Some Amazing Sights

 We had the opportunity yesterday to go to a friends taxidermy shop as a home school field trip.

We saw this amazing albino elk!

 And this beautiful antelope.

 And this gigantic Buffalo just getting ready to get started.

 It was fun to have David with us since it was a holiday off work.

And yes that is a whole herd of elk drying to be sent off to a Cab*las Store.

 Hannah demonstrating just how tall these guy are, and there were 5 of them.

 Here Hannah is enjoying watching them put teeth into a jaw for a bear skin rug.

 Both the kids getting a close up of how large a moose's antlers really are!!

A herd of elk with a herd of kids, or do you call them a pack, or a flock.......

The eyes don't have it!

Notice anything odd about this picture.

Here we see just one example of Caleb's schooling challenges.

His eyes do not converge.

It is actually very odd to watch.

He really thinks both eyes are looking at this, then we cover the right one and he is trying to figure out where it went!

Interestingly I think in most cases you would at some point see two if your eyes were doing this, he says he never sees two.

I am not a specialist or anything, just a mom trying to figure things out, but the way I understand this, is that if his eyes are struggling to converge he will have trouble focusing on words on the page because both eyes are not looking at the same place.

Hence he starts reading OK and struggles more and more as his eyes get tired.  

He also struggles keeping place on the page.

He says the words jump off the page towards him.

So we have started some basic eye training with him at home with the cute pencil and lots of one eye at a time.

We are also using the Brain Integration Therapy by Dianne Craft, we have not been doing it long enough to tell whether it is working.

We will also be starting to integrate some of the exercises from Eye Can Learn in the next week.

I am thankful that I am a veteran at the homeschooling thing, or I would have decided a long time ago that I was not cut out for this.

An example with Caleb it that due to his

1)  Auditory Processing Disorder he does not learn well by hearing

2)  Visual Processing differences (not formally diagnosed) he does not learn well by seeing

3)  Attention differences (also not formally diagnosed) he does not learn well by doing

4) PTSD (also not formally diagnosed) he does not do well with getting things incorrect or being corrected, which is all part of school and learning.

I am so thankful for the support of my husband, family, friends and therapist that keep us going on this long road.  

He does seem to be doing better overall with the changes we have made this year.  I will post more on the full curriculum later, but for now, it is off to school and he will be commandeering my computer for the next 4 hours!

Concepts in Pictures and Color

I have so enjoyed all I am learning this year in helping teach my youngest treasures, whom have learning challenges!

Interestingly both Hannah and Caleb have been diagnosed with Auditory Processing Disorder, but both of them display it in totally different fashion.

Caleb struggles with hearing and discriminating sounds, so  he really struggles with spelling and hearing the words he is reading.

Hannah struggles with storing and reproducing sounds in the proper order.

Caleb has an amazing memory when it is in story or sentence form, but struggles with memorization of math facts and processes, grammar rules, and sequenced things like months or books of the Bible.

So he can memorize verses and speeches to amaze people, but still can not tell you the months of the year every time.

Hannah on the other hand has always struggled with memorizing of any sort.

In fact we were recommended not to try to have her memorize for quite a while.

This last year she memorized the whole 23rd Psalm and we were so very proud of her.

We used lots of hand motions and changed some words to help her.

And example would be, "in the presence of my enemies".

She was really struggling with this line till I figured out it was the word "presence" that was throwing her off.

Her idea of this was "presents", and it was not going to change from the concrete form of 'presents' to the non-concrete form of 'presence'.

So we changed it to "in front of my enemies", and off she went.

As she memorized, she slowly stopped the hand motions, but when she got stuck all I had to do was put my hands in the right place and it would clue in her memory.

All this to preface the above picture-

 I did not want to cram verses into little minds with no understanding.

So with some help from teaching from Dianne Craft I came up with the above picture for Hannah.

With lots of color and pictures she was able to learn the verse and know its meaning at the same time.

I have also learned, at least at this point, we will only work on one verse a week with her.

She needs the constant reinforcement and when I try to add in a second verse for her Awana she mixes up the two and intertwines them and their meanings.

So I will be praising God for each verse and picture she memorizes at her own special pace---

Just the way God made her!

ESL fun!

