Homeschooling 101

I must admit this has been a journey of learning *for how I teach* over the last  (almost) three years.
Before then it was pretty easy. I did a basic preschool plan for our toddlers and since our older two girls with Down syndrome were newly adopted we also included them in the preschool program since they were both new to the English language.
It worked.
Before we even adopted our four kids with Down syndrome we had our four older children who were good students and were able to absorb things easily so homeschooling them was not a challenge. Some of them choose the public school route and that worked out ok too. All in all they did not have any trouble learning or understanding things that they saw/heard/watched. They did not have behavioral issues or attention issues or learning issues that got in the way. No vision issues, or issues with auditory process, it was just... easy.
Things changed almost three years ago when we adopted our daughter back in 2016. While our kids with Down syndrome had learned to sit down and were able to focus on their work, our newest had zero concept of being calm and working. She has struggled with focus and because of this have distracted our kids who were once very easy to work with.
Our daughter, now 7,  has Speech Delays, FASD and ADHD (though her ADHD is pretty mild and does not require anything more than reminders and redirection) has grown by leaps and bounds from where she use to be. She is still has delays but she is learning and growing and is able to work with the other kids without any issues.
I have had to relearn how to teach the kids because what worked for our four kids with Down syndrome has not worked for our child with FASD/ADHD.
We are all learning and growing.
I had to take a step back, find school work that was fun and exciting, add in more learning games and wait. It was HARD. I have always been pretty driven when it comes to teaching however taking a step back has been SO good for us. Our kids are actively asking to do school work. We have decided mornings are NOT what works for our family. We tried but have found the best time for us to do school work is after the kids have had a morning of fun and playing and being outside and riding bikes and jumping on the trampoline and things like that. We found that the best time for us to get started is around 2pm and work until dinner time. (around 6pm). It also works best because then my husband is home from work and can help out with keeping some kids busy if I need to work 1:1 with some of the kids.
We are learning every day, not just the kids but me. I am learning new ways to teach and what works best with our kids. I love watching them grow and learn. Sometimes I will teach them something and I hope they have it, but it isnt until we are in that moment when we are somewhere else and they look up and say something like, "That is King Tut!!! We learned about him when we were learning about Africa!!" or when they randomly write a word that I didnt know they could spell, or when they are building with blocks and one suddenly says, "This is a doctor's office, they do blood draws." and I say, "Do you know who does blood draws?" and they reply, "A phlebotomist." and it is all I can do not to fall over with shock and surprise, sometimes the kids really surprise me in all that they are learning. I could not be more proud of them!

 Harvesting potatoes

 first time doing word searches

 cutting practice

 Math worksheet - Rod and Staff

 Draw Write Now Handwriting Program

 Our 18 year old daughter was adopted at the age of 13. She came to us speaking another language and only knowing a little bit of English. ASL has been really easy for her but formulating sentences has been harder because she mixes up the order of how we say things in English. She has been working with this book called “Write a Super Sentence” from Evan-Moor, and she is loving it!!

Our daughter struggles with vision beyond what glasses can fix. We do vision therapy exercises to help. She was so proud of herself for being able to do this word search!

Draw Write Now program! Look at those bunnies she drew!!

Holiday Crafts

Our daughter Ellie came home from Latvia at the age of 13. She had never been to school before, could not read, write, or even talk. She had no idea what a fork or knife was or how to use one. She has come SO far!! She wrote this from her Draw Write Now handwriting program!!

Discovering pulleys at the Science Museum

Baking cookies with her American Heritage Troop to raise money for presents for kids in need.

Physical Therapy

Filling Shoe Boxes with their American Heritage Girl troop

Folding bags to be put inside the newspaper for Walk and Knock food drive

Spot It- to work on processing speed, memory, recall, and vision

Equipping Minds program - so amazing!!

Harvests from the garden, baby carrots, potatoes, and onions

Badge Award Night

Fall observation - talking about the leaves and why they fall and how much fun it is to jump in them! 

Learning locations of places on a map

2019-2020 School Year Starts

The summer was beautiful and we enjoyed every minute of it!
We are now back into the swing of school and the kids are missing the long days of playing outside all day.
Where we live it rains SO much that we let the kids have an extended summer and made the first official day of school the First day of Fall. Here it rains almost for three seasons, Fall, Winter, and Spring so you have to enjoy the sun while you can.
I am currently doing assessments and writing the kids IEP (individual education plan). For our oldest girls the biggest focus will be reading and understanding what they have read. They will still work in other subjects but the main focus will be reading with understanding and building communication skills.
We are doing Simply Classic  by Memoria Press for several of the kids but other kids need something different.. 
Our youngest little guy who just turned 8 is one of our strongest reading with reading skills at a 2nd grade level. While our seven year old little girl is one of our weakest readers. However, our 7 year old loves math and is doing pretty good in it. 
This year we had planned on just doing Simply Classic. We actually LOVE the program. However, with kids who are all over the place in skills, doing one set curriculum does not really work. For example, some kids have great handwriting but struggle with reading, while others have great reading skills but struggle with handwriting. Some are great in math, and others struggle. So we decided to do a mix of things.
For those struggling with reading we are doing Teach your Child to read in 100 Easy Lessons.
Our our oldest girls we are mostly sticking to So Happy to Learn by Mrs. Brown .  They will sit in during the History/Social Studies/Science lessons with the younger four.  All the kids despite their ages are academically between K-2nd grade so it isn't that big of a gap and they can always learn things together.
We are doing Abeka for Science, Social Studies, and History.  We will use Simply Classic for Music, Art, Literature, and a few other subjects.
We are also doing Equipping Minds. We have a few other things we plug in here and there depending on the need of the child. Some kids are working hard on building the finger strength and coordination and have scissor skills as one of their goals. So for our crew there really is no one size fits all.
Here are a few pictures we have taken so far.

He is doing so good with reading that the clip it cards in the video were mostly just to work on fine motor skills.