflective of her improving dynamic thinking skills. In years past, she accepted whatever candy came her way. This year, she showed discernment. Anytime someone handed her with peanuts she would say, "No!" and push it back. Then, explaining her peanut allergies worked, and most people let her pick something safe.

For the first time ever, houses hosted haunted tents. To get the coveted prize, trick or treaters wove through smoke and scary monsters (kids wielding glow in the dark weapons). Pamela could care less: she casually made her way to the candy and ignored people trying to scare her.

This house always has interesting gadgets to capture the kids' attention and this year was no exception!

Perspective

Monday began like any other day. Steve left at seven-thirty to drive to Tennessee for a short business trip. Pamela and I decided to catch up a little bit of reading postponed last Friday because of the holiday. When I dropped David off at band, I noticed the iffy weather and threw up a quick prayer request for Steve on Facebook at 10:23. Three friends--all prayer warriors and parents of children with autism--responded: Steve's sorority sister gave a thumbs-up plus a local friend and a homeschooler in Tennessee said they would pray.

Pamela read and narrated her books while I worked on Beth Moore Bible study. The orthodontist interrupted us for a few minutes, but we doggedly got back on track. My parents called from their RV in Florida, so I talked long enough to be polite. As soon as I hung up, we tackled our work again: Pamela was reading a chapter from The World of Columbus and Sons while I read Beth Moore's suggestion that, as adopted children of God's royal family, we represent His land just as the Queen of England represents her land when visiting our country.

The phone rang again, and I fussed, "Not another phone call!" I never get three phone calls in succession, and I came close to ignoring it! I got up one more time and heard the words that you never want to hear, "Tammy, don't worry but . . ."

Steve was calling from a concrete barrier in the median of I-40 watching traffic zoom around his wrecked car blocking two lanes of traffic. He didn't even know the nearest exit much less the state. "I'm okay! I'm walking, but the beemer is gone. I just totaled it. I think I'm in Tennessee . . ." It turned out he was in North Carolina!

I could hear the passing cars through the phone and, at one point, a woman asked if he needed help! He asked me to pray for him because he was afraid someone would plow into him before the police arrived. Fortunately, the ensuing traffic jam took care of that problem.

Fearing that Pamela might become unglued if she figured out the truth, I returned to what we were doing and acted like nothing happened. She asked who called and, in a phony calm voice, I told her that her dad called to tell me how he was doing (close enough to the truth to avoid lying). Because of RDI, Pamela can read moods better and, if she had detected my fear, she would have flipped out. Navy training kicked in, so we went back to work.

As soon as I got her going on her reading, I typed a Facebook note at 11:49, thanking everyone for praying, "PRAISING GOD FOR ALL WHO PRAYED FOR SAFETY!!!!!!!!!!!!!! STEVE JUST TOTALLED THE CAR AND HE IS OKAY. THAT IS ALL I KNOW. KEEP HIM IN YOUR PRAYERS FACEBOOK FRIENDS." For the next hour, people from all over the world--his friends, my friends, mutual friends--chimed in with their gratitude and prayers!

Since I was behind in my Bible study, I got back to page 97, which--I am not kidding you--stated:

Not only are you royalty but you also have been placed in your sphere of influence, regardless of the size you perceive it to be, 'for such a time as this.' Ecclesiastes 3:2 tells us there is 'a time to be born and a time to die.' God cut out those exact perimeters for you and me on the kingdom calendar so that we would be positioned on earth right now. Likewise, Acts 17:26 tells us unflinchingly that God 'determined the times set for [us] and the exact places that [we] should live.' You see, even your current location is part of the set-up for your kingdom destiny. As we learned in one of our earliest verses on providence in this series, in Christ 'we were also chose, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works everything in conformity with the purpose of His will' (Ephesians 1:11). These realizations should be stunning and marvelous to us, exploding our lives with significance.

Yeah, the timing was stunning all right . . . ten minutes after I learn about Steve's brush with death!!!!!!

For the past two weeks, our town of 4,000 people has seen one person after another die: a fifth grader from swine flu, a teacher from an aneurysm, a 10th grader from accidental drowning, a reporter (who wrote stories about my brother's reenlistment and my mom's quilt group before he moved last year) from a car accident Saturday night. Steve could have been the next! At the last minute, he decided to drive the beemer instead of Red (the Kia). Five minutes before the accident, he started to feel nervous about the road conditions: he grabbed the wheel firmly with both hands and kept his eyes peeled. The car slid on what he thinks was a patch of oil, side-swiped a truck hauling a bunch of cars, rotated ninety-degrees before plowing into the concrete barrier in the median, head-on. As it spun and bashed into the barrier several times, two things spun in his head: "Dear God, don't let it be today and don't let anyone else get hurt."