A little look into what our days with English as a second language can look like:)

So this cute picture shows what?

Yes, the boy is "ABSENT" from school.

Now this unknown word is partially due to ESL issue, but also because of homeschooling he is never 'absent' from school.

Always interesting to find words that are fairly common, yet he has no idea what they mean like: mental, actress, dental, atlas and insult. And these were all today.


But the word that took the cake today was not only a word that he did not know what it meant, but that even after trying a dozen times he could barely say the word--it was fun laughing with him as he tried.

I can not even explain how he was saying it, but we finally got---

EN-CHANT

And yes, we had to totally syllablize to get him to wrap his little tongue around it. In fact, I think he is still saying it as N-chant.

So we finally get the word pronounced correctly and I ask him what it means....

Didn't you know that it meant 'old', you know like ANCIENT!

Wow, you gotta wonder how confusing life must be when so many words are mixed up in a little head.

So I tried you know--enchanted--where have you heard that word Caleb?

His answer--

Yep, the movie--LOL.

We finally got that:

ENCHANTED=magical

ANCIENT=old

Then you should have seen his face when I told him in "Beauty and the Beast" the castle is both 'enchanted' and 'ancient'!

It was priceless confusion!

I can never say life is dull around here-LOL!

It Makes Me Cry

It makes me want to cry when I know how hard he has to work for some things...

When trauma has affected his ability to learn and retain.

It hurts to know it will probably always be a struggle.

But God....

This has not taken Him unawares.

He only has the best in mind for all of us.

He formed him in his mother's womb.

HE DOES NOT MAKE MISTAKES!!

Caleb and I are learning to trust in a new way!

Praise God, Your mercies are new every morning!!

Thank you God for this amazing treasure you have blessed us with!!

Your blessings overflow!!

Good-Bye Science Class

Yesterday was our last homeschool science class.

I loved my time and had so much fun.

Here is a picture from last week with Caleb, Imani, and Andrew who made birds nests for their homework assignment.

As our last class we studied eggs and hatching.

So what better way to study and egg, than to play with them.

Carmen, Madison, and Faith digging in.

Caleb, Hannah and Emily getting their fingers dirty.

Josiah, Andrew, and Imani on the verge of some big messes!

What better way to celebrate St. Patrick's Day!

Caleb is working on his State Notebook of Oregon.

He just informed me that he found our State Seal.

The sea lion of course!!

Seriously, he has it all nicely written up in his notebook and could not understand why I was laughing so hysterically.

Gotta love the guy, he is so literal.

It is probably the ESL (English as a Second Language), but so fun!

New Therapy

Now I have been doing lots of research again, this time on how to help Caleb.

I decided to attack one issue at a time and see if we can get some real improvement.

We purchased this DVD from Dianne Craft to work on Caleb's writing issues first.

Here you see Caleb working on his 20 minute writing practice.

As I have mentioned before he has to think before writing most every letter.

On my pre-test with him he had 13 letters he miss-wrote.

After only one week of this practice, we re-tested and he only miss-wrote 3 of his letters.

I am impressed.

If we continue to get this kind of results I will probably be going back for more video's soon.

Reagan Anyone?

Wondering if anyone realized that February 6th would have been Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday?

Since my one of my wonderful daughters, Danielle, works at the Ronald Reagan Ranch and Gallery, I thought I would give you a glimpse and maybe spur you on to further study of this great man.

This is a picture of one of his favorite Bible verses and a reproduction of his Bible cover.

This large table is all interactive. Danielle was privileged to do a lot of the research that is contained in it. This covers most of his life as a political figure.

The bookshelf in the background is interactive and is a reproduction of his at his ranch.

The table at the left you will see in a couple of pictures.

In the background you see his Jeep Scrambler that he is famous for driving all over his ranch, Rancho del Cielo. Yes, it is in the building. It was lowered in through the roof during renovations.

Here is a picture of his ranch in the foothills of Santa Barbara.

The rock in the foreground is one of the many sensors that were placed all over the property while he was president to help provide discrete security.

Here is the table from the earlier picture. It was used when President Reagan signed the tax overhaul.

Hope some of these pictures inspired you to find out more about President Reagen and maybe make it a part of your home school week in February.

Don't miss the bit about----"Tear down this wall!"

