Introduction to Decimals

Pamela has delays in many areas, including math. Her abstract thinking skills and ability to reason really did not emerge until she turned thirteen. While her sequential skills are an asset in learning operations and math routines, her literal thinking and aphasia make word problems the most challenging. We have been using Making Math Meaningful since she was twelve, and she has completed Level 1 through Level 4. She is near the end of Level 5, having completed place value, addition/subtraction (to the trillions), multiplication/division of three- and four-digit numbers, and addition/subtraction/multiplication/division with fractions.

Today was her first lesson in the link between decimals and fractions. Pamela has worked with decimals in the past whenever we have worked on money. Last year, she worked her way through one of those cheap workbooks sold at Wal-Mart that covered the concepts of telling time and counting money. She has added and subtracted decimals, but has never seen the connection between decimals and fractions until today.

The introduction to decimals played right into the money work we did last year. The author usually starts on a concrete level for new concepts and introduced tenths with dimes. The book has her make a table comparing ways to express the value of seven dimes. Pamela has an eagle eye for patterns and caught onto this activity right away:

7 dimes = 70 cents or 70¢ = 7 (1/10) = 7/10 = .7 = seven tenths or point seven

She found the next page equally easy. The author showed icons for three whole apples and four slices. A key indicated that one whole apple equaled one and a slice equaled one tenth. Pamela filled out another chart that showed and sailed through it because the chart played up to her ability to recognize patterns:

3(1) + 4(1/10) = 3 + 4/10 = 3 4/10 = 3.4 plus a column heading for the ones place and tenths place.

By the end of this school year, Pamela should get three quarters of the way through Level 6 (we school year round). Then I plan to start her on Math-U-See Zeta and then Pre-Algebra. I am not sure if she can make it through high school math, but I am willing to teach as long as she continues to be willing to learn. She enjoys math now. I have a master's degree in operations research (fancy-smancy word for statistics), so I can create extra material when she needs more practice in higher-level mathematics.

The Slowest Miracle Ever

I have kept Pamela's social stories (I write a couple a year) in her big speech therapy book. The Association Method encourages teachers to keep a "child's book" which contains the stories the child has been reading to learn syntax. Pamela's book, which she calls the black book, has every story I have made since the beginning of school last year. When we thumb through it, I can see the progress she has made:

Repetitive sentences/questions (page 13) with the most basic syntax (a/an/some, want(s), see(s), have/has, I/name/noun as a subject, name/noun as an object, who/what)

Animal stories (page 13) that focus on animals (names, numbers, body parts, adjectives, can paired with verbs, not, is covered with, how many/what kind of/does/can questions)

Inanimate object stories (page 14) that cover things (it, objects and their parts, clothing, more adjectives)

Personal description stories (page 14) that describe people (pronouns he/she/they, his/her/their, I/my, you/your, is/are/am, does/do not have any).

This week Pamela is learning to use they/their in sentences and next week will be in questions. The method alternates between teaching syntax in a sentence and then in appropriate questions for that sentence. So after they/their, Pamela will learn to use I am/my in sentences and you/your in questions. Then we will finally move onto prepositions, round-up stories for prepositions, and present progressive language to finish the second unit of language. Pamela has struggled with present progress for years: she tends to say, "A dog is bark" or "A dog barking." If the association method clears up this issue, which has confused Pamela for years, it will be a true miracle.

I want to mention one thing about the notebook. Pamela loves going through old homeschool files but has a tendency to rip through the pages. Rather than apply three hole reinforcements per page, I usually file papers into two-pocket fastener folders. Plastic folders are more durable and have passed the test of time and use. Since Pamela's therapy book gets the most use of all, I splurged on sheet protectors and sturdy three-ringed notebook, and it too has passed the "Pamela" test.

Here is a sample of one of five stories from this week. Notice that I color-coded the new patterns to catch her eye as suggested in the Association Method Manual:

Today is October 31, 2006.
It is Halloween.
Children can dress up.
They are Pamela and David.
They are trick-or-treaters.
They want candy.
They have costumes.
Their costumes are funny.
Their costumes are homemade.
Their bags are empty.
They do not have any candy.
They are hungry.
They can walk.
Pamela is a cat.
She has white fur and a pink nose.
Her whiskers are long.
She has an orange pumpkin bag.
David is a hippie.
His hair is long and black.
His T-shirt is colorful.
He can carry a clipboard and paper.
He does not have any pumpkin bag.
People can sign his paper.
They can supply candy.
Pamela and David have candy.
They do not have any vegetables.
They can eat.
Their candy is delicious.

Are you asleep yet? I agree--this is very tedious. Unfortunately, Pamela must read, hear, repeat, say without prompting, copy, write without prompting, and write from dictation syntax, one structure at a time. Occasionally, I can cover two structures a week when related to a previous structure. Since Pamela already knows he/his and she/her, she had no problem distinguishing they/their. However, if we add too much new syntax at one time, she gets it all muddled up because syntax does not come naturally to her. It only comes by rote through multi-sensory channels!

Choreography Crisis

We attended another rehearsal for City on a Hill--this time 1.5 hours. The director decided to have us all do the choreography for the last song. Considering that Pamela could not imitate to save her life when she was at the age for The Itsy Bitsy Spider, she did very well! The neatest thing about Pamela is her smile. She has been in several small productions and something about being on stage, with the music, audience, and lights, doing the routines she has practiced for so long brings a gorgeous smile to her face. As soon as the music started and we were doing the choreography, Pamela's face lit up like a candle!