Miraculously, no other car was involved in the accident, and the truck driver could not find a single dent on his rig. Steve was shaky, stiff, and sore with a minor burn on one hand from the airbag. The state troopers and emergency teams were efficient in cleaning up the mess!

I called my closest friend, who totaled her car last year. She said that she was so worthless after her wreck that she could not have driven a half hour to get home, much less five hours. Her description convinced me to take no lip from Steve, who has been known to drive three hours with a high fever caused by the measles, telling me that it was nothing. I told Pamela that Dad missed us and we were going to visit him in North Carolina (which was another half-baked truth). Luckily, she was so delighted by the impromptu trip that she bought my excuse without question. I picked up David, asked for more prayers from my friends on Facebook, email lists, and Twitter, and drove off.

The roads were nasty most of the way: slick with plenty of rain and later fog. Every stalled car, every tow truck, every cross on the side of the road came alive as I thought about what happened to Steve. Knowing about all those people praying for us calmed me.

On the five-hour trip, I reflected upon Oswald Chamber's book If You Will Ask, which busy days caused me to put down after the first chapter. Oswald wrote, "Only when a man flounders beyond any grip of himself and cannot understand things does he really pray." Steve and I sure experienced that kind of helplessness!

Prayer to Him is not a way to get things from God, but so that we may get to know God. Prayer is not to be used as the privilege of a spoiled child seeking ideal conditions to indulge his spiritual propensities; the purpose of prayer is to reveal the presence of God, equally present at all times and in every condition. . . It is not so true that 'Prayer changes things' as that prayer changes us.

Because of Pamela, I had to stay calm: I had two choices: a very bad situation or a worse situation compounded by autistic meltdown! As Oswald pointed out, "The secret of Christian quietness is not indifference, but the knowledge that God is my Father, He loves me, I shall never think of anything He will forget, and worry becomes an impossibility." The only way I could stay calm was through the eternal perspective. As my pastor pointed out in his sermon last Sunday, we can live life in the light of the Gospel, regardless of chaotic chapters in our lives, because we know the end of the story (Isaiah 65:17). He also observed at our Wednesday night Bible study that prayer is the inverse of anxiety:

It means the more you pray, the less anxious you feel. Likewise, the less you pray, the more anxious you feel. Do I hear an amen?

That is what I experienced on Monday through prayer: hearing the whisper from God to pray for Steve's safety and ask others to pray before he crashed . . . to answer the phone, however inconvenient it was . . . to continue the Bible study and receive consolation while he was still in danger . . . to share the circumstances with those who pray so that they too could spend time with God . . . to feel at peace because God wants what is best for my family . . . to rejoice with our friends when I shared news of his safety. The first chapter of Oswald's book came alive before our eyes last Monday.

"As long as we are self-sufficient and complacent, we don't need to ask God for anything; we don't want Him. It is only when we know we are powerless that we are prepared to listen to Jesus Christ." Oswald Chambers

P.S. Once we hooked up with Steve later that day, Pamela's curiosity ignited when she saw him without the car. She asked, "Where is the gray car?" Because he very quietly explained that it crashed and because she could see with her own eyes that her Daddy was safe, Pamela took the news with great calmness. That surprised me. Two days later, she cried when she realized he had left some beloved CDs in the car along with the keys. The tears were short lived because he promised to call the towing company to see if they could mail them to us, which means she will start nagging us in about a week . . .

Cube City

There is a difference between mindlessly checking things off a to-do list and doing things worth doing. Pamela frequently confirms the meaning of what we are doing. Recently, she started watching DVDs without closed captioning and sets the audio to either French or Spanish! She pulled out an old twaddly companion book to a kid's tape for learning Spanish words, and she reviews it for fun. Second, Pamela has started building things, mainly houses, with the Math-U-See blocks. Unlike her brother, who will never admit to how recently he put away his Legos, she has succumbed to the Lego bug. I may just drag David's collection downstairs for her! She still plans to trick or treat this year, dressed as a mom, taking her babies (Baby Alive and Baby David) out because they are toddlers now. When she flips through old photographs and asks me a question, she turns it so that I can see without hinting, "I can't see it." When we do money transactions, Pamela asks what we are doing so she can figure out if it is negative or positive. Making mathematical connections to the real world because she can easily memorize without understanding.

