Planning for a New Homeschool Year

It's August, and time to plan for a new homeschooling year for Tom, our now-14-year-old with autism (actually PDD-NOS, or high functioning autism). This will be our fourth year of homeschooling, and chronologically Tom will be entering 8th grade. We're hoping that, after this year, he'll be ready to enter what we understand is a wonderful charter high school - and with that in mind, we plan to focus much more on basic academic and social skills than on content acquisition (even though he'll be immersed in all kinds of content whether he "aquires" it or not!).

Tom as Pharoah!

Being a slightly compulsive planner, I already have most of Tom's program laid out. Like last year, he'll be taking part in two days of small group classes taught by an ex-homeschooling mom who also happens to have a teaching degree and experience in special education. These aren't "special" classes or kids, but the small size of the group combined with the expertise of the teacher make it a good opportunity for Tom. Truth is, I personally wouldn't have chosen the topics for Tom (The American Presidency, for example) since he does poorly with abstractions; in general he does much better with topics that are more limited in scope (like Ancient Egypt or Greek Myths, for example).

Jessica, the homeschool teacher, has offered to work with us on helping Tom reach specific goals. Now "all" I have to do is figure out what the goals are, break them down into objectives, and select objectives that really make sense given the setting, the other kids, and Tom's real capabilities (which are always hard to grab hold of!).

In addition to these Tues/Thurs classes which run from 9-1, here are some of my plans for the year:

• Continue with our genius of a math tutor who works with Tom on Sundays (we barter for his time, but have to travel over an hour each way!)
• Continue with our genius of a clarinet teacher, who is a whole lot closer (he's a professor at a conservatory, and an absolute jewel of a person)
• Continue with the after-school jazz band at the middle school (nervous since the wonderful and experienced band director has retired!)
• Continue with our genius of a speech/social skills therapist, who is now helping Tom to interact socially with other kids at about his age and level
• Restart tennis at a local tennis school (for reasons I can't understand, Tom seems to love and be reasonably good at tennis)

We're also working on ideas for building Tom's independence and academic skills.  With that in mind, we're thinking about -

• buying a small laptop and teaching him to take notes using a keyboard (he's been learning to type on Mavis Beacon software, and he's a decent typist)
• tapping into Universally Designed software programs intended to prompt learners with LDs and other issues (much more on that soon)
• purchasing a "visual clock" that actually counts down so you can see how much time is available (Tom is still really unable to understand the concept of hours and minutes fully, though he's fine with days, weeks, months and years)

Whew!  Sound like I'm biting off an awful lot, but since the vast majority of what we're doing is NOT being done by us (mom and dad), the biggest challenges are organization and, of course, cash money to PAY for all this wonderful equipment and programming.  Of course some is free, and some we barter for...  but with all that, getting a child with autism out of the house and into typical settings with appropriate programs and support isn't the all-time cheapest or easiest road to take!

More coming very soon...  meanwhile, any thoughts or questions are welcome!

Roadblocks or Language Issues?

We're working on writing. I decided to download a software program called "Kidspiration," which uses graphical organizers to help kids put their thoughts together... found it was a lot of work to do something that's easier to do by hand LOL! But thought I'd try "webbing" as a way to put together a paragraph about a character in a book.

We started with Tom's imaginary friend, Lizard, and that went pretty well. So I moved on to Willy Wonka from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I put Mr. Wonka's name in the middle of the web, and asked Tom to tell me three things about the character. Tom has watched the movie a thousand times. He's read the book and answered every readin comprehension question correctly. He told me a pile of things that Mr. Wonka DID, but couldn't come up with a single character trait. After much pushing and shoving, I got three traits -- but there was NO way he could come up with examples of the traits. It was simply asking too much.

I realized that Tom really didn't grasp the concept of a character trait. No one has ever asked him "what is so and so like." We ask "what does so and so DO," "when does he do it," and so on -- but never something as abstract as "what is he like?" Somehow, either he doesn't understand the idea -- or doesn't understand the language I'm using to describe what I'm asking for. I don't exactly know which...

I've decided to step back a bit, and use the organizers to help him write about animals -- something that will be much easier for him. We've also been making a "colonial" loom from cardboard, and he had no trouble coming up with a sequence of steps (though his choice of words, handwriting and grammar are still very young).

Had a similar concept/language problem today with skip counting. Thought I'd use SchoolHouse Rock multiplication videos to help him memorize sequences -- he got teary-eyed! Why? he was very upset that I'd mixed up TV (which is fun) with learning (which is something other than fun?!). Now, he loves educational videos -- but apparently up until now he didn't realize that they had anything to do with the kind of learning you do in school (or even in homeschool!). Wow. I just assumed he knew...

Then we went on to multiplication worksheets. Now, Tom has been able to add for many years, and adding 3 to 42 really is a no-brainer for him. Yet he cannot grasp the idea that skip counting by threes means the same thing as adding three and then three again. Yes, we've done 3+3+3+3, etc. Yes, we've made groups of three. We've made triangles. We've done hands-on 3's counting. We've rearranged cards with multiples of 3, and he's put them in the right order. We've done mazes where you follow the trail of 3's. But when he gets stuck, and I say "just add 3," he looks at me like I'm nuts and has no idea what to do.

Are we hitting real conceptual roadblocks here? Or is this some kind of language issue? Somehow, he is not connecting ideas that he KNOWS with the words to describe those ideas. I'm not sure what the problem is... so am not at all sure how to solve it...