You know the Berlin Wall!

Oh by the way there is a very large piece of the Berlin Wall at the gallery.

Hopefully that was enough of a tease to get you to want to take a trip to Santa Barbara.

Science Anyone?

You may remember last year I taught a geography class to a group of home schoolers while their moms were at a Bible study.

This year I took the first term off to try and get into some sort of rhythm with Caleb's homeschooling.

Well I have jumped back in and am teaching 9 kids for 2 hours once a week.

We are using Apologia's Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day.

It is a great way for me to get my science in with the kids, experiments and all. And it gives them a chance to be in a classroom setting.

And best of all the get some good fellowship, well so do I afterwords:)

This week it was raining, so no outdoors for a scavenger hunt.

So....

We studied about extinction and each of the kids made their own extinct flying creature.

Oh the mess of crafts:/

But they sure had fun!

Carmen, Imani, Faith, Madison, Emily, Hannah and Josiah and Caleb in the front.

Just FYI both the girls who are smaller than Hannah in this picture are at least a year older than her---Just a perspective picture.

What's up?

Life has been a little bit of an emotional roller coaster. Maybe at some point I will blog a little about it, but right now I am just wanting to hear what the Lord is teaching me.

Thankfully life continues around me in full force to keep me focused on today.

Been doing a TON of research on some possibilities of learning help for Caleb. Has anyone used anything by Dianne Craft?

Caleb, as we have previously noted, has some trouble moving cross mid-line. This makes it difficult for him to transfer information from the right side of his brain, your thinking side, to the left side of his brain, your working memory.

So what does this look like?

Caleb has to think about most letters he is writing. So every word and every letter is a thinking process. Think about if every time you wrote, even your name, you had to think of how to form each letter, let alone which are the right letters.

Then try to transition a letter from a book or the white board onto your paper...

Well it is very difficult and makes most simple tasks take a very long time.

We are also working with an idea my friend, Jen, mentioned with transparencies over a book. She actually gave me some information, but I left it at her house back in November.

Caleb has mentioned that the words seem to move up towards him when he is reading. His vision is 20/20, but he seems to be having some vision processing issues.

Vision therapy is so expensive and not covered by insurance, so we are looking at some home based options. Anyone have any ideas?

It is hard to watch Caleb struggle.

I know he is smarter than we are seeing.

I know he is trying.

I know so much of it stems from early situations and losses.

It makes me so sad for him.

He has lost so much, I would love to be able to help him recover some of this.

God is ABLE.

Praying for wisdom.

Isaiah 55:9

As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Our Day

Thought I would post a little more of what our day is looking like right now.


Here is Hannah doing one of her phonics books. She is working on her new sound (th).


Here, having her mouth sound cards beside her paper helps her to make a decision on which sound she is making. Example would be 'bath'. She says 'baff', not uncommon, so we are retraining and reinforcing, by having her see what her mouth is doing (we do use a mirror if needed) and seeing what my mouth is doing.


So in this simple phonics lesson she is working her speech therapy, working her phonics, and working her positioning of sounds. You can't see the horse in this picture, but she is using it to determine where in the word the (th) sound is found in the word.


FYI These mouth cards are: top-t,d middle-f,v bottom-th, hard and soft

Caleb is here working at his desk.

Couple things to notice are the ever present timer to keep him aware that time is passing.

The new add on it the head phones. He is much better able to focus with them on.

Our final transition in the last couple of weeks was doubling up! Actually we do double of half our subjects on one day and double the other half the next day. Erinn's idea. For some reason we have seen an AMAZING improvement in Caleb's school since implementing this set up. My guess is he feels there is less to do and it is easier to accomplish for him this way.

So a small peak into our changes.

A Therapy Update

A while back, I said I would write more about what we are learning in regards to Auditory Processing Disorder with Hannah and Caleb.


So here goes with some trepidation, because I know their therapist has this sight--guess she can correct me this way.


We have known basically since Hannah came home (at 3 years old) that she had speech issues. She was unable to make many sounds, she stuttered, limited vocabulary and understanding, and limited ability to recall words, nor could she listen and repeat what she heard, such as a story.