Our choreographer is keeping it simple since we have so little time to learn. During some spots, we step right and bring the feet together, while we snap our fingers. Pamela's version is to rock right and left and flick her fingers. For right now, I have my left hand on her right arm to keep her at the right pace for she tends to speed up. The other movement is to raise the right arm slowly up from the side, then the left, and bring them down slowly in front with palms up. We can work on this movement at home, facing each other.

Whenever we face a challenge (this being a challenge because she has ten days to get it close enough to avoid being distracting), I write social stories for her. In this case, I wrote a story to explain to her that she can watch the choreographer to learn the moves. I searched some local websites and found a picture of the choreographer, so Pamela can recognize her easily.

This is Miss Donna. She is a dancer. She can go to my church. She is a choreographer for our musical. A choreographer shows people how to dance. I can watch her to see how to dance. If I forget, I can look at Miss Donna. She can give me a clue!

Happy Birthday, Dear Daddy!

All of Pamela’s work learning poetry paid off last night. We celebrated my husband Steve’s birthday, and he wanted very simple gifts from the children: a song, poem, picture, or anything creative. David played We Wish You a Merry Christmas from his favorite Christmas songbook on the recorder, while Pamela recited a poem with a few simple body motions to make it extra special. I let her choose her favorite one, and she picked Daffodowndilly. She said it perfectly and knocked him off his socks! We all knew that such a feat was not possible for her last year, and Steve told her it was the best birthday gift he had ever received.

Today we attended another rehearsal for City on a Hill and made a sane decision. The youth (teenaged young ladies) will be doing the choreography. The rest of us will sit on tall stools to the side. Pamela is included in the seating arrangements because two weeks is not enough time for her to absorb the dance steps, as simple as they are. She has come a long way, but not that far . . . yet. After dinner, I headed back for another rehearsal for the adult choir Christmas concert. Our trio practiced for Sunday morning worship; we are singing the upper three parts of Lo' How a Rose E'er Blooming. It is my favorite arrangement by Robert Shaw with our second soprano, singing the tenor an octave up.

Like I said before, 'tis the season to be busy . . . and I would not miss it for the world!

'Tis the Season to Be Busy

Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest unless it is December and you happen to be in music ministry! For singers, musicians, and directors, Christmas is the season to be busy!

I launched my singing career at the United States Naval Academy. Even though my major was in mathematics, I practically minored in music between the choir, glee club, small groups, and musicals. All throughout my adult life, I have tried to squeeze in singing here and there and just about everywhere. Every move to a new town presented new opportunities to sing, whether it was the church choir, a choral society, or a symphony chorus. Right now, I am a soprano in the church choir and a trio, a supporting voice in the youth/*young* adult, and soloist when asked to sing at various events around town.

Lately, my mother, born in Nazi Germany, has been speaking about her experience as survivor of a Danish refugee camp. After her speech, I always sing America, the Beautiful to back up her two main points: gratitude for God’s grace in protecting her family and thankfulness that she is now a citizen of a country ripe with freedom.

Last night we had a gig in a little Presbyterian church in a tiny town up the road. Mom’s heartfelt speech spent left many in tears. Because we are in the advent season, I followed up the patriotic song with one verse of two different Christmas carols in German: Ihr Kinderlein Kommet and Stille Nacht. We met some wonderful people who truly appreciated our efforts and gave Mom a gorgeous arrangement of roses. My mother adores roses, and her garden boasts of several varieties. They gave me the beautiful flower arrangement pictured here.

Both children have pleasant singing voices, so we find it easy to incorporate music into our curriculum. Pamela has a very light soprano voice, while David’s voice is now in the tenor range. She is not a sight-reader, but catches on quickly (except for lyrics). David both sight-reads and learns new music easily because he taught himself to play the recorder. They are part of the chorus for our youth/*young* adult Christmas program called City on a Hill. The music is a blend of Christian contemporary music and updated traditional carols. The DVD track has a power point presentation with neat graphics.

On Sunday, we had a rehearsal that lasted nearly two and a half hours! Pamela did fine with practicing parts and singing with the track. By the time they got to blocking, she was overdone. Fortunately, she did stick it out. There were moments I had to humor her and give her some deep pressure squeezes and encourage her. She fussed a bit, but never melted down to the point of having to leave the room.On one of the songs, I swayed with her to give her some vestibular input, which calms her. She agreed to wait if she could sit quietly on her own. That was a great compromise because I needed to learn the choreography. She was very patient, all things considered!

Pure Poetry

Every once in awhile, homeschoolers experience shining moments that feel like pure poetry, and today we had one of them. As Charlotte Mason homeschoolers, we read poetry on a regular basis, focusing on one poet at a time to get a picture of an individual poet’s style. Right now, Rudyard Kipling is our subject.

Pamela fell in love with Kipling’s work through her favorite media, videos, ala Disney’s The Jungle Book. One of her first video vocal self-stimulation phrases was Baloo’s mournful, “Mowgli, Mowgli, come back!” When she was five-years old, she would say this to console herself whenever she felt sad. She tapped into Baloo’s emotion, but did not realize at the time the words made sense only to people who knew her.

