A vitamin filled day

One of our main goals during our homeschooling adventure was to eventually remove JD from his ADHD medication all together. Another reason was added to our list Friday when I saw the septic tank full of “undigested” Concerta capsules. The medicine left though the holes on either end but the capsule itself was intact. I reduced his medication dosage by half this same time last year and his behavior was acceptable at home during our homeschool time. Of course there were still many distractions and “moments” but I deal with them better in our setting verses the public school experience with one teacher and 25 other bodies stuck in room all day. All the research over the last couple of days regarding holistic ADHD treatments has paid off. Search after search led me to question if JD was vitamin deficient. I think that’s the main part of the problem because Sunday, 13 February was the first day we gave JD a Flintstone’s multi-vitamin with iron and a 1000 mg fish oil capsule instead of his Concerta medication that he has taken since Kindergarten. It has now been 9 days since his last Concerta pill and JD doesn’t even miss it. Which is thrilling to me since it is a controlled substance and because I’m worried about him becoming addicted to it and others like it. JD behaved within “normal” and acceptable limits while in Sunday school and church yesterday. Besides the army guy toys that were dug out of some deep dark pocket while in the church service. (Smile)

We started out the morning with the vitamin and the fish oil. I volunteered to take one of JD’s very first (First Baptist Church daycare) teachers to a medical appointment. So I left JD with specific instructions to work on. He was under the supervision of Daniel, Sarah, and a timer while I was away for 2 ½ hours.

First I set the stove alarm for thirty minutes so he could read his book Hoot. When that alarm buzzed he was to push a specific button 10 times for a 10 minute break before the dreaded writing lesson. It was a pre-printed page that listed 10 reasons why he loves his daddy and me. I knew he would read and take a break, but my outlook on the writing assignment was bleak at best.

When I got home I found the language arts writing lesson on the kitchen table. I was amazed! It was neat. It had complete sentences. It was genuine answers. And it was completed! (You can click on the picture to enlarge it and print it.) I’m told by Sarah and Daniel that he read for thirty minutes, turned off the alarm, and sat down at the table without a break to complete the writing assignment. They told him he gets a ten minute break but he opted out of it. I’m so proud of him. Another goal this year was to build up a self-sufficient, self-motivated, and independent working student. I think we’re on our way.

After a short lunch break we work on the math lesson. It was about ratios. It was problems like 1 foot equals 12 inches, so 2 feet equals 24 inches. Other ways ratios are used is converting miles per hour problems and prices for only one item verses multiple items. It was fairly easy and the vitamins were still working. As a matter of fact I don’t see a difference from his 36 mg pill to the vitamin and fish oil. (smile)

We kind of worked backwards today. The last thing we did was our devotion. The title was “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” Of course that who is God. The devotion was about a boy who hung out with another boy who taught him about computer stuff. By the both getting to know one another they learned from one another. Proverbs 9:10 says, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” In other words if you know God you know the one who is always right. If you only know of God what others say about God, you have limited knowledge of God and can’t know what’s right and wrong. Get to know God through his word and gain the knowledge needed to result in understanding.

It was a good school day and I'm proud of my independent working student.  That means I reward him with dropping science and social studies. 

Archeology adventure

I did not get a chance to research ADHD medicine alternatives last night because instead I was researching all I could about septic tanks. Yep, ours went on the blink. (Ok it was full.) Who would have thought that after nine years it would need to be pumped? Yep, you saw correctly…nine years of “stuff” backed up.

Second tank with the lid

So today we stood outside and watched the septic guy from 10:30 to 3pm. He was very busy digging here and there all around our backyard. I even joked about him digging a garden plot for us. The company promised a $175 fee if they didn’t have to dig or $190 if they did have to dig. Problem #1 they sent a AAA tow truck driver to empty my septic tank. What? (Apparently he took a septic tank class and knows what he’s doing.) He opened up our concrete lid and emptied the tank. Boom $175. **Fleeting thought… there’s only liquid getting sucked up. He said, “There must be another tank for solids.” (Dig, dig, dig.) He found it about two feet from the concrete liquid tank. The tow truck driver, Daniel, and I had to lift and pull to remove the concrete lid. Then he said, “That’s weird…that’s connected to the liquid tank.” I think his first clue was the fact that the tank was empty. The next clue might have been all the sunlight shining in from the first tank. He tried to snake a possible clog from the second tank into the pipes from the house but he kept hitting something. **Another fleeting thought…where do the solids go? He then said, “There must be a solids tank around here somewhere.” He had a long metal pole that he spiked into the ground to touch the pipes. This went on for about forty five minutes. He was trying to figure out what angle the pipes bent at. Surely there’s a clog there. That led to the discovery of the third tank. (Dig, dig, dig.) **Um, is this still going to be around $175? Because I don’t want to get hit with a bill for $1000. Yep, still $175. Oh, okay, dig away. Now comes the completely gross part.

The solids tank.  Yuck!

