Dream a New Dream

This is a print that I bought at Eat Street Markets on the weekend. It is on the wall of my renovated home office. 

Today as I was swimming in the pool with Sam (yes, it was another 40 degree celsius plus day), I felt a wonderful sense of calm. I watched Sam having fun swimming and it suddenly hit me. What I am doing with Sam now will impact on the rest of his life. Having kids is a great responsibility and we all want them to be safe, excel and be happy. If you have a child like Sam thought, you realise that for them to achieve their potential, you have to really be involved. He does not learn like typical children. He does not see and feel things like typical children. Nothing about Sam is typical.

I was gifted with a variety of talents. I'm artistic, I love to write, I sing and I love to perform. A part of me has always felt frustrated that I did not use these talents to pursue a professional career. My dream was to be a cartoonist, author, musical actor. For most of my life I struggled to accept that my life did not follow one of these paths. I felt like I had failed. Why was I given these gifts if I was not going to doing something special with them? It has really only been since Sam started school that I appreciated how much extra help he would need. Even then, it took his health issues in term three for me to see that Sam needed a different approach. Since then, I have discovered that the talents I have can help Sam. The key to unlocking his potential could just be the gifts I have. Perhaps these gifts were not meant for me, but for Sam...and Zoe. As I learn more about helping Sam I am also learning to be a better Mum to Zoe and I can 'feel' the difference my attitude is having on both of my kids.

I still have my dreams...I want to write children's books. And I love singing and performing with my amazing friends in community theatre. Right now though, my talents are focused on the real gifts in my life...my children. Soppy I know, but it has taken me a long time and a good deal of therapy (another post on that subject), to figure it out.

Right. How did we do at homeschooling today?

Sam did really well. I also finally got around to getting rid of the Coco Pops that were encrusted on my coffee table, so  I would call that a successful day.

As it was another scorcher, we started off in the local library. 

At home, we kicked off with some tracing exercises.

Great job Sam!

We followed this up with some letter writing practice - E to H.



I read somewhere about using a highlighter pen to help guide early writers. It works well.

And then we tackled the dreaded sight words. I had an idea to cover them all up...

...then reveal three at a time. Too much information can distract Sam. It worked!! Sam was engaged and we worked on the letter sounds and blending. He was getting it and sounding out the words. Yeah!

To finish off I let him play with the 'Talking ABC' app on my iPad and he typed in all the sight words.

He loved it. A great way to reinforce the sight words and have fun.

Good job Sam!

I tried a different tactic for Math today - counting and matching numbers and number words 1 to 20.
(Excuse Sam's hair. We went for a swim between English and Maths.)

Sam had to match the number ping pong balls with the number word on the white board.

I made him close his eyes and swirl the balls around then pick one. He thought that was a laugh. 

Another great effort. 

To finish off we had a go had subtractions. We used wooden coloured rings to work our the answers. I pretended they were donuts and Sam was the donut seller. I would buy them and then eat some. 

No calories gained and we got our answers.

Zoe and Sam swimming after school.