She adored the first Kipling book I read to the children: Just So Stories. Pamela was eleven-years old and very much language delayed. I read from an older version of the book, beautifully illustrated. We acted out many of the stories with stuffed animals to bring them to life. Her favorite one was How the Camel Got His Hump. She adopted the camel’s phrase almost immediately and, whenever she balked at a task, she cried, “Humph!” like the camel. This was her first vocal stim from a book too.

The next book we read was, of course, The Jungle Book; the differences between the book and the movie were startling. We read both books about life in the jungle and were surprised to find so many stories that were not about Mowgli. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is neatly tucked away into this book! The story we related to the most was The White Seal because we were living in the Shumagin Islands of Alaska, not far from the story’s setting, the Island of St. Paul. David, Pamela's younger brother, appreciated The Spring Running from The Second Jungle Book the most because it opened a door for us to discuss puberty and the angst, mood swings, and depression that can come with it. Right now, we are working our way through Kim and Kipling’s poetry.

The first moment of joy came when we read The Cat That Walked by Himself. We all identified our two dogs with the characters in the poem. Our obnoxious hyper-dog has the personality of pussy, while our pliable, laid-back, elderly dog seems much like Binkie. So, we substituted our dogs' names and reread the poem, which tickled her.

The Beginning of the Armadillos was exciting for it was an opportunity for Pamela to show she has gone beyond literal thinking. She knew right away that the poem was set in South America, even though Kipling does not mention the continent by name. With only a little bit of hinting, she gleaned that the Don and Magdalena were ships.

Pamela had a chance to stretch in our final poem for the day, A Nativity (1914-1918). To help her get into the spirit of the piece, I highlighted the poem’s two voices in two different colors. Pamela read parts of the poem reflecting the Nativity, recognizing the story of the birth of Jesus almost immediately. I read the part of the mother of a fallen soldier in a very tragic, sad voice. At first, Pamela thought it was a story about a lost child. Then I reminded her that World War I started in 1914 and ended in 1918. We spent the rest of the time analyzing what had happened to the soldier, whose mother mourns his death.

The Babe was laid in the Manger
Between the gentle kine --
All safe from cold and danger --
“But it was not so with mine,
(With mine! With mine!)
Is it well with the child, is it well?”
The waiting mother prayed.
“For I know not how he fell,
And I know not where he is laid.”

A Star stood forth in Heaven;
The Watchers ran to see
The Sign of the Promise given --
“But there comes no sign to me.
(To me! To me!)
“My child died in the dark.
Is it well with the child, is it well?
There was none to tend him or mark,
And I know not how he fell.”

The Cross was raised on high;
The Mother grieved beside --
“But the Mother saw Him die
And took Him when He died.
(He died! He died!)
“Seemly and undefiled
His burial-place was made --
Is it well, is it well with the child?
For I know not where he is laid.”

On the dawning of Easter Day
Comes Mary Magdalene;
But the Stone was rolled away,
And the Body was not within --
(Within! Within!)
“Ah, who will answer my word?”
The broken mother prayed.
“They have taken away my Lord,
And I know not where He is laid.”

The Star stands forth in Heaven.
The watchers watch in vain
For Sign of the Promise given
Of peace on Earth again --
(Again! Again!)
“But I know for Whom he fell” --
The steadfast mother smiled,
“Is it well with the child -- is it well?
It is well -- it is well with the child!”

At first, David thought the poem was about a child who died young. I pointed out the title to him, and he made the connection immediately. He thought this poem was one of the best he had ever read. It reminded him of his great-grandfather, who died in World War II. His great-grandfather fell fighting the Russians, and his fellow soldiers buried him in a mass grave near St. Petersburg. David’s great-grandmother was thankful they returned his wedding band to her. The poem helped us tap into the feelings of the family left behind, wondering where their loved one was laid. I asked David what he thought Kipling by meant the last line of the poem, and he interpreted it as an allusion to heaven.

'Tis the Season for Calendar Lovers!

As mentioned in an earlier post, Pamela loves calendars, but that is fodder for another day. Her favorite kind of calendar is an advent calendar, a custom her Oma (German for grandmother) brought to the United States.

When I was a girl, these calendars were rarities in America, so my Oma mailed an advent calendar from Germany to us. It had little windows, randomly placed in a Christmas scene, numbered 1 through 24. Starting on December 1, one of us seven children opened a window and discovered a treat, usually a candy, ornament, or trinket. Each calendar had 24 windows because Germans opened their presents on Christmas Eve! My mother always timed it so that I opened the window on my birthday, December 17.

My mother is a quilter, the president of the Heart-in-Hand Quilting Club, which donates handmade quilts raffled by various charities. At last year’s meeting, they drew lots in a gift exchange, and my mother was thrilled to receive a handmade quilted advent calendar. She gave it to Pamela for Christmas!

I filled most pockets with candy and a few with trinkets. Since some calendars we kept in the past had quotes from the Nativity story, I created a file in Word with the entire childhood of Jesus, illustrated and quoted from the NIV version of the Gospel (except the genealogy).