Volume
To teach volume, I cut out a bunch of flattened cubes (a spreadsheet I made in Excel), built them, and taped them together. We recycled some of the boxes used for calculating surface area and filled them with cubes. Not only did it give her a feel for what volume is (how much space an object takes up), building with cubes spotlights the idea of cubic units being very different from square units. We carefully took the cubes out of the box and compared it to it, side by side. We separated each layer of the volume to enable Pamela to be certain of her count.
Pamela did free lance explorations in which I gave her 20 cubes and let her figure out how many ways to create a volume of 20 cubic inches. Another variation was to take a pile of blocks, create a rectangular prism, and count the dimensions and volume. Activities like this appealed to her orderly, patterned mind. She recorded everything she did in charts to allow her to discover the formula for volume.



By the fourth example of volume, Pamela spotted the formula for volume: length times width times depth. She quickly transition from doing hands-on work to picture (even trying her hand at drawing a 3-D box) to words and symbols. Once she solidified her ability to do volume problems, I introduced one variation: being given a problem with mixed units (1 foot by 10 inches by 14 inches). She is learning to be vigilant about checking the units before labeling her drawings.

Covering a Surface
Pamela struggled with coverage problems like,

Susan needs to buy paint to cover 2100 square feet. One gallon of paint covers 400 square feet. How many gallons of paint does she need?

I realized she did not quite understand what the problem was asking so we backed up and did some concrete activities like covering a 9" x 12" notebook with 3" x 3" sticky notes (pictured left) or covering books with index cards (or cut-up index cards of a standard size to make the numbers work). When we made the leap to word problems, I knew Pamela understood when she illustrated her problem with paint cans.


The next variation I plan to address are house problems including painting or covering sides with siding (you only hit the sides, unless you have triangular shaped attics) and shingling roofs. More variations will involve subtracting out the area of doors and windows or applying two coats of paint.

Dynamic Solutions, Not Bandages

FREEBIE ALERT:
"I Love the '80s" download from Amazon. By '80s, they mean the following compositions by the following composers:

• Brahms' Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90
• Mahler's Symphony No. 1 in D major, "Titan"
• Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64
• Dvorak's Symphony No. 6 in D major, Op. 60, B. 112
• Borodin's Symphony No. 3 in A minor
• Saint-Saens' Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op. 78, "Organ"
• Bruckner's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, WAB 109 (1894 version)

Now back to your regular programming . . .
Adjusting to school has left me little time to blog our RDI journey, which we still do, of course! In fact, I am trying to incorporate dynamic intelligence into our school lessons.

A few Sundays back, a minor problem at church bothered nobody but David. I usually sit in front with the choir for half of the service, while the family stays in the pew. Steve ran eight miles that morning, instead of five, and was too drained to get off the couch! During the service, Pamela usually draws on the bulletin, sermon notes and quotes, and guest registries. While the pastor was speaking, she stood up, looking for a sharpened pencil.

Our very understanding congregation are Pamela's biggest fans. They are delighted when she speaks to them, even if, before the service, she abruptly points to someone with an eye patch and says, "You broke it!" While David (face turning beet red) guided his sister to sit down, Pamela remained oblivious to his discomfort. The lady behind him was chuckling the whole time, and I found out later that her grandson is autistic and sits behind us for that reason!

After church, David begged me to work on this problem. Two quick-fixes that get the job done in a static way are:

Plan A (Nothing more than a band-aid): Put enough paper, pencils, and lead in her purse to keep Pamela happy. This static solution (single response) will get David through church.

Plan B (A more sophisticated band-aid): Come up with a set of rules on how to behave in church and make her learn them. I will not try this plan because it is a static solution that does not promote dynamic thinking.

While we implemented Plan A, we also addressed the real problem through RDI. The underlying issue is that Pamela is not doing a good job of monitoring her actions and those of people around her and then reflecting on her behavior in comparison to theirs.

Lesson 1 - We spent two weeks people watching at every opportunity we could. Whenever we walked into a new setting, we observed what other people were doing and made declarative comments about them. We also talked about our actions.