Our tank was jammed to the roof of the concrete lid. It was all dried out like hard clay. Once he broke though that it got a bit easier. But he reversed the vacuum and blew water into our tank to mix up the “stuff.” He had to do this six times. There was so much “stuff” in our tank that a gear on his truck broke doing all that heavy work. His boss called asking where he was and he made the comment that “This is the worst tank I’ve ever seen.” Among the different articles found in our tank was: Q-tips, candy wrappers, disposable razors, material, garbage bag, pills (JD’s unusable ADHD meds), hairballs, baby wipes, cigar wrappers, and tooth paste tops. I know this because I started a written list. That’s all we could see and identify.



JD was off his medications again today. That was fun watching him run around three huge open holes that he could possibly fall into. He was a wild child out there. (Try dressing up Mowglie from the Jungle Book and passing him off as a homeschooled child.) (You get the visual right?) I told the tow truck driver that he was homeschooled. It wouldn’t surprise me if social services showed up here very soon. (Smile.) Then when all these strange objects popped up in the tank I would ask JD, “Do you flush razors (or candy, etc)?” His response was, “Why do you see that down there?” (Cheshire cat grin.) I offered him a free pass to tell me what he’s flushed before but the only response I got was, “Why what did you find?” (Funny boy…you give me laughter.) I told the tow truck driver, “It would surprise me to find a couple of G.I. Joes floating around in here.

Total time spent on our archeology adventure: 4 ½ hours

Total cost: $185

The discovery that the rubbery case of JD’s medications don’t completely dissolve (even in bacteria and acid.): Priceless

A hyper and unfocused day

JD has not swallowed any Concerta or Zertec in 5 days. He was so quiet while we were sick in bed I just didn’t give him any of his medications. So we’ll see how our school day goes today. Because we spent four days in bed recuperating from a bug we only did a half day today.

The devotion today was called A Snake in the Grass. It was a modern day story of the conversation between Eve and Satan. The serpent told the woman in the story “God doesn’t want you eating this fruit because he wants to control you, but I think you’re old enough to make those decisions yourself.” She of course caved in and ate the fruit. The serpent told her at the end of the story “Let me show you some designer fig leaves that I can sell you real cheap.” She not only took a piece of fruit from the serpent, she took something that belonged to God…the power to decide good and evil.

We tackled math next. It was about figuring out rates. The lesson itself wasn’t terribly difficult but it usually takes both of us to figure out the processes/formulas and answers. It gave us a formula of “I = P x R x T” (interest = principal x rate x time). This is real world stuff so I really wanted JD to understand the concept. If he deposits $500 in the bank and they promise him a certain percentage in interest what will be in his account in five years. So some of the questions would have question marks for the missing value and our job was to figure it out. (Grr! Frustrating.) Then add the completely unfocused child sitting next to me. Usually when I get frustrated with JD and his self-distracting methods I want to throw something. Today I wanted to throw the chair through the window next to us. So after our lesson we huddled together and called for a MUCH needed break. We came together after the allotted time and tackled the quiz. We managed a 70% on the quiz. (Hopefully those kinds of questions won’t be on the assessment.)

Speaking of the assessment. I ordered his assessment 28 Jan. His test week will be in May. I can’t remember if it is the 16-20 May or 23-27 May. Anyway it’s on order.

I sent Jeff an email that said something along the lines of “What was I thinking!? Trying to do math without medications…” After the “suck-o-meter” math lesson JD asked for a T4L language arts lesson. I was not even going to try to have him write today. So I allowed him to do a “Think Aloud” fictional story. He likes them and I do too. It asks him questions to consider while reading and asks him to answer question on the screen. This lesson was not officially scored.

According to Fox News today “an estimated 1.5 million children are home schooled and that number's growing. In the span of eight years, home schooling has grown nationally by almost 75 percent.”

- 36 percent of home schooled children stay at home for religious reasons.
- 21 percent don't like the environment in traditional schools.
- 17 percent are home schooled because their parents are dissatisfied with the academic instruction that’s available to them in traditional schools.
We of course pulled JD out because the school system was failing him, not him failing them. He needed the one-on-one interaction and we all three love homeschooling.

**Note to self...before breathing, peeing, or eating...research ADHD medication alternatives!

Four days of sickness

JD and I started feeling pretty bad on Saturday night.  By Sunday morning we were both stuck in bed.  Jeff went onto church and JD and I suffered in my big bed. 

We quarantined ourselves for a couple of days.  I started feeling better by Tuesday but JD is still down with the bug. 

I guess it's just one of those bugs that needs to run it's course. 

Here's a picture of the gruesome twosome and our Wi-Fi experience. 

Friday, 4 February, 2011

Today was field trip/technology day. 

The day started out by me getting ready for our field trip to Hobby Lobby for a magnetic kit when suddenly my new computer showed up. 

A couple of days ago Jeff ordered me a Dell Inspiron Duo for our homeschool.  Since it was a tablet I thought I could get downloadable applications like a 3G cell phone.  (I was wrong.)  I spent about an hour turning it on, hooking up the Wi-Fi, and checking out the basics of this new toy. 