When she was about 5 we started with our present therapist and the OPD was high on our list of culprits for the speech issues, but due to her age and lack of vocabulary we choose to wait on testing to get a more accurate picture.


This is what we have been working on this summer.


As we began her testing and I was answering a long questionnaire, I started questioning whether this might also be an issue for Caleb. His schooling his becoming more of a battle, listening has always been an issue, his spelling and reading were falling farther and farther behind. We were starting to see more language, vocabulary, and retention issues also as school became more and more difficult for him.


What we found is very interesting.


Hannah has trouble storing her words correctly, therefore has trouble recalling and using those words. She also needed help on fluency and pacing of her words. And the basics of how to form sounds.


Caleb will also be working on basics of how to form sounds, so he can learn to hear and discern them from one another. We also found he can not filter out background noise! Nor does he hear the ends of words or the ends of sentences---makes it kinda hard to follow any directions or listen to coaches or teachers or anyone.

Caleb now wears ear plugs when doing school and it is helping tremendously (more on this later).

So here is where we started 4 years ago when Caleb was just 6 and home a year from Liberia.


Remember, Liberia is "English speaking". But not really like American English.


Also remember, you have most of your language acquisition in the first 3 years of your life. So basically, both kids are English As A Second Language (ESL), though I am really just learning to what extent this has been a challenge for them.


Liberia has very few consonant blends, so neither of the kids could really make blends like these above. So I taught these (and many more) to Caleb and help him learn how to put the sounds together (really he could not do it without work).


Abeka teaches them basically as one sound, so that is how I taught them.

So moving to present. Caleb can not discern the two sounds d-r. Therefore he can not write them and if he tries to sound out the word 'drum' you might get 'jum' 'dum' 'jrum' or 'drun'.

Then he just gets frustrated and starts just guessing some of the oddest things.So where we are is using these disks to help him visually separate the sounds out. He does not have the card sitting there to help!

You know using all your senses together.

Yellow is always a vowel. and each color stand for a different consonant.Then he says each sound while touching the disk and then puts it together.

Then he writes it down.

These cards have been an amazing help for both the kids to see how to form sounds and to discriminate what sound there mouth is making, by what it is doing. These are for making most of the consonant sounds. We are just starting to work on the vowels, which are an extra challenge for both kids. Caleb to discriminate what vowel is being used, or that he is hearing and for Hannah that and also just saying some of the vowels-some vowels just don't come out right for her no matter how hard she tries :)

Hannah we take the disk example a little farther.

She struggles with all prepositional type (front, back) of words and ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd). The concepts have been very difficult for her to grasp.

So Mr. Gray Horse (she is very literal when naming things:)) sits on our table and she places a disk in front of his head-front, his tummy-middle, and back-tail. This helps her to keep her sounds in order.

Otherwise the word 'pin' can become 'inp' or 'nip'.

You see she gets the right letters, but can not retrieve them in the right order to make sense of the word. Nor can she then read the word and tell you what is wrong.

This simple tool helps to keep her processing in order.

She will actually run her finger along his back and say 'map' then she can tell you that the word starts with 'm'. Without this aid, many time she will just pick one of the letters.

To make this all the more confusing, sometimes she will need no aids at all and get it all 100% correct and sometimes even with all the aids I can think of she will not be able to process at all--those are the days we have short school days. If I try to push she will just get frustrated and actually go farther backwards.

Finally to end this long post, at least for now, here are our new sight words cards.

Caleb and Hannah will be working on memorizing these and continually using them for review. I never found this a necessity for the older kids, but the retention is not the same for these two and hopefully these will help with all those words that don't 'play fair' and words we just use all the time.

Shining Through

The beautiful sunrise from our window this morning!

Through the clouds and fog we saw this beautiful sight!

Kind of like working through the layers of our littles lately.

We peek, we shine, we push, we pull, and we mostly seek.

For some the start of school brings an abundance of joy for both parent and child.

In our home, with our littles, school is a time of trials, testing, and bright spots, like the picture above of learning and growing.

We have decided we will really use this year to seek some answers for some of our challenges.

But it can look like this---

Caleb giving such varied answers at the eye doctor, that she finally has to test him like a very little child to get to the answers without asking him.

Answer for this question is no vision problems and she believes only some small areas that she showed me some therapy to work on to strengthen some things.