Lesson 2 - Now, we are working on the second lesson. In addition to people watching, we figure out the kind of group we are watching. Pamela then assesses whether or not she belongs to the group. Then, she decides what her behavior ought to be. The goal is not to force conformity but to think about each situation dynamically. For example, in church last Sunday, my men were down hard and Pamela came to church with me and sat in the choir. She decided the choir was not her group, so she sat whenever we stood and sang. Later, in the pews, she decided to stand up with me for the last song (instead of sitting) but chose not to sing.

Last night, even though her dad was home and she could have stayed with him, Pamela wanted to attend my women's Bible study. When she was in the mood to explore and be apart from the group, she identified herself as not being in the group. However, at the end, when they prayed, she decided to be in the group and sat quietly during the prayer. She even said, "Amen," at the end. The beautiful expression on Pamela's face when she heard the music from the DVD cue-in will surely cheer you up if you have had a horrible, no-good, awfully rotten day.

Corndog, or Cattail?

To complete Outdoor Hour Challenge #3, I read pages 16 and 17 of Handbook of Nature Study. The first section covered language arts and nature study. As a Charlotte Mason homeschooler and RDI mom, I heartily agree that "the purpose of a language is, after all, merely to convey ideas" for I wish to know what Pamela discovers. In the cattail study, Pamela connected cattails to cotton and dandelion seeds all on her own! While nature study supplies excellent subject matter to narrate, the quickest way to kill the benefits is to turn it into a language arts exercise. I try to look at journal entries and written narrations as a record of her understanding of the English language.

The other natural form of expressing ideas found in nature study is art. We usually try our hand at water colors, but the handbook encourages allowing students "to choose their own medium, pencil, crayon, or water color." For the tree study (this week's challenge), I brought all sorts of choices: markers, watercolors, pastels, and oil pastels. The most freeing statement in the book concerned my own issues with art because my family has many talented artists, and I am not one of them:

Too much have we emphasized drawing as an art; it may be an art, if the one who draws is an artist; but if he is not an artist, he still has a right to draw if it pleases him to do so. We might as well declare that a child should not speak unless he put his words into poetry, as to declare that he should not draw because his drawings are not artistic.

The irony of it all is that usually children who draw what they see in nature study develop their own style and learn to draw very well!

We followed up the cattail study by painting water colors based on one of the pictures I took: mine, which is entitled "Cattail, or Corndog?" is on the left and Pamela's is at the top. Pamela wrote some notes about the cattails: "It felt like cotton. The seeds were like a dandelion seeds. It floated on the pond." Notice that Pamela made a tiny grammatical error, but I did not correct it.

Yesterday, Pamela selected a tree, well a sapling, from our backyard to do a year long study. Every season, she will record her observations to help her understand how trees grow and change throughout the year, so I printed out the tree study page for autumn.

Before we headed out, I read pages 622-624 of the handbook, focusing on autumn work. Pamela drew an incredibly geometric picture of her tree, while I snapped pictures that will help us study and classify the tree next week, focusing on the leaves, seeds, roots, trunk, bark, and crown.

How has my attitude about nature study changed since starting the challenges? I have longed to be more consistent but thought a weekly field excursion was too time-consuming and the handbook, too intimidating. Thanks to Barb's bite-sized plan to ease families into short but effective studies and her scaffolding of the handbook, I feel much more confident. I have kept my own nature journal, sporadically in fits and starts over the past three years, and seeing Pamela's art is inspiring me to do my own. The benefits of nature study are plentiful--exercise, fresh air, attention, science, language arts, topics for conversation, art, etc.

P.S. Pamela's tree is weeping mulberry (female cultivar), a variety of the white mulberry, so we will be doing a mulberry study for science next week. Since the handbook does not cover it, Barb's article on subjects not specifically covered will come in handy!

The First Pre-Algebra Test

Number Theory
Last week, Pamela worked through the odd problems in Math-U-See's Lesson 1 according to plan. We transitioned from concrete work through the games I blogged in the plan to number lines (click the picture on the right to enlarge it), which was where I first introduced negative and positive signs. When we started working on word problems, I made a list of actions that usually go with negative and positive, grouped in +/- opposite pairs (sell/buy, have/owe, earn/spend, find/lose, etc.). Whenever we do one of these transactions in real life, I spotlight it for Pamela. Finally, last week, I introduced her to abstract symbols for problems like (+7) + (-10) = _____. She shifted very smoothly from concrete to pictures to words to symbols in the process of understanding the concept of negative.

