Magic, numbers and puzzles

Miss M's (3.5yrs) latest favourite thing to do is to "beshooom" something for you.  Except when she says it, it sounds a bit like "becharm".  She will do this hourly, or more.  Anything that she perceives that you might need in the moment.  This week I have been lucky enough to get new clothesline pegs, after she watched two in a row disintegrate; a foot stool for my, apparently, tired feet; dinner so I didn't have to cook; a remote control for her sister Miss F (18 months) after I said I wished she had a mute button for a few minutes! And a million other things I clearly needed.  If only her magic had some substance to it! I think I have a few different TV shows to thank for this! Ben and Holly is one that comes to mind... 

Numbers is a big thing at the moment for Miss M.  Anything numbers is completely amazing.  It started with having to change the way we transition Miss M from one thing to the next.  As a kid on the spectrum this is always a challenge.  We used to write them on a white board (didn't matter that she can't yet read) and rub each thing off as we did it - that lost it's charm recently.  So this week's style is to point to the clock in the living room and say "when the big hand reaches the top, it's time to get dressed/get in the bath/ have dinner/ go to bed .... ".  The only draw back to this is that you need to be watching the clock and not say it at 5 past something (e.g. 7.05) because, as it was pointed out "the big hand has already passed the top!".   A positive for this method (other than the simple fact that after five days it's still working!) is that she's becoming more aware of numbers.  After you point out the clock and the impending activity, she will stop whatever she is doing and climb onto the couch and watch the clock with huge levels of excitement (flowing over to her sister who also climbs the couch to watch).  It kind of defeats the purpose of having her finish of her previously enjoyed activity to sit and watch the couch... but whatever works! 

So from this she has developed a love of numbers.  I found some books (possibly bought ages ago, or given... I can't remember that far back!) that have dotted lines of numbers so they can be traced over with a whiteboard pen, over and over and over again.  Well they came out today and the two girls had an absolute ball.  Miss F drew crazy lines and was giggling hysterically - then I realised she was drawing on the table, herself, the chair - basically anything but the book! Miss M however traced over every number in order for several pages.  Delighting when she got the numbers right and at the same time getting seriously upset when her tracing went off the line - massive A type personality there! 

Today we got out the jigsaw puzzle box.  I'm sure we're not the only ones to have one of these? A big box full of those toddler appropriate puzzles (with the little handles on all the pieces)- and more recently a few big kid type ones - 12 or 16 pieces.  Well we have about 25 toddler puzzles.  None of them had all their pieces.  All the boards were nicely piled up. All the pieces were hidden underneath in a tormenting mountain.  (not sure if I thank my wife or my mum for this!).   Eventually (once I had sorted them all out) we had a great time with the puzzles.  Miss M has always loves puzzles.  Miss F prefers to just throw them.  Today, however, we managed to get Miss F enjoying the puzzles and cheering after every piece she put in.  Miss M managed to do a big puzzle (? 24 pieces) all by herself - and it didn't even have the cheat picture underneath! 

protectors of... plants and caterpillars!

While hanging out the washing the other day we became distracted by the amazing amount of weeds that had invaded my garden.  So the three of us (Miss M 3.5yrs, Miss F 18months and myself) took it upon ourselves to attack the weeds.  This led to conversations about which plants were weeds, which were plants, what was the difference and why we had to remove the ones called weeds.  After explaining that the weeds were unwanted plants in our garden and would eventually kill the plants we had planted, Miss M took on the "hero" position and went out to save all the plants.  "PROTECT THE PLANTS!!" was yelled over and over.  Miss F wasn't sure what to do, but helped by removing random leaves.... most were weeds.  

While gardening we found a few bugs, and watched then crawl away.  Miss M became upset that, in protecting our plants, we had destroyed the bug's homes.  So she 'built' bug homes in the piles of weeds now on the path beside us.  Such a beautiful soul.  

We also found a caterpillar in the strawberries in the fridge (Yay right!), so he is now living in a glass jar with random bits of food.  The jar regularly gets shaken up when either Miss M can't find him, or Miss F climbs up and reaches the jar.  Otherwise he seems quite happy! 

Being 18 months old Miss F thinks everything is her's and she a right to grab and play with everything.  This is quite concerning for Miss M, as a concept. She is very worried about Miss F taking everything and making everyone in the world very unhappy.  We have had lots of conversations this week around this topic.  While driving - "what if (Miss F) thinks that house is hers?".  And "Mummy you would be very sad if (Miss F) thought your stitching(knitting) was hers, because then you would have none!".  What if she thinks all the flowers are hers? All the puppy dogs? All the TVs? I feel this issue has more to come.  

We watched a documentary about the Great Barrier Reef this week.  It was amazing.  We watched a mummy turtle crawl along the beach and lay her eggs, and then crawl back to the water (if she could).  Miss M was very concerned that the mummy turtles 'just left' the babies in the eggs there alone.  So we talked about different animals and the different needs of their babies.  

The documentary also showed robots that dived down into the depths of the ocean.  That sparked a conversation about how robots work - waaaaay out of my depth here!! I didn't even get a chance to google as she moved onto another topic about sharks.  