It can also look like this--

Hannah working with her speech therapist (testing so we can get an 'official diagnosis'), she answers every rhyming question correctly!

Oh by the way she can not rhyme at all, she does not 'get' the concept!

Thankfully her therapist has worked with her long enough to know this and score her accordingly.

Answer through 2 of the 3 days of testing--Hannah does have Auditory Processing Disorder (APD or CAPD)

So where does his put us on this road--a few steps in and a few steps back.

We are presently working on finding someone or some group that will do a comprehensive evaluation on Hannah and possibly Caleb.

We are not so much wanting labels, as the knowledge of how we can help her within her limitations and abilities.

So we will be looking at psychological issues (trauma), emotional issues (attachment), developmental issues (malnutrition), IQ issues (educational), and the whole range of learning disabilities.

As you can see it would be helpful to have one evaluation that could take into account all areas instead of piecemealing it.

Praying that God would lead us in the right direction, that we may be able to get some answers, and like the picture above start pushing back the clouds to let the kids shine through!

Moving On..

So what now..

Now that the floors are done, I have the slow process of painting, trimming, cleaning and decluttering!

Not a real fun job, but praying the dividends will be nice!

I am also starting to reap the not so great dividends of two little kids who have been through a lot this summer :(

Hannah is..

having language issues--expected, but still needs to work through!

having bathroom issues--some expected, others beyond my imagination!

having 'deer in the headlights' look again--think 'fight, flight, or freeze' response to stress, can be as simple stress as asking her a question.

having school issues--same as above, but highly exaggerated.

Caleb is..

having immense listening issues--always been an issue, now times 3!

having the 'freeze' response to questions--normal, but again highly exaggerated.

having boundary issues--now also pulling Hannah in too.

Now understand this is not every moment, nor everyday.

We have had some amazing times and amazing breakthroughs this summer also.

But we do need to get back on a schedule for all of our sakes.

As I said, I still have lots to do to have the house put back together, I need to get Drew ready to head off to WSU in 3 weeks, and still need to schedule for the coming school year.

I would covet your prayers as we head into this adjustment time.

School is always hard for the kids, hence stressful for all of us. Any great ideas would be appreciated!!

I am working on a surprise box with immediate prizes for the kids. Something that is paid out later is never a real good motivator.

Class is done!!!

Today I enjoyed teaching my last homeschool class!! I will miss my kids and had a great time. Hope they enjoyed it as much as I did. I was surprised with some sweet gift cards to us in the future!

We studied 19 countries and learned where they are and what continent they are on. Along with the types of animals that live in each country and some interesting sites to see in each country. I think the kids had the most fun with learning to say hello in 17 different languages--though I am sure I botched the ponunciation a lot. They also enjoyed learning to say the large population numbers.

We included games, food or crafts from each country. So they made a mancala game (Kenya) and a dreidel (Isreal). We made paper fans (Korea) and island paintings (Haiti). And we made guacamole (Mexico) and peanut sauce (Liberia). ect...

Most importantly we learned how we can pray for kids in each of these countries, and how different their lives our from ours.

I can say from our 'tests' today, that all the kids retained something!! :):) I guess we had fun and accomplished something at the same time!!

Now off to pack for state for the next two days!!!

Homeschool Questions

Laurel over at Our Journey of Faith asked some interesting questions regarding our homeschooling. Though after homeschooling for as many years as she has, I am sure she is just curious about how it works in Oregon, comparatively. Anyways thought I would answer them and some other homeschool questions in case anyone was interested.

I want to say up front, that though we homeschool, we know that it is not for everyone. We are not the homeschooling only type of family. If, I thought it was better for any of my kids at any time to be schooling in a different way, we would pray about it and do what we felt was best at that time for that child. That said, here are some Q and A's.

Has Drew been in some type "program" for his homeschooling?

Actually both Drew and Danielle have used Abeka Video Academy for upper division school(Danielle from 7-12 grade and Drew 9-12).

For Danielle it started because, she and I were struggling and I thought the best way to preserve our mother/daughter relationship was to remove the stress of the teacher/student relationship. It worked out great.

Also we suspected she would go on to run in college, as is Drew, and having an 'accredited' diploma would make life easier.

