Spell Check

My son has always had trouble spelling, he has a dictionary sitting on the desk right next to the computer he does his school work on. My opinion, he has to learn how to spell. My husbands opinion "These are the days of spell check, he doesn't need to know how to spell. The computer will help him." I continue to reset assignments for him to correct spelling errors.  What do you think about kids learning to spell?

The cure for writers block.

A research project was due for Michael's Bible class. He did the research and copied the passage word for word. When I told Jim he needed to re-write it in his own words. That's when the writers block started. He sat for nearly an hour just staring at his research. When I tried prompting him to write something he began crying, saying he couldn't think of what to write. I started getting very frustrated with Jim. Certainly it couldn't be that hard, could it? When I was just about to explode from frustration, I started a game of Yahtzee with him. I kept quiet during the first round, and the tears stopped. Then with each turn, we talked about the research he had done and sentence by sentence, he came up with ways to put them in his own words. He was numbering his sentences to make sure he came up with four to make a complete paragraph. By the end of the yahtzee game, his report was finished.

This is another amazing part about homeschooling. You can use whatever methods necessary to teach your child. Today it was yahtzee, other days it's throwing a ball back and forth. We're getting there. Hut I know deep down that if he were still in the public school system, he would still be shedding tears or taking a bad grade on his report because his brain does not work the same way other kids brains do.

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Caramel Apple Cake

Ingredients
1 Spice cake mix
1 can apple pie filling
3 eggs
1 package caramel chips

Directions
Mix together cake mix, apple pie filling, eggs & 1/2 the package of caramel chips in your large Celebrating Home mixing bowl. Microwave approximately 15 minutes (microwave ovens vary). When cake is done (test by sticking a toothpick in center), melt the remaining 1/2 bag of caramel chips by placing them in your small mixing bowl with 2Tbsp water & microwaving for 2 minutes, stirring well after each minute. When upper edge of large mixing bowl is cool enough to handle, turn your cake out & drizzle melted caramel over top.

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Public School

I'm often asked about how we made the decision to home school our son. Let me fill you in on our public school experience.

Michael's pre-school year was great. Perfect teacher, perfect school year. Kindergarten, not so much. On the first day of school, the teacher let my friends daughter get on the school bus when she was supposed to go to after school daycare. When Michael got home, he was starving. I fed him & found out that he didn't go through the hot lunch line, but ate his snack for lunch, then didn't have a snack. I called the teacher & asked why he ate his snack for lunch. Her reply was "he should be responsible for getting himself in the lunch line." Are you kidding me? My 5 year old who has never eaten lunch at school before should be responsible for putting himself in the lunch line on the first day of school? I don't think so...I asked her to make sure he made it into the hot lunch line from now on. I made this phone call every single day for the first week as well as coaching Michael on putitng himself in the lunch line. Michael started having accidents, several times a day. The pediatrician said it's still normal for boys to do that until they are 6.

Soon after the accidents started so did the bullying. We were at my mom's one night & heard my son call my little brother a very nasty name. After an hour of me prying & him crying, he finally broke down & told us he was cornered in the bathroom, called nasty names & kicked at. He was able to block all of the kicks (thank you tae kwon do class). The teacher was called, as was the principal...nothing was really done after several weeks & we finally told Michael to defend himself. We tried the school's method of solving the problem & it didn't work, now it's time for my son to defend himself. I got a call from the teacher the next day explaining that Michael punched another student in the throat. Michael said the other boy told him he was going to punch him in the eye this time.

As soon as Michael turned 6, we were referred to a pediatric gastroenterologist. After some testing, we were told that Michael has Encopresis. This basically means he wasn't getting the signal from his bowel to his brain when he had to go. So the accidents continued & the bullying by the school staff began.

By the time he was in the first grade, the school nurse was telling Michael "if you were my kid, I would bust your butt every time you poop yourself." The teacher hotlined us on the second day of school with alligations of sending Michael to school un-clean, dried feces on him, dirty clothes, etc. Luckily while the case worker was here, I had the paperwork from the GI specialist to prove what we were saying was true.

We were called into countless meetings with the teachers, councilor, principal & school nurse. The nurse told us that our doctor was a quack & we needed a second opinion, we need to punish him & bust his butt for having accidents. The principal said we were hotlined in Michael's best interest, and the teacher said she "doesn't have time to make sure Michael goes to the bathroom, that's his responsibility." She didn't seem to understand that he doesn't know when he needs to go. So my son was having up to 6 accidents a day & the school decided if we were not going to do anything about him having accidents, they were not going to clean him up anymore. They would call me at work to come get him from school. He ended up missing more school than he attended & failed first grade because he couldn't read. During the course of the year, we tried home bound, but that only works a couple of months & you have to have a doctors order to get it done.

After this ordeal, the last meeting with the school was the last straw. When they told us flat out that we were not doing anything to control his accidents, just letting him mess himself all the time without consequence, he couldn't read so he was failing first grade.

As Jeff & I got in the car to leave, I was in tears & Jeff was livid. On the way home we looked at each other & said, "this is it, we're home schooling."

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Celebrating Home

I'm proud to announce my new business as a Celebrating Home designer.

www.Celebratinghome.com/sites/Stephanienorton

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