Last Friday, Pamela ACED her first test straight from the book with no help from me. I was busy typing something on the computer while Pamela took her test. She must have thought about the time when her brother took his first Math-U-See tests because she grabbed the calculator and used it herself. Pamela proudly commented on using the calculator, probably a sign of growing up to her. You can see how she completed most of the test unassisted because she showed her work up until Problem 15. I am more delighted about Pamela reflecting on how David took tests and altering her behavior than the test score!

Algebra/Arithmetic
If you examined the test closely, you will see some fraction problems. Like Math-U-See suggests, we have been reviewing fractions for the past five weeks, falling back on manipulatives, drawings, real-life activities, etc. for concepts that are murky. We examined concepts like whole versus fractions, equal versus unequal parts, terms (numerator, denominator, proper, improper, equivalent, etc.), adding and subtracting fractions, and reducing fractions. I have assessed her understanding of fractions from concrete to pictures to words to symbols, and Pamela is recovering what she did not retain. One of these days, I might get around to blogging our plan for algebra/arithmetic, the third track, which focuses on the review of fractions, decimals, and percents until the seeds are sown for doing algebra.

Geometry
We are making steady progress in our plan for geometry. After blogging our first week of geometry, I left you hanging!

Area of Triangles
Since Pamela caught onto the relationship between the area of a rectangle and the area of a triangle, we reinforced what she knew, NOT through kill and drill, but through new ways of exploring the same idea. She cut out rectangles on a grid and found the area of a rectangle. Then, she cut the triangles out of the rectangle and matched up the pieces to prove to herself that the triangle has the exact area as the remaining pieces of the rectangle. Since the triangle plus the group of remaining pieces form two equal parts of the rectangle, then you know the area of the triangle is half the area of the rectangle.



Then, we transitioned from the hands-on to pictures and she learned to draw a rectangle around the triangle, find the area of the rectangle, and divide by 2 to get the area of the triangle.


Pamela spent some time learning to measure the base and height of physical triangles or pictures of them to avoid the trap of thinking that half of one side times another side will work. I helped her get far enough to be able to handle finding the surface area of a pyramid which was the ultimate goal. Down the road, we will revisit the area of triangles and delve into why and how to extend the base to find the height.

Surface Area of Rectangular Prisms
We began by counting the number of surfaces of various polyhedrons to introduce the idea of a solid having faces. I found an awesome resource for making my own out of cardstock paper (you must check out the link--some of the models are fantastical). The first item we chose was the paper clip container, which perfectly matched the sticky notes (top and bottom) and only required minor adjustments for the sides. We labeled each side with letters and identified their position (top, bottom, front, back, left and right) to prepare her for transitioning to pictures later. Then, we made up a table of the areas of all the faces and added them up. Her eagle eye spotted a pattern right away (top = bottom, front = back, left = right).



I showed her how to open the box and flatten it out and draw a two-dimensional picture of it. Given the flat picture, Pamela easily found the surface area. Given a box in real life, she had no problem! The tricky part was, when shown a 3-D drawing of a box, drawing the flattened picture and correctly transcribing the height, width, and length. We continued to practice one a day, looking at the picture, and pointing to the parts of a real box. After consistent and slow work, everything fell into place suddenly and she figured out the logic in a pattern that made sense to her:

• Every number gets copied four times.


• Figure out the dimensions of the bottom and copy them to the top.


• Logically, you have to copy the width of the top and bottom to the front and back.


• The front and back involve the height, so transcribe that.


• Logically, you have to copy the length of the top and bottom to the left and right sides.


• The only thing remaining to transcribe is the height, which gets assigned to the left and right sides.

By now, your eyes are probably bugging or your head is spinning. Here is the thing to keep in mind. Unlike reading words on a page or taking notes in a lecture, working through these problems, day by day, develops understanding. Pamela thought of this way of solving the problems by knowing what makes sense and what does not make sense. That kind of knowledge comes from going from concrete to picture to words to abstract numbers and symbols.

Surface Area of Triangular Prisms
We applied the same process to a pyramid with a square based. She had no problems making the connections for this solid, drawing what she calls "the star", and transcribing numbers correctly.

To assess whether or not Pamela truly understood calculating surface area from a flat drawing, I gave her a slightly different problem. The last thing I want her to do is work math problems on automatic pilot. The only way to understand math is to think and make logical connections. I gave her dimensions for a pyramid with a triangular base and the star suited for that solid. Pamela had no problems adjusting her strategy for this problem.