Though it made life easier in some aspects, we were still considered homeschoolers at state colleges and had the same college hoops to jump through as other homeschoolers.

Since Abeka is so test driven, we did not use it for Erinn, who at the time dealt with major test anxiety. She now is holding a 3.8 GPA at college to keep her 1/2 tuition scholarship---guess she got over the anxiety!!

Are these just a group of homeschoolers who decided to "graduate" their kids together?

Yes, in the previous post you see a group of homeschoolers from our county who have decided to graduate together. Our local support group is the catalyst for this, though the parents and students plan and fund the entire graduation.

Danielle's class was 27 kids and I think Erinn had 18 kids in her class.

Do you follow state guidelines for "graduation"? Or, do you create your own homeschool requirements?

We have followed Abeka's guidelines for graduation, adding in our own classes as need or desired.

For Erinn we followed the local high school's guidelines and made our own transcript. We did add in our Bible classes that the high school does not require. We also made adjustments and such for things such as spending a month in a tribal location during the school year. We called it
"cross cultural training" or something like that. I also added an addendum to our transcript that showed what texts, programs, classes or whatever for them to see that we actually did it.

I have not had any problem getting any of the kids transcripts accepted at any school, be it state college, private college, Christian college, or Naval Academy. We have sometimes had to provide additional resources, so I recommend to every homeschooler starting high school to keep records of everything. It is only for a few years and worth the hassle of not having to find it later.

Do you get official Oregon State diplomas, or do you give your kids self-made homeschool diplomas?

The diplomas we give the kids at graduation are home made and endorsed by our local homeschool group if the kids have passed their required state testing at a certain level. I do not know what that level is, since all the kids have been above the 95th percentile I have not had to worry about it. Danielle and soon Drew will also have accredited diplomas from Abeka Academy.

Do the local high schools graduate this early in the year? Or, was this just a date chosen by a group of homeschoolers?

Our graduation date was chosen by our group---well me actually (LOL). We usually choose a date before most high schools are graduating, so there is less conflict for families who want to come. Since I knew how busy our spring was I check early on race dates for Drew and Danielle's wedding and this was seriously the only date we could do in May and early June. Thankfully it worked for the other families as well.

Drew actually has 2-3 weeks left of his video schooling and till sometime in June for his college credit anatomy class that he is taking at the local high school.

Nothing like graduation then having to hit the books the next day!!! He isn't complaining and is upstairs working away as I type!!! :):)

So that answers most of Laurel's questions.

One thing she did not touch on was our participation in athletics.

Here in Oregon our homeschool kids are allowed to participate in public school sports. They are required to take testing every year to prove that they are academically eligible and follow all the other guidelines the public school kids do.

This has not always been easy. For Danielle and Drew who excelled at their sports from the minute they stepped on the field (their dad has coached them since elementary school) it was easier in some ways as they were immediately accepted as a helpful part of the team. For Erinn who had never played water polo it was entirely different and much more difficult.

They have been teased and hurt by words, but we felt that giving them the freedom to step out in this was was a good way to start spreading their wings outside in the world. Then each evening they would come home and be refreshed and refueled. Unlike giving it to them as they went off to college and did not have home to come to every night.

So far we have been blessed to watch all three walk these waters and come shinning through. We are exceedingly proud of their accomplishments on the field, in the pool and in the school room, but most importantly in the way they have grown to be mature adults who love the Lord and shine for Him where ever they go. I think that is the goal!!

Interestingly now that I have run the race with our oldest three, I am finding myself doing it again and since these kids have their own special challenges, we are changing lots of ways that we do things.

Different curriculum, different schedules, different goals.

Not bad, just different.

A new challenge!!

"FELEPHLANT"

Hannah and I had a great time at her speech this week. She always has fun with Ms. Jennifer and I was able to get lots of clarification on some issues we are dealing with!!

We have been really struggling with some vocabulary issues. Mostly her not being able to remember the names of things or when we ask for things she does not know what we are talking about. I was thinking--you've been here for 4 1/2 years and you are 7 years old you know what ketchup is!!

Well as it has been explained to me--Hannah does not store those words in her brain properly---they are mixed up--so when she goes to pull them out to use them she can't get the sounds in the proper order--she then freezes (her stress response) because she knows it is wrong, but really has no idea how to fix it! Interesting!!