Dinner time is always a challenge in our house.  Miss F will eat almost anything (unless she's pushing out teeth), but Miss M is another story.  If it's something that has the ingredients all mixed together (spag bol, shepherds pie, etc) she won't touch it.  So this week I had a stroke of genius and used ice cube trays for a dinner plate (we have a lovely expensive, bought sectioned plate - she doesn't like it).  

The ice cube trays were a hit! Miss M ate almost everything in her ice cube tray plate! Miss F ate the corn (blaming the new eye teeth here!). And then discovered it was fun to throw her food on the floor for the lizard to eat (yes we have a free ranging lizard, or two!).  

Bedtimes are also a bit of a struggle.  Miss F is going through a clingy, cuddly stage.  Miss M just takes ages to wind down and stop her crazy brain.  The other night, after a busy social day, there was a huge list of things on her little brain.  It started with "mummy, what's in snot?" (we currently have a cold making it's way through the house), that one took a while to explain (little germs, and fluid to help push the germs out??).  Then it got harder.  "what's in guts?", "what's in horses?", "what's in people?".  After talking about food, digestive juices, organs and bones, she moved onto things.  "What's in houses?", "What's in pillows?", "what's in curtains?".  This started after saying curtains were in houses, and then led to "what's in material?", "what's in fibres?", "where do fibres come from".  Ummmm, sheep, cotton plants, plastic?? Thankfully she finally fell asleep thinking about curtains.  

😀

Poo, poo and more poo!

This week Miss M (3.5yrs) has had a fascination with poo.  So, sorry for those who find poo offensive - you may want to skip reading this post!

Every time I have changed Miss F's (18months) nappy, Miss M would like to see the poo.  I'm ok with that, but I draw the line at touching it, or poking it with things - much to Miss M's frustration.  When we have done a dog poo scoop in the yard, Miss M delights in finding all the poo, standing over it, point at it and yelling (at the top of her voice) "POO!!!).  Such a great help - sorry neighbours!

Miss M is not yet "toilet trained" - I personally hate that phrase, but that's for another conversation.  She has shown interest a few times, but not for quite a while.  This week we were all about undies and using the toilet and not nappies, so it was a nice change.  But the poo fascination continued.  The poo in toilet required everyone to look at it - "it's a beautiful poo" she exclaimed! The  poo that didn't quite make the toilet wasn't so nice "I don't like poo in my undies".

Today we are back in nappies, but the poo fascination continues. "what is in poo?".  😐 So we talked about how what we eat gets churned up in our bellies, our body sucks up all the goodness and nutrients from the food to make energy (she's all about energy at the moment) and then what is left becomes poo.  Not a bad explanation I thought? Then she wanted to take a photo of a "beautiful poo" in a nappy and send it to her aunty so she too could admire the beauty.  Yes we took the photo, but we talked about how poo is not something most people would like to look at, so perhaps this could just be a photo for  you to look at (you're welcome sis)- and no maybe not on our wall, how about we just keep it in my phone?

It's ok, I won't share that particular 'beautiful' photo on this post... here's a beautiful flower instead.

We drove to playgroup this week - about 30mins away - and Miss M was very concerned that her little sister thought everything was hers.  The drive consisted of questions like "what if F.... thinks that house over there is hers?", "What if she thinks that truck is hers?" "what if she thinks the trees and sky are all hers".  Trying to explain to a 3 year old that a 1 year old doesn't really understand ownership and thinks everything is hers to enjoy and look at and play with, is oddly frustrating.  So after trying for some time, we started singing play school songs instead - very thankful for Justine's CD being in our car!

Miss M has, until recently, never really been one to play imaginary games or play.  A new game this week has been 'library / pet store'.  In this game (invented by Miss M) Miss M asks us what book we would like to borrow from the library / or what pet we would like.  We are not allowed to say one already done (!) and then she magically finds it for us.  Its quite fun, but gets very hard when you're into the second hour and have asked for a book on everything you have knowledge of existing, or have asked for a pet of every animal you can think of.

It did highlight one thing to me, Miss M's knowledge of animals is a lot more than I gave her credit for.  For most of the animals I asked for, she could tell me where they would live and what they ate.   Kids really are sponges for information.

Thanks for reading.  Hope you didn't get too squeamish with all the poo talk - that's toddlers for you!
Cheers!

Baby birds, flour, and pretend bones!

Today was another fun day of random stuff! While playing ball with the dog in the back yard we discovered that Miss F (18 months old) now knows "up" and "down".  Had a great time watching her point up and down as we threw the ball.

Miss M (3.5yrs) loves anything oceanic the moment, but she hates colouring in pictures, she will draw, but not colour in something already drawn.  So to encourage this a little, the other day, my wonderful wife made some fish and seaweed and other sea creatures for the girls to colour in.  They got blue tacked to some blue card.  Now the daily game is to move them around as if they are swimming and moving.  In true aspie style Miss M puts them all back in exactly the same place after she's finished playing with them.  Miss F's fun is to randomly move them throughout the day just to see if her older sister notices!