More Outdoor Hour Challenges

Lichen Follow-Up
Last Friday, Pamela became interested in lichen, but she did not know what it was. During the week, she googled "green bark tree trunk" for images and found out its name. We looked up information on lichen, and she typed the following narration for her science notebook:

I saw green stuff on the brown bark. It was lichens. It was a fungus with blue-green bacteria. It grew outside on bark, tree trunks, wooden fences, and even rocks. It will not hurt the tree.

Challenge #2
On Tuesday, we combined Lesson 5, Day 1 of Writing Strands Level 2 with Outdoor Hour Challenge #2, which focused on using words. This series guides parents in guiding their children in nature study. Challenge 2 asked us to read The Field Excursion and How to Use This Book from Handbook of Nature Study. I loved the idea of taking a well-planned, efficient field trip of only fifteen minutes, which my busy schedule demands. The suggestion to preview the outing by talking about what you expect to study dovetails nicely with how we homeschool anyway. I learned to "make the lesson an investigation and make the pupils feel that they are the investigators." How? Keep the information shared in the book's studies to myself just like I avoid giving away spoilers in a novel. Likewise, imperative language (direct questions) kills a nature study in the same way it douses conversation. "If the questions do not inspire the child to investigate, they are useless"--perfect advice for an RDI parent.

For this challenge, Pamela and I sat on the steps of our back porch with lined notebook paper. I explained that we were going to practice sequencing in a story with nature study. She would find words to describe what she saw, heard, and felt and use sequencing words like first, second, third, etc. Since we have been making nature journal entries regularly, I skipped that part of the challenge. Unlike me, Pamela remembered that Tuesday was the first day of fall and I loved what she wrote:

Summer is over. First, I saw the green-and-brown tree with green-and-brown leaves. Second, I heard the wind, and it was blowing. Third, the yellow leaves were falling, and I felt cool. Fourth, the birds were whistling. The season is fall.

Autumn Challenge #1: Cattail
Before heading out, I reviewed the challenge and skimmed (busy schedule, remember?) the part about spring, summer, and flowers in the study on cattails and focused on what to expect in the fall. I even printed out the notebook page and packed some markers.

I called my friend Brenda because I figured she would know where to find cattails. She went above and beyond the call of duty (it fits--she's a veteran of the Coast Guard and I'm a Navy veteran). Brenda gave us a ride on her golf cart up and down several hills until we reached a beautiful fishing pond with plenty of cattails.


Pamela and I orally observed the setting first: weather, date, season, location, etc. We noticed how cattails grow along the edge of the pond. She touched the cattail and said it was soft. I added that it felt like a sponge. She drew a detail of one cattail and then drew a bunch of them, very neatly and abstractly. During the week, she will write her observations for science class. The book asked if the cattail would float and Pamela guessed that it would. I snapped off a cattail and handed to her to throw. Impulsively, she ripped off some of the seeds and said, "Dandelion seeds." They are so soft, white, and downy. We talked about the wind blowing the seeds away.



Pamela went to the edge of the pond and threw the cattail. She was right! Before we left I snapped some pictures for our follow-up study next week.

The sweetest moment was when a mother showed up with her little girl, probably no more than two years old. Pamela asked for her name and repeated it when she heard it. Pamela looked at me and said, "New friend?"

"She who opens her eyes and her heart nature-ward even once a week finds nature-study in the schoolroom a delight and an abiding joy." Anna Comstock

Vermeer and the Latest Twist on Picture Study

Swine flu has hit our town, shutting down one of the private schools until next week. One family is mourning the loss of their 5th grader who woke up sick on Monday and died today. I do not know them but I am praying for them. I cannot imagine their grief, and it gives me a new perspective on autism. It makes me savor little moments like folding clothes and sitting on the couch next to Pamela while she draws on her dry erase board . . .

Last week, we wrapped up our Monet picture study by looking at his water lilies. Since one goal is for Pamela to know an artist's personality through the paintings, I chose Vermeer based on the startling contrast between neoclassicism and impressionism. Before moving on, we talked about our favorite paintings. Pamela understands that Monet's lilies stand out as uniquely his and observed that the painting with the bridge looks like the one at Swan Lake.