So we were encouraged to continue to prompt her with beginning sounds or give her the word. If I have asked her for something and she can't put what she is hearing with what she needs to get, we should try to describe it and move her towards it.

We have worked on pacing words using her knuckles--sometimes she goes so fast--and she does not pronounce every sound--that it becomes hard to understand her. So she makes a fist and points to a knuckle for each syllable. It slows her down and paces her words so she focuses more on making each sound.

We are now using this to help with words that are getting twisted up coming out. An example would be "elephant"--she would come up with something like 'felephlant'. You see the sound are out of order. So when she uses her knuckles and says el-e-ph-ant she gets her sound in the proper order with a visual and kinetic boost (her learning styles), then she can put her hand down and say it correctly!!!

Hannah's therapist enjoys working with Hannah, but does admit that there are so many levels that we are working with that sometimes it is hard to say why things are happening or if they are permanent or if there is only one thing affecting what we are working on. An example would be in the above scenario--is it all auditory processing, or is there some motor planning (how to make the sound), or is there some learning delay (due to her malnutrition)!! It is a multi-layered beast at this point, but I am very thankful for all the help we have found to help us walk this path.

We are hoping that when we start up again after the weddings, to do an official test for auditory processing on Hannah. Though she is sure she has it, it will help her to know where we are heading. And help us get other services if we choose to down the road. It will also help me in writing up her Privately Developed Plan (PDP)--this is like an IEP that schools do. Her PDP will allow me as a homeschool teacher to set her own academic goals, rather than trying to reach a set standard.

So Sweet....

So as I have mentioned before, I am teaching a group of homeschoolers on Thursday mornings during a ladies Bible study at a local church. I usually have 6 kids all girls and Caleb is my only boy!

This morning we were only had 4 and they presented me with this beautiful key chain and precious card!

I understand from one of the moms that her daughter was the instigator and wanted to encourage me because she knew I was very busy and she was enjoying the class!!

What a beautiful thought!! I was very touched!!

We have 3 more weeks and I will miss my kids, it has been fun traveling the world with them!

We have been to:

Honduras Haiti

India Uganda

Philippines China

Ukraine Kenya

Chile Israel

Guatemala Brazil

Liberia South Korea

Mexico Ethiopia

Papua New Guinea

Any idea for our final weeks?

A Whole New World!!!

We are finishing up a one hour day of phonics with my little Hannah!! We did take some heavy work breaks for her!!! And she got the whole page done all by herself (okay, with lots of mom help).

Some interesting things I am learning about auditory processing disorder, and probably some other issues such as sensory processing are:

1-Reading is very hard when you have memory issues due to APD, since you can not remember the last word you read in your sentence.

2-Remembering that word you just figured out in the last sentence does not happen and you have to refigure it out.

3-All your vowels sound the same when you put them in words.

4-When you read 'red' as 'rud' it sounds OK to you.

5-You vocabulary is so limited that when you read a word wrong you do not realize that it is not a word, or inversely when you read it correctly you do not realize it is a word.

6-The concept of long and short sounds is extremely hard to grasp (we will be taking a break from this till her next open window).

7-The concepts of ordinal numbers (first, second, ect) are life a foreign language, so when mom keeps saying what does the second letter say, you are at a loss for what she is talking about.

8-When mom reads what you write, you look at her facial expression to decide whether you answer is correct, rather than being able to hear that "Bill sat home fast." is not a correct sentence.

We could go on and on, but I just wanted to give you a little insight into Hannah's world of learning, at least where she is now. Our process is slow, and not so steady, but she is getting it in her own time.

Rather than be frustrated we take joy in the victories and have learned to let her go at her own pace.

And you know.....

Her smile when she gets it says it all!!!!!

She is such a treasure and sometimes I am totally floored that God is allowing me to be her Mom!!!

If you are on the fence about whether or not adoption is for you, and whether or not you can handle a child who is not flesh of your flesh, or whether you can handle the unknowns....let me tell you that from where we stand (and I do understand that there are a lot bigger issues and bigger needs than we have) take the leap and let God guide you through the process into a whole new wonderful world!!!!!!!