Hello! My name is Melissa and I am super excited to get started with the SCM curriculum! I homeschool my 9 year old son who is on the Autistic Spectrum- he has Aspergers Syndrome, as well as ADHD, Dyslexia, Dygraphia, and other medical issues. We started out in the public school system in Georgia and continued through to Virginia public schools the past year which ended in March of this year. Our public school journey was nothing less than a nightmare and I am happy to be done with it. None-the-less, homeschooling has its own issues, though it has been an easy transition and certainly worth every moment. We are no longer faced with people “giving up on” my son or my child being the one “left behind”!
We look forward to meeting other CMers and wish everyone blessings and love!!
There are other people here who have the same issues so you are in good company. =) I am excited that you are able to use CM methods, they are amazing and have helped my children so much! My daughter with APD is thriving in this learning environment after really struggling in PS for several years.
I have 4 girls, 12, almost 11, almost 5, and 3.5 yo. We are loving life and learning together.
I can sympatize with you to an extend regarding your son’s challenges. My older ds (11 in 5th) struggles with dysgraphia and some sensory processing issues. I had to start him 2 grades back in math and it took us a long time to catch on to subtraction and regrouping, and now he’s struggling with multi-digit multiplication. Thankfully homeschooling allows me to help him work at his own pace and not compare himself to the other kids in the class. The younger ds (7 in 2nd) has ADHD. He excels at reading, spelling and math, but finds focusing enough to complete a task in a given time frame very difficult. In PS he almost never completed any kind of seat work, and only finished two crafts in two years.
This past year was our first year homeschooling with them after a couple of very difficult PS years. It has been a blessing, though my older son who is extremely social has missed the socialization of school. (Personally I’ve been grateful for the absence of the negative influences. ) My younger ds doesn’t genrally “click” with other children, especially those his own age, but has recently been developing a good friendship with a boy from our church who is a year older than himself.
It’s been a good year, but I’m finding working part-time and still accomplishing everything I want to accomplish with them difficult. Thankfully they have voted to continue working on our Apologia Flying Creatures throughout the summer (because it’s easier to find insects to study) as well as their math and copy work, just at a slower pace. This should help take the pressure off the rest of the year. Organization is my biggest problem. I am always trying to tweak things to make it work better for us, but I have yet to find a system I really like.
Welcome to you both! I’ve been homeschooling for years and think this is the best homeschooling forum out there. Blessings on your new journey….I’m sure it will be wonderful for your whole family:) Gina
Thanks Ladys!!! I am super excited. We are also Apologia- Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day and we will continue throughout the rest of the zoology books from Apologia because my son wants to be a Marine Biologist or Zoologist. He loves Art too, but has found that it would be better as a hobbie. This is one reason why I love homeschooling so much. My first focus is to educate and raise an indepentant- productive- Christian citizen and my second is to educate him with a foundation that will last his entire lifetime. We knew at an early age he would one day work with animals, so we focused as much of our curriculum around animals. I have been sucessful in that because it peaks his interests.
I have already started planning our course of direction next year using CMs organizers and boy is that ever helpful!! I am so excited to have that and its so helpful. I am going to be teaching hi to use it as he does a lot on his computer anyways since writing is not his friend.
Are any of you in Virginia?? A lot of the people here have much older children, so we don’t get out much with our support groups, but luckily we have church members who also homeschool.
What are your thoughts on Classical Conversations??? We are thinking of trying that because I have heard great things about it from other special need’s families.