You can see in the video that Pamela and I enjoy picture study, which puts us "in touch with the great artist minds of all ages. We try to unlock for [our] delectation the wonderful garden of Art, in which grow most lovely flowers, most wholesome fruits. We want to open [our] eyes and minds to appreciate the masterpieces of pictorial art, to lead [us] from mere fondness for a pretty picture which pleases the senses up to honest love and discriminating admiration for what is truly beautiful - a love and admiration which are the response of heart and intellect to the appeal addressed to [us] through the senses by all great works of art" (Miss Hammond).

Bringing Charlotte Mason into the digital age, I set up the screensaver on the computer to rotate through the Monet paintings that we studied, a trick I learned from other moms. Miss Hammond suggested inserting the picture in a book to enjoy on a rainy day. I printed out all the pictures we studied and placed them in a folder.

Objective:
1. To start a study of Vermeer's pictures.
2. To develop interest in Vermeer's works.
3. To help Pamela learn to give enough information accurately about a painting to allow me to single it out from other choices.
4. To let her see the natural consequences of leaving out important ideas from a painting.
5. To teach her to picture something in her mind and share what she sees in her mind.
6. To reflect about the painting and how it relates to our lives.

Modifications from Charlotte Mason (Volume 1, pages 309-311):
1. Since the focus is accurately describing what she sees in her mind without the other person seeing it, we will not discuss the picture before putting it away.
2. Since we are helping her with theory of mind, I will ask questions about details to help me get a clear picture in my mind.
3. I cannot give a preview of the picture because I do not know which picture she will pick. So, I will begin the next lesson by asking her to recall the previous picture. Then, I will tell her the story behind the previous picture to link the known (the last picture talk) with the unknown (the current picture talk).

Steps:
1. Select and cut out twelve pictures by Jan Vermeer. Let Pamela pick one without me knowing what it is.
2. Tell her that the new artist we will study is Vermeer.
3. Encourage her to study the picture attentively so that she can remember it after we put it away.
4. Ask her to describe the picture with the most important features that will help me select the right one.
5. Ask questions for more clarity.
6. When finished, mix up the pictures and slowly review them, letting her know why I reject the pictures that sound wrong and why I accept the picture I think she described.
7. If my guess was wrong, brainstorm together what would have helped me.
8. Look at the pictures and talk about anything we missed.
9. Talk about what the picture reminds us of or any special meaning we get from it.

My favorite part of the video was how Pamela personalized the painting. The maid in the painting was sleeping and Pamela thought she was tired from walking. Whenever we return home from our daily walks, Pamela sits on the couch and rests, recovering from her exhaustion!

Weeks Three and Four Recap

Life got in the way of blogging, so I'm combining weeks three and four, both made of four days due to Labor Day and the local school district teacher's administration day (Pamela likes having her school year line up with everyone else's). We are now full steam ahead, working five hours or less a day (including exercise and practical skills).

My favorite moment in Week Three was when Pamela called Ctrl-Z (the undo feature of Excel) "rewinding". In Week Four, I loved her use of dynamic thinking. On Thursday, Pamela reflected that we had Friday off and said to me, "Tomorrow is to be continued." I suspected she hoped to split up the work between two days, so I asked if she wanted half days. She told me, "Twenty-two more, eleven today." After studying her schedule, she adjusted her plan to twelve on Thursday and ten on Friday. That is what I call dynamic thinking, which is the point of RDI!

Spanish
Pamela and I continued to practice sharing our feelings in Spanish plus we reviewed colors and learned pets. To mix things up, one day we colored a picture, saying the names of the colors in Spanish and we played "I Spy" in Spanish, Yo veo . . . morado. Pamela's favorite Spanish word is for orange. She may have struggled with aphasia most of her life, but the word anaranjado glides off her tongue like silk. We added Los pollitos dicen, which Steve learned as a child, to our sing-a-long time. Pamela loved figuring out many of the words by watching the video on youtube.

Mathematics
We continued splitting time between geometry, number theory, and algebra/arithmetic. In geometry, not only did we cover the idea of 0-D (point), 1-D (line), 2-D (plane), 3-D (solid), and square units for problems without measurements, we hit surface area from many perspectives, doing problems from Lesson 15 in Math-U-See's Pre-Algebra:

• Cutting up 3-D boxes, cubes, prisms, and pyramids (check out this awesome link), measuring and calculating the area of the faces, and summing to get the total.


• Unfolding and flattening paper models, outlining their shape on paper, and calculating the areas in the diagram to get surface area.