I highly recommend an advent calendar for any child who adores calendars and routines! If you have not bought one yet, try making your own: Crafty Folks and Quick and Easy. If you are craft-impaired like me, here are some fun online, interactive calendars: A to Z’s Home’s Cool, Christian Devotional, Christian Musical, Secular/Educational, and Boola and Kwala.

Penmanship 2006

To give parents with struggling writers hope, I thought I would post a snapshot of Pamela's studied dictation of Tennyson's Cradle Song from yesterday. She wrote this on regular filler paper with lines spaced 3/8 of an inch apart. Compare the neatness and legibility of her handwriting today to her shaky capital letters of nine years ago.

One point of studied dictation is to show one's best efforts in penmanship, spelling, grammar, etc. This is a sample of her handwriting at its neatest. Pamela only made three minor errors: she left out a comma, capitalized then, and wrote she rest. I corrected her work in purple ink, and today's grammar lesson covered noun-verb agreement. Today's studied dictation had only one error: she misspelled 'til.

Purple Parrots

Pamela enjoyed another awesome night at youth group on Sunday night. She was sitting in the room with other high schoolers, observing an object lesson. The teacher wrapped a fine thread around a student’s wrists. The student had extended her arms in front of her. Pamela took one look and said loudly, “You’re under arrest!” for the teen really did look like someone waiting to be cuffed. Everyone thought her comment funny, and people appreciate Pamela for her unique way of seeing a situation and speaking her mind.

After the lesson, the high schoolers were going to play a quick game that required two teams. The teacher selected the captains. Usually, Pamela and I— as her aide in social settings—are often picked last for two reasons: she is the new kid on the block and is the only homeschooled teen at our church, except for her brother. One of the team captains has only recently started attending youth. I was shocked that he picked Pamela as his second choice out of about twenty potential candidates. If the teacher put him up to it, it was not obvious for he did not act wishy-washy. He pointed to us and blurted out in his brash way, “I want you two on my team!” While we waited for the other captain to pick, he gave Pamela a high five.

Our team captain named us the purple parrots, had us huddle, and revved us up with a pep talk. We each put a hand in the center and chanted, “Purple parrots,” before heading out to the competition. In the relay race, a teammate must don yellow rub gloves (fingers and thumbs filled), clap once, and hand the gloves to the next person in line.

The purple parrots lost the relay, but we had the most spirit. The way in which the captain welcomed Pamela made me feel like a white dove had hoisted the colors of peace over our team. I will store that treasure in my heart for times when the world slaps us with a spirit of confusion rather than that of kindness.

Blast from the Past: Capital Crazy

At age seven and a half, Pamela had mastered her pre-writing skills and seemed ready to write. An occupational therapist and dear friend, Nancy Kashman, gave me a copy of the first grade level of Handwriting without Tears. Had the pre-K and Kindergarten materials been available, I would have tried those first! The teacher’s guide provided excellent tips, especially for teaching lefties! Many parents of children with autism find this program, developed by occupational therapist Jan Z. Olsen, effective in teaching children to write.

Homeschoolers have many opinions of what penmanship program is the most effective. Some prefer the traditional ball and stick concept because what the child writes matches the kind of text they seen in print. I believe Handwriting without Tears is one of the best programs in this category (backed by research). Her teacher’s guide includes tips for avoiding letter reversals, which is one of the cons mentioned by those who prefer other methods. Pamela struggled to learn curves and found Jan Olsen’s minimalist style with few curlicues and flourishes easier to master. Other homeschoolers prefer italics like Getty-Dubay or D’Nealian because of an easy transition to cursive, reduced number of pencil lifters, and smaller potential for letter reversal. Programs for language delayed children like the association method start with reading print, but writing with cursive to focus the child upon whole words. One creative friend let her son pick letters he likes the most by comparing them at sites like Educational Fonts: he prefers a blend between Getty-Dubay and D’Nealian.

We spent the first half of Pamela’s second year as a homeschooler practicing the formation of capital letters following Handwriting without Tears’ wet-dry-try method on a slate with a piece of chalk and sponges. My kids, the super-smash siblings, broke the slate before Pamela had mastered her capitals, so I improvised by taping a border with electrical tape onto a dry erase board. One advantage to this innovation was that I could gradually make the box for writing capitals smaller and smaller as Pamela’s control improved. I could also spell words on the dry erase board by taping several boxes. Four months may seem a long time to practice capitals off paper, but Pamela’s first efforts on paper in January of that school year show how difficult she found writing legibly.

Thanks to our sabbatical from writing and Blues Clues, Pamela had made friends with markers. When we reintroduced writing letters on paper, three strategies helped her learn to write legibly. First, because she had a tendency to press too hard with pencils, we started her off with markers in January and transitioned to pens in April. Had gel pens been available, I would have tried those before ballpoint pens. Second, she had difficulty writing with small print, and I later learned macrographia was common for children with autism due to differences in their cerebellums. The blocks in Handwriting without Tears’ gray block paper were too small, so I made copies with enlarged images until I found a block size successful for Pamela. As her control improved, she worked her way down to the regular-sized blocks for letters she had mastered, but still needed enlarged blocks for new letters. Third, Pamela wrote with greater ease in the vertical plane, so we started her off with writing on paper taped to the refrigerator. Then we transitioned to a slant board, which is very expensive. Nancy Kashman told me how to make them out of thick three-ringed notebooks. As her writing improved, I gave her thinner and thinner notebooks until she could write on a horizontal plane.

