Advertising Savvy

So as we explore the cost of living the girls are seeing a lot of ads.  They’re decoding the help wanted ads in the newspaper, the apartment ads in the renter’s guide, ads for cars and car insurance, ads for various utilities packages, etc.

It’s a perfect time to do a little tangent study about advertising.  The Federal Trade Commission has a site directed at kids on this very topic.  You Are Here is cute and has some good activities and information.  But I wonder if the kids will pick up on the fact that the site is, in some ways, just an ad for the FTC.

Did I Say Our Election Study Was Over?

One of the great things about homeschooling is the ability to continue on a topic even when we’ve covered all that was planned.  As soon as we ‘finished’ our election studies I found this great game on the Cable in the Classroom site.   I don’t know how long they’ll keep the site up, but for now if you want to know what my girls are doing when the ’school work’ is done for the day….you’ll find them running for President over and over and over…..

Election Study and Detours

We’ve been focusing most of our time and energy on election studies these past couple of weeks.  I’ve been using some of the materials from Lydia’s wonderful unit study over at Little Blue School.  Last year, when we began discussing the election, we found the girls were very interested in the subject.  They wanted to create their own campaigns and have our own family election.  As luck would have it, Lydia’s study walks through that process.  Thank you Little Blue School!

As we’ve explored various issues, detours of interest have presented themselves.  When talking about wars, the girls expressed interest in learning more about World War II.  We’ve also discussed and read about the different sides of the abortion issue.  Other topics we’ve touched on include the environment, education and health care.  The girls are quickly learning that these are all complicated issues with no one right answer.  We’ve got multiple political parties and many different opinions represented right here in our own family so the girls are getting different takes on all of them and forming their own opinions about the direction they think is best.

With all the great detours and information this study has brought us, I think I’m just going to ignore the dates on my homeschool plan and just let it continue till we’ve exhausted their enthusiasm.

Link Overload

I’ve just finished updating the kids private homepage… for the 5th time this week!

I created the webpage about a year ago to give the kids access to websites we approve of while minimizing the danger of them ending up somewhere they shouldn’t be.  The links are all graphics (most of them the actual logos from the sites) to make it easy for my two non-readers to find what their looking for and to increase interest in what otherwise might be dismissed as just a boring educational site.

Over the past year I’ve added a few sites here and there as I came across them but overall it’s remained pretty much the same.  More recently though, I’ve been finding awesome links everywhere!  Everytime I add a few, I turn around and find a few more.  There were so many new ones I had to start deleting some of the older, less used links to make room.

Even the kids are laughing at me, “Mom! There’s so many new links we can’t even keep up!”   There are now a total of 70+ links on the kids homepage – all ‘educational’ in one way or another.  Once again I’m reminded just how much information is out there (available free of charge) and how many ways there are to learn it all.  Who needs text books?!

Printable Graph Paper

My sister (the school teacher) passed along this great site that has .pdf files of graph paper.  They’ve got everything from traditional graph paper to dots to triangles and trapezoids.  Now I just have to think of fun stuff to do with it all  

I’m Back!

Ok, so I really never left.  But things have been absolutely insane around here lately.

First, I was helping my husband get the websites up for our company.  The prototype of our software is close to being ready and we’re anxious to get it out there to the non-verbal kids we hope it will help. The one site is our company site, www.AutisTech.com    The other is a community site where we hope to bring together resources and infomation for parents of autistic children.  We’re hooking up with professionals we know to pick their brains about everything from IEPs to speech therapy.  Those articles should be out soon at www.EverydayAutism.com

Then there was the everyday stuff….

Monday my sister, for whom I advocate, came to discuss some things I’ll need to work on for her.  Then I had to go back to the doctor for a silly cyst on my back that’s been giving me grief for several weeks.  Ouch.  I closed the night out by hosting another Mom’s Night Out. 

Tuesday was a tag team doctor’s appointment for the boys.  Three shots total. 

Wednesday we picked my Mother-In-Law from the airport.  She’ll be staying with us indefinetly. 

Thursday I was asked to participate in a presentation at the NY Governor’s Expo on Assistive Technology.  It’s been a while since I’ve done public speaking of that magnitude so that consumed much of my time and energy the past few weeks.  My mother-in-law took care of the kids so my husband and I could go together.  It’s been many, many years since my husband and I have been out together, alone, in the light of day.  The presentation when off without a hitch and we had a great time.

I spent Friday doing approximately five hours of homework for a class on leading effective discussions. Yesterday I drove the 2+ hours to attend the class and drive the 2+ hours home.  The class was well done and I was glad I attended.

But now I’m tired.  I’ll spend today figuring out what I’ll need to do next week and trying to get some much needed downtime.  Oh, and catching up on all that laundry that’s piled up while I was busy doing everything else

Planning for Disney

With the hubby busy getting his Masters (and shelling out the bucks for it), we’re holding off on our usual once (or twice) annual trip to Disney World this year.  It’s hard!  What can I say, I’m spoiled!