• Looking at a drawing of a 3-D shape, drawing the flattened version, and calculating surface area.


• Viewing the surfaces of a room and house as solids to determine the material is needed for painting, siding, and roofing.

Because Pamela has not completely mastered these ideas after four weeks of work, one thing is clear: she could not have come this far in only one week which the book suggests is possible! I still plan to introduce volume next week while continuing to hone Pamela's ability to calculate surface area.

In number theory, Pamela played more games involving the concept of negative and, for the first time, we used that words negative and positive as we transitioned to working on a number line, doing word problems, and providing answers for problems in numbers and symbols. Because of Pamela's aphasia, I developed a long list of situations that go with negative (buy, owe, lost, pay, spend, etc.) and positive (earn, found, have, received, sell, etc.). She even worked some problems from Lesson 1 of Math-U-See's Pre-Algebra. In algebra, we reviewed fractions (falling back on blocks and drawings as necessary): comparing, adding, subtracting, reducing, and proper/improper/equivalent fractions.

History
We worked out of six books for our history threads, and Pamela added pages to the book of centuries. For the most ancient of history, Pamela read and wrote a narration of Seth and his extended family, including Enoch's startling story (Adam and His Kin and an illustrated version of Genesis). For the era leading to the birth of Jesus, she read passages about the births of John the Baptist and Jesus (an illustrated version of The New Testament) and the family of Octavius, Cicero, the five conspirators (Brutus and kin), and Mark Antony (Augustus Caesar's World). We read the myths behind the founding of Britain in Our Island Story and read about the early childhood of Christopher Columbus and Isabela of Castile in a time when Mohammed II was eying Europe (The World of Columbus and Sons).

Language Arts
Pamela did studied dictation of two myths, Egyptian Creation and Gilgamesh's Flood, requiring no special lessons. She wrapped up her recitation of The Horseman. She practiced articulation through reciting, reading aloud poems, and singing songs. She typed narrations of Watership Down, myths, and her history readings and wrote notes for geography and literature. Pamela copied the story "A Rainbow for Sarah" into her copy journal for penmanship. She took several pictures and typed stories about her beanie babies. Pamela orally narrated her readings and paintings by Monet.



Pamela completed Lessons 3 and 4 of Writing Strands Level 2 (emphasizing reporting what you see, replacing nouns with pronouns, and combining sentences). Pamela wrote the following stories:

The Cat and Mouse
My white mouse with a long, tail ate the small, pink fish on the white-and-blue table. My brown-and-white cat with a long tail was walking on the brown deck. My brown-and-white cat with a long tail saw a white mouse with a long tail and a small, pink fish on the white-and-blue table. It screamed and fell on the white mouse with a long, tail and a small, pink fish on the white-and-blue table. The white mouse with a long, tail was under the brown couch.

Animals
My mom with a wand had a pumpkin. She was waving a wand and made magic. The elephant and giraffe were on the brown deck. They were six: the elephant, hippo, giraffe, monkey, lion and ostrich. They were two: rhino and zebra. The pink shoe was small. It sat on the lion.

Literature
Pamela read eight poems by Walter de la Mare, two chapters of Watership Down, two chapters of Little Women, and three chapters of Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone.

Geography
Charlotte Mason covered geography through interesting travel books. Pamela followed the Fisher family on their WorldTrek through England, Ireland, and Norway. To help her better visualize their journey, I created pages in a folder with pictures and maps. To supplement our other readings, we studied maps of ancient Rome plus Europe, Northern Africa, and the Middle Ages in the fifteenth century.

Life Skills
Pamela finished her first introductory course in Excel and started a new one about typing formulas (I learned a new trick about the Auto-Sum feature). She decided where to go during our daily walks and delighted herself by exploring a street we have never walked or driven. Pamela is learning to crochet chains, which requires such effort that we can only work at it five minutes at a time. She has mastered phase I (hooking with her left hand), and I started her on phase II (controlling the yarn and chain with her right hand).

Recreation
We exercised by walking the dog. Pamela painted in her nature journal. Pamela classified her first tree (the flowering dogwood on the left), noticed lichen, and joined me for Green Hour Challenge #1. Pamela sings Blessed Assurance, Land of the Silver Birch, and Los Pollitos Dicen well and even adjusts her pace to mine when I deliberately spend up or slow down to assess her co-regulation skills. We listened to Mozart in the car and did four picture studies of Monet's water lilies.