In the second half of that year, we had daily writing lessons of less than fifteen minutes. Like Charlotte Mason, Jan Olsen recommends short lessons. She puts letters in order of strokes, and Pamela practiced those with starting lines that begin in the upper left corner of a block and flow down to the lower left corner. Pamela did well with straight lines and letters with one large curve, so I had her write DEFHLK only once. We practiced her challenging letters first on the dry erase board and followed up with several repetitions of PRB on paper, especially B. She learned M and N next.

By February, she had learned all the starting letters with a vertical line going down from the upper left corner. Pamela showed signs of being able to print small letters. In February, we worked in letters with starting points in the center of the top edge of the gray block. We choose A first so that Pamela could spell her first name! Then we covered other center starters IJ and those that start in the upper left corner, but go in other directions TVWXYZ.

In March, Pamela was ready for curved letters like COQ, but needed the enlarged gray block paper at first. Then she learned GSU.

By April, Pamela could write the entire alphabet in capital letters and her first name on the gray block paper. We introduced two new things: writing with a pen and numbers (on the enlarged gray block paper).

In May and June, I assigned extra copywork on primary tablet paper with a seasonal theme.

Pamela’s final paper at the end of the school year was far from perfect. Although she understood catchy little phrases from Handwriting without Tears like “bump the bottom,” Pamela never really mastered perfect control. Her lines strayed outside of the gray blocks and her straight lines sometimes wavered.

Even today, after years of practice, she does not perfectly execute her letters. I keep in mind three soothing thoughts: Pamela enjoys writing and does it in her free time! Her writing is large, loopy, but legible. Some children in the autism spectrum have dysgraphia and struggle to write anything. We are blessed Pamela can write as well as she does.

Happy GF/CF Thanksgiving

As many parents with autistic children are following a gluten-free/casein-free diet, I thought I would share recipes Pamela could eat in our Thanksgiving feast. My mother found an awesome and completely gf/cf recipe for cranberry fruit conserve. The only change I made was I skipped the zest (which I detest) and used only one cup of sugar. Mom gave me two lemons and pecans fresh off the tree! Everybody raved about the conserve, and they were none the wiser about its lack of zest!

I made two kinds of gf/cf pie: a pumpkin pie and a pecan pie. For the pumpkin pie filling, I follow the directions on the back of a can of Libby's 100% pure pumpkin, substituting coconut milk for evaporated milk. For the pecan pie filling, I follow the directions on the back of the Karo light corn syrup bottle for classic pecan pie, substituting coconut milk for butter. For the shell of each, I made a pecan nut crust. For one shell, grind up about 1 1/2 cups of pecans with 1/4 cup of gf/cf flour (I used sorghum) in a food processor or blender until you have a fine meal. I poured the meal into a bowl. I boiled water, added one tablespoon of hot water to the meal, and mixed it together. Because the meal did not form a ball, I kept adding a tablespoon of hot water and stirred until a ball formed. I oiled a pan and pressed the meal into a pan with a small pizza dough roller to smooth out the shell. I added the filling and baked as prescribed in the recipe.

I made mashed potatoes by boiling four peeled and cubed baking potatoes and a head of peeled garlic. Once they were soft, I mashed the potatoes with a mixer and added salt and olive oil to taste. They were not as fluffy as those made with butter and milk, but very tasty. My mother made a standard gravy out of cornstarch, stock, and salt.

I made both two half loaves of cornbread, one for cornbread and one for stuffing. To make a loaf of cornbread, I mixed the dry ingredients in one bowl (1 1/2 cups cornmeal, a half cup gf/cf flour--sorghum, a teaspoon sea salt, and a tablespoon gf/cf baking powder) and beat the wet ingredients in another bowl (two tablespoons honey, two eggs, 1 1/4 cup coconut milk, and two tablespoons oil). I added the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stirred gently. Then I poured the mixture into an oiled 1.5-quart loaf pan and baked in a preheated oven at 425 degrees for about 30 minutes.

I baked a typical Southern style of cornbread stuffing. I chopped two stalks of celery, half an onion, and four ounces mushrooms and sautéed it in olive oil. At the last minute I added two tablespoons of minced garlic to the sautéed mixture so it would not burn. I chopped half a cup pecans and two boiled eggs. I cubed a half loaf of cornbread. Then I mixed it all together with three eggs and my favorite stuffing seasonings (thyme, marjoram, and sage). I added several cups gf/cf chicken stock until the mixture was moist. I poured it all in an oiled dish and baked it in a preheated oven at 350 degrees until the top looked crusty.

Pamela's special diet, which brought about tremendous improvement in her quality of life, reminds me of a person for whom I am thankful and whom I never met. That is Dr. Bernard Rimland. His newsletters gave me all kinds of wonderful ideas for helping Pamela, and I still look up information to this day. He died on Tuesday and that is a great loss to the autism community.

Blast from the Past: Pre-Writing Skills

Pamela attended special education preschool and kindergarten through age six. Like many children with autism, she has delays in her fine motor skills. Having interacted with many homeschoolers of children with autism, I have found this to be common for our kids. Most children in the autism spectrum, even high functioning ones, find writing frustrating.