I should really be avoiding anything Disney right now so I won’t be reminded what I’m missing…. but I just can’t resist Jennifer’s carnival on Disney over at Snapshot! 

This past Friday she asked about trip planning.  Oh yeah!  Not much I love more than preparing for a Disney trip.  Thinking on it more though, I realized I probably don’t have much to offer in the way of advice for newbies.  We’ve gone so many times that we don’t put much thought into where, when or how we go any more. 

In the past our family has stayed at Disney’s Beach Club, Yacht Club, AllStars, Contemporary, Animal Kingdom, Key West and Carribean resorts.  We’ve also experienced staying off site once.  Now we know what works for us so we always stay at the cabins at Disney’s Ft. Wilderness.  If you have a large family or a child with autism, this is the way to go!  The mobile home sized cabin features a bedroom with a full sized bed and a set of bunk beds, a murphy bed in the living area, a full kitchen (full size fridge, microwave, stove, dishwasher, dishes, pots and pans, dining table for 6), two tvs, and most important of all – space between cabins so your kids aren’t always waking the neighbors!

My favorite time to visit is October.  The weather is perfect, the crowds are light and you have to try the Food and Wine Festival in Epcot. YUM!  The hubby and the kids also like to go in May for Star Wars Weekends.  It’s just too hot for northerners like us in the summer and being that we homeschool, we’ve got no reason to go in the spring when everyone else is there.

We tend to go for 9 or 10 days at a time so most often we purchase annual passes.  Last I checked, if you’re going to the parks for 7 or more days, these are the best deal.  We often get 2 or 3 trips out of ours so they’re definetly worth it for us.  The bonus here is that we can go for a few hours the day we arrive or chill in our cabin in mid-day heat and I don’t have to feel like we’re ‘wasting’ our ticket for the day. 

That’s all no brainer stuff for us.  But each trip has to have a plan.  Here’s where we spend our time and build the excitement.  A couple of years ago I made our own personal Ultimate Disney Guidebook.  It’s got everything we need.  Printed menus from Allears.net, maps of all the parks, lists of our favorite rides and restaurants and THE PLAN.   For each day I plan which parks we’ll visit based on the hours, extra magic hours and special events.  We get votes from everyone on where they’d like to eat (the menus come in handy here) and make the reservations.  Then I print it all up on a master plan sheet complete with a list of all the park hours (so we can make changes on the fly) and it goes in the front of our guidebook, ready to help us make the most of our trip.

Besides that, preparations for the trip usually include the little things I like to do to make it special.  I make audio CDs full of Disney music, personalized t-shirts and car magnets that go with our trip theme, luggage and ID tags for the kids.

Whatever you do, don’t forget to get the kids to make a paper chain to count down the days!

 

 

A Link for a Rainy Day…

I found this list of  ‘101 Ideas to Add Spice to Your Homeschooling Days’  through a Google search.  I haven’t read through the whole list yet ( it’s a lot to digest in one sitting) but I’m saving the link for a ‘rainy’ homeschooling day!

Turning the TV ON

Summer at Mom is Teaching mentioned that Turn TV Off Week is coming up.  

Will we be participating?  Well, no.  We’ve skipped TV on school days all together for a very long time.  Recently Adrian became obsessed with having the TV on PBS … all the time.  So for the past couple of months I’ve let it stay on when he gets home from school.  During that late afternoon period they’ve got great educational shows like Cyberchase and Fetch!   But even then, my kids are rarely glued to it.  It’s on right now (because Adrian insists) but no one is even in the room.   They’re too busy painting, making kites and folding paper airplanes! 

No, we’re not a family glued to our TV.  My husband and I aren’t addicted either.  We can go weeks or even months without watching a single TV show. It’s just not our vice.

Since I started homeschooling I’ve realized that in ignoring the tv, we’re missing out on a very useful educational tool.  I’ve tried to get my act together.  We introduced the girls to Mythbusters, How It’s Made and Dirty Jobs on the Discovery Channel.  We showed them a few episodes of Alton Brown’s Good Eats on the Food Network.  We’ve caught a show on the Travel Channel here and there too.  But old habits die hard and I forget to check the schedules, record the shows or post reminders.

So instead of turning the TV off for a week, I’m vowing to review the tv schedules, find the good shows, hit the record button, post the reminders …and remember to turn the the TV on that week! 

 

Sidetracked

I’ve been giving the girls a list of math words and asking them to write out definitions and examples from this math dictionary website.  Each day’s list is only 4 words long so it shouldn’t take them very long to do.

The other day I noticed Gee had been working on hers for a very long time.  Assuming she’d gotten sidetracked, I spied through the window and watched her for a few minutes.

She was indeed sidetracked.  She was looking through the dictionary at various words that caught her fancy, reading the definitions and playing with the interactive examples. 

Why am I always caught off guard when I find my kids learning and exploring on their own?  And why do I always have the urge to tell them to stop learning and get back to their assignment?