The playdoh came out today - because I couldn't think of anything else to do(and we love playdoh)! I made some little balls and Miss M made a nest and put the balls inside, then asked me to make a bird.  She played 'house' with the bird and pretended the eggs were hatching.  Then she wanted to know what baby birds eat "do baby birds eat nutrigrain?".  Nope, they don't.  So we found a you tube video of a nest with eggs. It was a time lapse over a week or so.  It was amazing to watch the little birds grow more feathers and the finally learn to fly.  We talked about the mummy bird feeding the baby birds chewed up worms and insects. So Miss M made some playdoh worms for her mummy bird to feed her babies.

While I cleaned the kitchen the girls spent an hour crawling around the house with 'bones' (wooden spoons - shhhh don't tell my wife!) in their mouths pretending to be dogs.  It was fantastic! An entire hour of no fighting.  The (real) dogs were a bit put out though, as they got kicked off their beds.  

Snitzels for dinner tonight.  In our house that means drawing pictures and rolling around in flour that has been thrown on the floor from my flour bowl when my back was briefly turned (and i 'don't see').  Tonight the girls ended up painting each other and my legs white with flour while i cooked. That counts as  home ec / food and nutrition education right? 

Thanks for tuning in.  I'm off to clean the kitchen - again! 😀

Welcome to us

Deciding to homeschool our, now, 3.5 year old was one of the easier parenting decisions we've made so far.  Miss M is on the autism spectrum, she is high functioning, and highly intelligent, but struggles with changes in activities that aren't on her own terms, and struggles to understand many subtle, and some not so subtle, non verbal communication.  This often makes getting along with other kids hard for her.   So homeschooling it is, until we feel it doesn't work, then we'll try something else.

The aim of this blog is not to convince you that homeschooling is the bees knees, you can make your mind up all on your own.  It is not aimed at converting the haters or disbelievers.  But perhaps it might help some almost homeschoolers decide whether or not it is for them.  It might help our friends and families to better understand what we do.  And, I'm hoping, it will be a good reminder and a positive reinforcement for me on my 'doubting' days or frustrated days.  It is also not to show that we are amazing and have endless energy, we don't.  We have a constantly messy house, and sit and watch the tv just as much as the next person, the act of sitting and taking time out is under rated.

Because of how hard it can be to move Miss M from one activity to another we have gravitated towards the 'unschooling' approach to homeschooling.  Basically it means she chooses what and when and how she learns.  We are merely the facilitators, and our job is simply to recognise interest and opportunity and combine the two where possible.  Otherwise Miss M will largely be left to her own devices and interests.   For more details on unschooling see http://www.holtgws.com/whatisunschoolin.html

So what does our day look like? None of them look the same.

Yesterday started with Miss M sitting on the couch with the iPad watching YouTube videos of scuba divers exploring a coral reef.  She loves anything oceanic at the moment.  Fish, octopuses, jelly fish, sharks, anemones, sea urchins, you name it, she will know what it is and love it instantly.

Over breakfast we had a conversation (carried over from bedtime the night before) about water.  Miss M wanted to know what it was made of. We talked about H2O and what that meant (in my basic-vague-memory-of-high-school-chemistry-way).  That went on to antartica and what ice was made of and how it was made.  We looked at the ice in the freezer (she didn't want to touch it - it was too cold and wet!).

Then off to gymnastics for some jumping, balancing and tumbling.

We found a necklace that Nanna had forgotten last time she stayed here.  Miss M wanted to know why people forget things - but off course she had never forgotten anything, ever! She liked the idea of having a full head and getting distracted by something new, and then sometimes forgetting something seen as less important.  (seems to be what I do daily anyway!)

Baking some cookies with "mumma" (my wife) is always a favourite activity.  Miss M and Miss F (18months old) LOVE to help baking.  They clean anything with cake/cookie mix completely! They both love to watch the kitchen aid go around and around and help choose the cookie cutter shapes.

While the baby slept, I sat down with a cuppa and my knitting - Miss M 'helped' by unravelling all the wool.  We talked about how much wool was in a ball and how far it could go (all the way to the moon and back!).  Which led us talking about space and Miss M decided she would love to go into space one day and bounce on the moon like ben and holly did (abc4kids).  She wanted to know what was in space - "stars, planets, moons".  What are stars?  Ok (thanks google) - they are balls of gas, like our sun, really hot, and REALLY far away.  WOW!

Once Miss F woke up we fed the goldfish in the pond.  Looking at how some are bigger than others, and some are still 'babies', some have more white on them than others.  It was fun putting our hands in and letting them nibble our fingers.  We watched them swim and dive and duck away when we were loud or moved suddenly.  Miss M noticed that our lilly plant has a flower and a bud.

Then mumma went off to personal training - well that started a whole conversation about why? why? why? why?  We talked about how moving your body was important, and how muscles like to move.  How some people like to go for walks, or rides, or swim, or do gymnastics for exercise.  How as we become adults sometimes it feels good and relaxes us to go and do some movement / exercise.

Thanks for reading, sorry I'm a bit long winded today.  We had a busy day of random conversations yesterday! Today was quieter.  I cleaned the house and Miss M and F played on the iPads or in the back yard.

Bring on more interesting conversations and lots more google searching for answers!

😀