D2 has been struggling in the reading and writing areas. He’s in 4th grade now and I’ve never had a child who took this long to grasp things. We are also seeing some letter and number  reversals, inversions and a few downright nonsensical things in writing that have me concerned.

I took him for an evaluation at a place that does neuroeducational testing for learning disabilities and difficulties. I chose them because we’ve been there before. Years ago they helped P with understanding math. It’s not cheap, but since the boys receive adoption support, the bill is covered by his medical, praise God.

He doesn’t begin testing until the end of this month. It will be 5 hours, broken up over 3 days. I’m not sure what I am hoping to learn from it, besides how to help him to learn easier. Yes, I know my child best, but this is something that is beyond me.

You do know that it’s okay to have help sometimes, right? Just because you homeschool your kids doesn’t mean that you have to do everything by yourself. When in doubt, outsource it to someone who knows more than you do. Really, it’s okay. Living with special needs kids will make you become a firm advocate for your kids! And this? It is a very good thing.

Credit: SisterLisa/Pixosphere

As homeschoolers, we take on all of the responsibilities of our children’s education, including the social aspects. I am talking about the “S” word, yes, but there is a different view of it when we’re discussing children with special needs.

My post today for Wednesday Special Needs at The Homeschool Village is all about where to find friends and how to create opportunities for your special needs child to connect.  Do you make an effort to help your kids develop friendships?  Read Finding Friendships here.     

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And for today’s giveaway….  

See that picture at the top of the page?  It is one of thousands available for bloggers to use from the Pix-O-Sphere website.  I use Pix-O-Sphere for post images when ever I don’t happen to have one of my own.  I can go there and search for just about any topic, and come up with GREAT images!  

Photo-dependent. That’s what you can probably call a good percentage of bloggers these days. We LOVE to take peekshurs (as Jenn would say!) Love them. It doesn’t matter whether you use a little point and shoot 5MP camera, a $2000 Canon, or your iPad with the Instagram app. Pictures are king. Pictures make people stop and read.  Pictures make every story more interesting, right?

You’ve probably also done your share of searching for “the right picture” through Creative Commons and other places.  Sometimes this can yield good results, but you have to wade through a lot of inappropriate ones to find the good stuff.  My friend SisterLisa and her husband own Pix-O-sphere and view it as a ministry to families, and their heart is to offer a stress-free service to bloggers. There are no adult images to sort through. Just a growing group of bloggers who are sharing their photos with one another.  A basic membership is free, but with a PREMIUM membership you can even SELL your photos there!! 

And today only, you have a chance to WIN A PREMIUM MEMBERSHIP TO PIXOSPHERE!   

WELCOME BACK! Yes, things look a little different.  The address has changed too.  That only means that the ABC’s of Homeschooling can continue with a fresh face!  Be sure to grab the new ABC’s button code from my sidebar to replace the one you have!  :)  Also, just below the ABC linky is our giveaway for today!!  Be sure to link your info there for a chance to win!

Since this is “A” week, and life is CRAZY right now, I am writing about being Adaptable.

We can make all of our plans, and we can come up with all sorts of ideas, but how many times do the plans fall apart, or the ideas not come to something tangible? For me, it happens a lot. The fact that we homeschool makes people think we have it all together.  Really!

So many times I’ve heard “I could never homeschool because I am just not organized enough”– or disciplined, patient, creative, or smart.  No matter what their reason, they are wrong. I am not organized. (You should see my house right now. Buried.)  I am not disciplined. (Ohhh shiny!)  Or patient. Ahem. Serious lack of sleep lately is not helping things.

But I digress.

What most people miss is the fact that we have to be able to make adjustments on the fly.  Homeschoolers are nothing if not adaptable.  When the lesson planner is neatly filled out in blue ink, and you notice that you only completed two things for each day in your lessons, you have to adapt.  When the science experiment completely fails, you adapt.  Come up with something else.  Try it again to see if you can make it turn out differently.  Figure out why!

We have brains that give us reasoning skills and the ability to adapt to changes in circumstances.  One mom I know of just got out of the hospital and she has a PICC line and a G-Tube feeding her.  She is sore and tired and spends a lot of time lying on the couch, reading to her kids.  She is adapting in the midst of circumstances I can’t even fathom.  And yet she does it, and her kids are still learning.  Life is a learning tool.  We adapt.

Sometimes adaptability is forced upon us. That’s okay. It is a skill that everyone needs.  On the morning we woke up to water soaking our basement because the sump pump had quit, unbeknownst to us, showers were taken and dishwasher run before we noticed the flood. A sort of crisis mode ensued.  School was the last thing I was thinking about that morning.