In hopes of helping Pamela catch-up with her peers, her teachers pushed too much writing before she was developmentally ready for it! Pamela had not mastered the fine motor skills expected of a preschooler by the age of six. She did not enjoy scribbling and showed absolutely no interest in drawing, and yet her teacher sent home worksheets for her to practice writing like the one pictured here. Whenever I pulled out paper and something with which to write, Pamela let loose a series of piercing screams to show her dismay!

Fortunately, I “met” another homeschooler with an autistic child online—this was in 1994 and such a creature was rare in cyber space. She encouraged me to take a sabbatical from writing and focus upon pre-writing skills to reduce Pamela’s frustrations. My cyber mentor gave me tips from the National Academy of Child Development for assessing her dominance, lateral abilities, and writing readiness. Another homeschooler with an autism child has recorded her experience with NACD in Too Wise To Be Mistaken, Too Good To Be Unkind.

The first problem I identified with my cyber mentor’s help was dominance, or lack thereof. Pamela appeared to be ambidextrous, never having developed hand preference. My friend suggested I check Pamela’s eye, ear, and leg for dominance by observing her preferences in different situations. The ideal is for all three plus the hand to share dominance on the same side. Pamela showed preferred her left side in every part. They all matched, which emboldened me to promote her left hand. As both of her grandfathers are southpaws and people with autism have a higher rate of left-handedness, I was not surprised. Within six months, Pamela became a strong leftie, confirming my suspicions that her Special Education teachers had been forcing her to be right handed. Apparently, many southpaws have experienced problems from inconsiderate teachers!

The second issue I addressed was hand and finger strength. While today many wonderful products are on the market for developing this skill, they were hard to find back in 1995. Back then, stress balls were rare, and the Koosh ball fad had bypassed the Glaser house. The Internet, in its infancy, was devoid of articles with tips on strengthening the fingers and hands of preschoolers or winter fun! I had Pamela play with clay, squeeze sponges and pick up little toys with tongs and with clothespins. We spent time at a playground near our home because climbing equipment develops finger strength among other things.

Pamela’s third challenge involved crossing the midline and alternating feet going up and down the stairs. We did numerous exercises to improve coordination, much like what is available today through Brain Gym. For two years, we got on our hands and knees several times a day, crawling with various patterns. We played handclapping games like Say, Say Oh, Playmate and worked our way up to Miss Mary Mack. Pamela sat at a table, took objects from one side of a mat, and placed them in a bowl on the other side of the mat, one at a time. She did this for each side and eventually learned to do this by alternating hands. She learned to do various knee touching patterns as well and walked the stairs in our apartment complex every day. By the end of our first year of homeschooling, Pamela had mastered crossing the midline and alternating feet going up the steps!

We played hooky from any form of writing for an entire year, and Pamela slowly lost her phobia of writing. While I retreated from writing on paper, we worked in letter awareness in other ways. Ironically, Pamela was already reading, so recognition was not an issue. I had to find some way to introduce motor plans for making letters without having the stress of pencil and paper. Sensory Integration resources like The Out-of-Sync Child Has Fun did not exist, but my friend and occupational therapist, Nancy Kashman, gave me wonderful ideas for blending sensory integration and pre-writing activities like the following:

• Scribble and draw with crayon stubs as a natural way to encourage pencil grip and strengthen finger muscles.
• For kids not interested in scribbling, buy coloring books with their favorite cartoon character—the key is to scribble with a stub, not to color perfectly within the lines.
• Pick up small objects hidden in dry beans and rice and match with magnetic letters.
• Draw letters with finger, paintbrush, or stick in shaving cream on a tray, fingerpaint, pudding, sand, etc.
• Draw letters in the air.
• Experiment with differently sized crayons and pencils with and without pencil grips.
• Peel the paper off crayons if the texture is bothersome.
• Make available supplies and toys for writing with different media like Magnadoodle, sidewalk chalk, markers, dry erase board and markers, Handy Dandy Notebook, etc.
• Borrow from Maria Montessori and make your own sandpaper letters or buy tactile letters.
• Buy materials focusing on letter formation: wooden letter pieces with letter cards, dough letters, stamp screen, etc.

Pamela educated me about the connection between drawing and writing skills. When Blues Clues debuted in 1996, she became enamored with imitating Steve’s clues and taught herself to draw. As she began to fill pages and pages of clues, her coordination improved greatly. While she would have flatly refused to fill pages and pages of paper with letters, she found clues to be a joy! If a child has no interest in drawing, you might be able to entice them by teaching them to draw their favorite animated characters using simple shapes. I found very basic ideas in books by Ed Emberly and Usborne. I have no natural flair for art, and books like Draw Squad and Drawing with Children showed me how to move past the stick-figure stage! Thanks to her interest in Blues Clues her fine motor skills improved tremendously in just one year as you can see in the following pictures.




















Homeschoolers often worry about documenting progress and providing paperwork for the state. During our sabbatical from writing, I discovered different ways to document knowledge without loads of writing:

• Allow him to type (some find typing easier).
• For stories, have her dictate to you or into a tape recorder; you or an older child can type or write by hand.
• Develop worksheets in which he marks or points to the answers.
• For math, have her tell you what to write.
• Encourage him to draw.
• For sequencing in math, science, history, etc., place the information on separate index cards and let her sort.
• Let him set up the scene with blocks, toys, Legos, etc.
• Let her dramatize alone, with stuffed animals, or with other children the plot of a story.
• Take pictures of or film any of these if you must have documentation.

