Our January Homeschool Goals...

Bu has recently expressed interest in writing letters as opposed to shapes and lines. He is bored with the "pre-writing" stuff and wants to go straight to writing!

There's a specific order in which letters should be taught for writing, from easiest to manage to most difficult. The list we are following is from Handwriting Without Tears. We are focusing on capital letters first and intend to take all of 2017 to go through each letter. We don't expect mastery or even independent writing by the end of the year, but we are instead aiming for introduction of how to write each letter and plenty of opportunity to practice so that he is comfortable with the concept by the end of the year. As with everything else, we do not treat learning as a race and we are not in an rush for any one skill or concept to be solidified by any given time. We find our son learns very quickly and effectively when he decides he is ready to.

We are also including some crafts and hands on activities this month, with a Winter theme in mind. I might revamp the way I planned things out next month, but I feel we got more done and were more motivated to work when we were doing unit studies as opposed to following a curriculum laid out for us in a book.

We also recently got a DVD player in the car, which means that Bu cannot easily scan through or change chapters and programs at will. I am taking advantage of this by introducing different educational DVDs and programs on the way to our therapy appointments, so he can become familiar with different characters, songs, etc that we can watch later at home and learn from. This month, we are focusing on a couple of Signing Time DVDs. He is very familiar with the people on the show but has his few favorite DVDs, so I'd like for him to branch out to others so he can learn more signs. I am also introducing a Kindergarten life skills DVD and nursery rhymes from Rock N Learn, which is a series I intend to use for many subjects. Familiarity and acceptance of the characters, style of animation, etc is a must.

We are reading a Preschool Prep sight words book every single day, just to get in the habit of reading for fun. Bu was recently assessed by his ABA therapist as being at or above age level for reading, in spite of being nonverbal. That is compared to typical children, not just children with special needs! His word and letter recognition is fantastic, and he picks up new words and spellings every single day. At a typical school, they might not have tested his reading ability for years, considering he can't verbally read. Yay for homeschooling and teaching/assessing in a way that makes sense for my individual child and his needs!

Here's to a great 2017 full of learning and growing!