JD and I finally packed up and got the magnetic kit.  Next stop...the mall.  I spent my Christmas card to JC Penny's and Bath and Body Works.  By the time we got home from our shopping, Jeff called wanting to know where we were going to eat for Family Night.  We ate out, drove home, and explored the new computer. 

The worst part of the day was...I gave into the worldly ways and it pulled me away from my daily bible reading. 

The dreaded writing lesson

It was a good day until the dreaded writing lesson.

The devotion today was about Cola company slogans. The one for Pepsi is “Gotta have it!” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the youth say, “I gotta have that or this…” That’s exactly what God meant by the ten commandment of “Do not covet.” God values contentment. God never wants and he wants us to be content with what he gives us. That way we can reflect what God is like.

The math lesson was fairly easy. It required me to write things down to keep them straight but JD breezed right through using only his mind. It was still about proportions and unit rates. It also has a missing value that we had to figure out. Most of it was fining what value was best. Like: 3 liters of grape juice for $4.29 or 2 liters of grape juice for $3.02. The 3 liter bottle was the best value by one penny. JD was amazed he scored a 100% on the quiz. (He always has us cross our fingers…100%’s get high fives!)

For science today we continued with magnetic terms. We learned about solenoid coils, hard and soft ferromagnetic material (I know right?), magnetic domains, and magnetic induction. We‘ve been reading about it but I think there‘s a field trip in order here. Off to Hobby Lobby for a magnetic kit. I just can’t get my mind around the uses for magnets.

We did not do social studies today.

I cleaned my client’s house today. I’m down to only one day a week now. JD read his book Hoot for the first thirty minutes. Then he moved onto the AWANA/language arts lesson. Today in the AWANA book it wanted JD to write a letter to a missionary. (Bet you can’t guess what his response was.) Unfortunately, challenge 4:3 was not completed today. We sat together earlier in the day and looked up an AWANA missionary from North Carolina. This young family of two were impressive. David started in Sparks and received a Citation award in 2003. The Citation Award is the highest achievement afforded by Awana. It is awarded only to high-school seniors and adults who have completed 10 of the third-through 12th-grade handbooks or studies, which involves memorizing approximately 625 verses and includes all associated studies and activities. So I thought this would be an incentive for JD to get to know someone else who excelled in memorizing verses. We drafted an idea letter at home with all the required fields as taught in T4L. It had the heading, salutation, body, closing, and signature area. He introduced himself, told David he was a home school student and also in AWANAs. Then he asked David, “Can you offer any advice for having “fun” in AWANAs?“ All JD had to do while I cleaned was to write completed sentences from our ideas. JD did not want to write the letter today and kept breaking his pencil led, tearing his paper erasing, and just stalling. I had him count the number of lines on his paper. There were 27. I said, “If you don’t want to write the letter today then you need to write 27 times, “I do not want to write this paper.” Do you know he was stubborn enough to do it? AND it only took him 20 minutes.

A quiet productive day

Today JD woke up on his own and asked if that made me happy. I said, “Yes, since I was in such pain last night I was hoping for an easy day.” I took one Midrin in the morning and told JD that if he was the cause for my headache coming back today he would be writing a page out of the bible. That kept him calm, quiet, and obedient all day. Though he had a hard time staying focused.

The devotion today gave tabloid headlines like "Alien space ship found in New Mexico" (it was a four seat plane from Mexico) and "baby born with a treasure map on its back" (it was a birthmark.) The devotion went on to say people believe this stuff and the writers embellish these types of stories to get someone to buy the magazine. God doesn’t like stretching the truth, telling white lies, or lying at all. Lying can be destructive, separates us from God and can erode our character and destroy our reputation.

The AWANA book today had JD recite all 66 books of the bible for challenge 4:1. He learned them in book one, refreshed in book two, and now again in book three. He’s got such a good memory. Actually, we both did pretty good until we hit the minor prophets. Then we started challenge 4:2 where he’s learning God is faithful. He memorized 1 Corinthians 1:9.

The math lesson today was more on proportions except this time there was a missing value and we had to figure out how to find that missing value on the other side. They showed us two ways to get the answer. JD didn’t really need any other way except to figure out what they did to make 5 get to 15 and he did the same to either the top or the bottom. He scored a 100% on the quiz.

JD pushed out another lesson in Greek and Latin root words and did the corresponding quiz. He scored an 83%. Then, he tackled two quizzes on suffixes. He scored a 75% on one quiz and a 100% on the other.

In science today JD and I learned about electromagnetism. That’s a huge word and amazingly I spelled it correct the first time. We learned about magnetic fields, electric currents, electric charges, electrons, and many other glossary words. We also learned about Benjamin Franklin’s role, Hans Christian Oersted’s role, and Andre-Marie Ampere’s role in electromagnetism discoveries. The unit of electrical current, the amp, is named after Ampere.

Today for social studies we used T4L. We went into the tab called Rome since JD is always asking about Roman leaders and traditions. We stopped under Origins of Christianity. That was an extremely easy lesson for JD. It was all about Jesus and the 30 some odd years he lived. He scored a 100% on the quiz.

Today I only had JD read for 25 minutes because he listened the “first time.“ He’s still reading the book called Hoot today.