The Wonders of a Dry Erase Board!

While I find technology useful, low-tech helps are great too, especially ones that are inexpensive. One is our portable dry-erase board. Some autistic children struggle with the smell of the markers, but not Pamela. During their free time, both children enjoy drawing pictures on this board. I have used it in many ways:

• Beginner writers find writing on a vertical plane much easier. I started my children with a dry erase board mounted on the refrigerators with magnets.
• In Handwriting without Tears, a dry erase board worked better than a handheld slate, which broke! Some kids dislike the feeling of chalk dust, and they avoid fingernails scratching on a slate.
• When we first introduced narration, I wrote keywords and character names to which the children might want to pay attention. As each child narrated a keyword, I recorded a brief summary to give Pamela visual reinforcement.
• We recorded the schedule for the day on the dry erase board. If we were out and about, it was easier to carry and harder to lose than handwritten notes. If our plans changed, we updated it on the board.
• When Pamela did not understand the need for whispering in a group setting, we would "talk" by writing on the dry erase board. She also quietly entertained herself with it.
• Pamela has to copy questions and sentences in cursive for speech therapy (the association method). I write them on a dry erase board to avoid wasting paper.
• You can document any work done on a dry erase by taking photographs as I did in the following picture:

For my college-bound child, I have the dry erase board helpful in teaching him to take notes. As we read through his biology book, he tells me what notes to write. After we fill up a board with notes, he copies them down to simulate taking notes during class lectures. Pictured below are two boards of notes on the parts of the cell.

The most recent really cool, life-saving, self-help, low-tech tip came from my email list, Aut-2B-Home. One mother solved the problem of missing spots during tooth brushing by rinsing with Listerine Agent Cool Blue Mouthwash as directed. The rinse reveals the presence of plaque much like those pink, chewable tables did for me in school when I was a little girl. This visual cueing solved Pamela’s spotty tooth brushing habits overnight!

Calendar Crazy

Pamela found a mistake in the church bulletin, which stated next Sunday, November 13. She muttered, "This is the worst day ever!" Then she marked out the twelve and changed it to thirteen. Steve and I chuckled because all of the offering envelopes in the pew where we normally sit are covered in figures like this picture:


When Pamela was younger, she had no hints of ever developing savant skills. She did not seem to have a flair in math, music, art, or anything. When she was twelve, she became interested in calendars and began researching them on the Internet. She memorized all fourteen kinds of calendars: seven leap years (starting on Sunday, Monday, etc.) and common years (starting on Sunday, Monday, etc.). Then she learned what years go with each kind of calendar. For several years, Pamela has been writing notes like these:


I have about three reams worth of calendar pages like the ones shown here. Pamela wrote all of the pages in today's blog entry last week. Eventually, Pamela branched into learning the Chinese astrological signs too.

"Clever as Clever!"

Pamela proved to be "clever as clever" this week in language arts and math. I broke up her new poem, The End by A. A. Milne, into four segments. She aced every single studied dictation, including capitalization, tense, and punctuation! She almost has it memorized due to its repetitive language. While I suspect Pamela had very familiar with it because The End is one of her favorite poems, she deserves congratulations for doing such a fine job!

When I was one,
I had just begun.
When I was two,
I was nearly new.
When I was three,
I was hardly me.
When I was four,
I was not much more.
When I was five,
I was just alive.
But, now I am six,
I'm as clever as clever.
So I think I'll be six now,
Forever and ever.

One thing I love about living ideas is how they spill into other parts of our life. Today Pamela mastered her first lesson in multiplying fractions (Level 5 of Making Math Meaningful). She struggled with math when she was younger and highly concrete in thinking skills. Now that she is more able to handle abstract ideas and logic, she picks up new concepts more quickly. Pamela caught onto her introduction to mutliplication of fractions quickly. I recognized her efforts by saying she was "clever as clever." That cherished phrase brightened her face.

I have been wondering about why this poem attracts Pamela so much. When she was six-and-a-half years old, we started her gluten-free, casein-free diet. She blossomed that year and taught herself to speak spontaneously, pretend play, and imitate videos. She grew more at ease in social outings too. Pamela has always been "clever as clever," but six was the end of opioid-induced fog for her.

Pamela is not one of those brilliant little professors, and she struggles with every stride. Being clever isn't everything. If you doubt me, I dare you to watch this video.

Pretty in Pink

Youth Group was wonderful tonight. When the kids sat on big comfy couches arranged in a square, Pamela looked around and asked, "Where's Amy?" The other students looked at Amy in surprise because Pamela does not usually acknowledge anyone. Amy smiled and bobbed her head gently with attitude because she knew to be singled out by Pamela was special.

Every week, the class warms up with an affirmation exercise. A student draws the name of a boy and a girl in the class. Then they must come up with positive adjectives that describe the person to form an acronym of their name. When they drew Pamela's name, a little knot tied up my stomach. Outside of Amy, Pamela does not really interact much with the other kids, even though she faithfully attends Youth Group every Sunday night. We have only lived here for a little over a year, and, to people who were born and raised in this town, Pamela is still the new kid on the block, especially because we homeschool. I knew she had two allies, Amy and a girl who works as a paid ABA therapist for some autistic twins. I worried that silence and awkward pauses would fill the room as kids struggled to find affirming things to say about Pamela.