You don’t have to be perfect to homeschool. You just have to be able to handle the unexpected and adapt at the right times.  Everything else falls into place when you make the changes and don’t stress about them.  Teaching your kids is supposed to be enjoyable! Become adaptable and you will enjoy it a whole lot more.

Read past posts from the ABC’s of Homeschooling

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Today’s giveaway in my Week of Giveaways is a BEAUTIFUL pair of ribbon rosette earrings from my friend Ashley’s shop, Daily Chocolate! Your choice of color, you’ll just love the style! Ashley is one of my Relevant 2010 sisters.  We stayed up all night talking on Saturday night.  She is amazingly talented!

It’s funny how I can lose sight of things when I create An Agenda.  You know what  I mean. I can’t be the only one who tends to live by the almighty Lesson Planner! Right? Tell me I’m not alone here.  It just looks so good to see all those lessons written out so neatly in the little white squares in my planner. It looks so… accomplished.  So tidy. So productive!

So what’s the problem?

My planner for Tuesday may say “Handwriting p. 21 #2; Math Lesson 36; Spelling List Day 38 full assignment parts 1-5 on SpellingCity; Read aloud 30 min.; History- Read Ch. 7 and do Explorers lapbook parts 3 and 4; Health p. 17-20; Grammar p. 139 Common and Proper Nouns” but what gets done looks more like “Math Lesson 36; Spelling List Day 38 assignment pts. 1-2; Grammar p. 139.”

This is life.  This is life with a child who struggles to stay focused and takes over an hour to do a ten minute copywork assignment in his handwriting book.  This is life with two boys who take off like rockets at lunch time, and reeling them back in for more school work afterward takes the patience of a saint. And I’m no saint.

What happens to those neat little white boxes full of so much productivity?  Well let me tell you: Nothing. I quit writing lesson plans down ahead of time.  These days I’m all about loose planning, going with the flow, and documenting everything after the fact. It’s the only way I can come out not feeling like we are failing, because with special needs you just can’t always plan for everything.

We go day by day, and week by week.  We do get that history project done sometime during the week, just maybe not on Tuesday.  The math and spelling do almost always get done, because they are both on the computer and the boys love using the computer for school work.  And the other things? Experiences sometimes trump lessons anyway.

Two weeks ago the boys were in the thick of things when for three days, we had a concrete crew here that tore out our driveway and poured new concrete. They watched, they helped, and they asked questions.  Sometimes you just have to go with the flow.  That week, not a lot of actual “school work” got done, but don’t try to tell me they didn’t learn.  I documented hours’ worth of social studies, PE, life science and occupational education over the course of those three days.

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Homeschoolers love their planners, and I am no different.  My personal choice for planners is actually a digital journal.  I have used the Homeschool Daybook for a long time now, and I love it. It is lesson relaxed schoolwork documentation. It is simple and easily customized, and guess what? Today’s giveaway is a premium license for the Homeschool Daybook! Giveaway is closed. (Click the screenshots for close-ups!)

I’ve been working on the computer a lot. I mean, constantly. NOT exactly what I like to be doing, but this is big! And I’m excited to share it with you!

Yes, my birthday is coming up, in three weeks to be exact, and I am sharing my birthday present with you!  I wrote about the changing seasons of life recently. I have been feeling an urgency to move ahead into my next phase of life. What that will look like, I have no idea.  The only thing that I do know is that “5 Kids and a Dog” has moved into a season of 3—almost 2—kids (and two really obnoxious dogs), and although I haven’t talked about them very much, our THIRD GRANDBABY will be two weeks old tomorrow. Yes I’m turning 40 and have grandbabies. It happens.

In light of this current transitional season, I am proud to announce that three weeks from today I am launching a brand spanky new blog! My new home has a new look, new feel, but still much the same things you’ve come to expect here.  The ABC’s of Homeschooling will continue, starting fresh on October 11th with “A Week”!  

I have been working really hard on the back side of the new site, designing all my own graphics and doing all the theme tweaks. Don’t worry, I have help for the big stuff, like the post importing. (THAT’s not being very friendly to me at all.)  Here’s a little sneak preview!

And the most exciting part?  I have a week of giveaways arranged for you and the prizes are going to be GOOD!  I’m so thankful to have met some amazing people here in my little corner of the blogosphere who have offered to share of themselves to help me launch my new home!!

God is good, friends are wonderful, and change is exciting! So who’s with me? 

If you don’t already follow me on Twitter, please do now so you will get all the giveaway announcements as they happen. The Momma Knows has a Facebook page too!

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