I was pleased with their efforts for even some of the more reticent boys came up with kind words to describe Pamela:

P - Pretty in pink, positive
A - Awesome
M - Magnificent
E - Excitable, excited
L - Lovable, lovely
A - Adorable

The pastor usually rewrites the affirmations neatly and posts them in the window that week. I promise to snap a picture on Wednesday and post it.

Baby Steps in Figurative Language

Autistic people tend to take words literally, so they need to learn how to discern meaning from figurative language. This is why I think Pamela can benefit from reciting poetry. Not only does she learn to improve her spelling and grammar, but she also sees how to interpret words in different ways.

Yesterday, she had her first lesson in personification with the poem, Daffodowndilly. I dictated the entire poem to her yesterday, and she wrote it perfectly. She recited the whole thing with a few, very minor glitches. Since she knew the poem so well, I decided to see if she had figured out the meaning behind the words. Here was our conversation:

Me: "Who is she?" (pointing to "She wore her yellow sun-bonnet")

Pamela: "A girl."

Me: "No, who is she?" (pointing to "She wore her greenest gown")

Pamela: "A woman."

Me: "No, look at the title. What is she?" (pointing to "Daffodowndilly")

Pamela: "A bird."

Me: "No, but you’re close! What does 'Daffodowndilly' sound like?"

Pamela: "A flower." (smiling)

Me: "Yes! Now, what kind of flower is it?"

Pamela: "A daffodil." (smiling brightly)

Me: "What season is it?"

Pamela: "Spring!" (without any hesitation)

Interpreting the season is a skill we have been practicing. Originally, she would take everything so literally that seeing the word "winter" automatically meant the poem was about the frosty, snowy season. Pamela knew the poem described spring without hesitation, showing how much she has honed her understanding of language.

While I think it important for autistic children to learn functional skills, I want more than a utilitarian education for Pamela. I aspire to balance learning to function in a neurotypical world with appreciating the finer aspects of life. Charlotte Mason, a Victorian/Edwardian era educator, makes a point that applies to children today:

We teach him those things that are proper for a person of wealth to know (as Locke said), OR we teach him enough art, reading, writing and arithmetic to prevent him from being illiterate. In both cases, the focus is on utilitarian education. The child is being indirectly educated to a profession rather than for personal growth. (page 156)

Schools should feed their students knowledge until they've created a healthy appetite in them. Then the students will go on satisfying their hunger for knowledge every day for the rest of their lives. We need to give up the farce of teaching students how to learn. That's just as ridiculous as teaching a child how to lift a fork to his mouth and chew without giving him any real food! They already know how to learn. Lessons given for the sole purpose of improving the mind shouldn't be a priority in the future. (page 348)

This begs the question. Does Pamela have a healthy appetite for poetry? When she finished her recitation of Daffodowndilly, she named the next three poems she plans to learn: The End by A.A. Milne, Cradle Song by Alfred Tennyson, and A Pirate Story by Robert Louis Stevenson.

The Best and Cheapest Investment Ever!

The best and cheapest investment in homeschooling curricula I ever made was a 1992 Hammond Ambassador World Atlas. I bought it at a used library book sale in St. Cloud, Minnesota for two dollars. Only two dollars! We have traced many exciting journeys in our atlas and, because it cost me next to nothing, I boldly mark the maps as we go.

Pamela just started reading aloud The Endless Steppe by Esther Hautzig, a memoir about a Polish family herded into cattle cars and forced to work at a labor camp in Siberia during World War II. When I circled Esther’s hometown, Vilna, on our Russia page, we noticed she lived close to the hometown of another Jewish girl who fled her home in Berdichev, Ukraine in Letters from Rifka. Her family fled Russian persecution of the Jews after World War I. We had circled several cities to trace Rifka’s journey to Ellis Island: Warsaw and Antwerp.

Pamela enjoys finding geographical connections between books. When we learned that Ralph Moody was moving to Maine, she was thrilled because Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm lived in the Pine Tree State too. Although the towns featured in this book are not in our atlas, we circled what might have been the model for Riverboro (Hollis, the town where the author spent her childhood). Not far from Hollis is a town called Windham, whose name bears a striking resemblance to Wareham from the book. It might be a coincidence, but we circled it anyway. After reading the first chapter of Fields of Home, we added two more circles to our Maine page, namely Bath, where Ralph’s ship arrived, and Lisbon Falls, where his grandfather lived.

Twenty-three pages of terrain maps of the ocean floors are a lifeline as we read The Sea around Us. Rachel Carson described continental shelves, which Pamela found colored light blue on our relief maps, and the deep ocean in dark blue. When the author named the Atlantic Ridge, Pamela traced it with her finger as well as other ridges outlining the continental plates of the world. When she read about various trenches, Pamela located them and traced quite a few. As her fingers traveled across the ocean, we are reminded of other nautical journeys in our present (Carry On, Mr. Bowditch and 20,000 Leagues under the Sea) and from our past (Kon-Tiki), all of which are marked in our atlas, which we are tranforming into a prized momento of our literary travels.

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).