The Art of Messy

The ArtisTree has been transformed, uprooted, and moved to The Art of Messy. New start. New beginnings. See you there!

Saturday Fun

What can occupy children for hours? Dry erase markers on the windows! In a lion suit.That definitely helps. 

And they got along. :)

Progress in VT

We are only a couple of months into Vision Therapy with Wyatt and I think it is safe to say we have progressed. We still have a couple of exercises that have proved challenging for him, but for the most part we have moved on to new exercises leaving the old ones behind. One of the biggest accomplishments was a recent one. JUMPING JACKS!

They seemed impossible for him. He would jump and flail his arms at different speeds, completely inconsistent. It took about a month, but this week he conquered it!

What seems so easy to do, is difficult for him. Processing space and objects around him has been a hurdle that we didn't see coming. But he can do jumping jacks now! We have also reintroduced reading and writing into our school time! And he actually volunteers to read to us! I am so proud of him!

Christmas | 2015

Christmas this year was simply WONDERFUL! What a difference staying home makes! This year we Nick got off at 2 pm the earliest EVER, we went to my mom and dads, went to Christmas Eve service {which was just a mile down the road} and went back to my parents to do gifts with the kids. Here are the kids all dressed and ready to go:

Christmas Eve the kids opened Christmas Jammies and a Christmas movie from us at my mom and dads. It happened to make it easier when it was late and we were going home {around the corner right behind them}. We decided this year to sleep under the tree. It was a lot of fun and a great idea, but, an air mattress is a must for next year. We have one, we were just too lazy to air it up. Here Wyatt is waiting for sis to get up.

Nick spent a lot of time prior to Christmas fixing up my old doll house for Josie for her Christmas present. We also furnished it with new room sets. 

Wyatt wanted a globe SO bad. He is into ALL things S C I E N C E ! So, he got some geology, chemistry, and geography related gifts. He was happy. 

After opening up prezzies we got dressed, I made breakfast, and relaxed until my family showed up for dinner. We of course had to make a cake for Jesus, after all we were celebrating His birthday! Of course this is a picture of it before I accidentally unknowingly marred it while trying to take my bread out of the bread-maker pan. Yeah, don't ask.

What a merry Christmas we had!

Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift! 2 Corinthians 9:15

Challenges We Face

I think I have mentioned before that we have been struggling in our homeschooling. More like battling. It has gotten a little better. We have switched to doing school only three times a week by doing every other day. The breaks in between have seemed to help.

We have experienced a change in Wyatt since last year. He went from loving school, really liking all areas in addition to those he loved. This year, not so much.

He was giving up, quitting, throwing huge fits, getting angry, extremely frustrated, and didn't even want to sit to begin. His feelings started with reading and writing, then soon blanketed everything. I noticed that he wasn't reading or writing as well as he had last year and couldn't figure out why. I felt he was being lazy, and  blowing it off because he just simply didn't  want to do the work.

One day I saw an article pop up in my newsfeed on facebook about the signs of dyslexia. After reading each with affirmation I felt like maybe he isn't being lazy, he is struggling and showing real frustration! I talked to a teacher friend about it and she recommended going to see an eye doctor.

Of course I had to mark the occasion of his first eye doctor visit with some pictures!

Turns out his eye sight is fine! Yay! No glasses! But, the downside, his eyes aren't working together and processing what he sees right. So, onto a series of standardized testing with a vision therapist.

Yesterday I had a consult with our eye doctor and vision therapist. Wyatt scored below age level on most and some he scored so low they couldn't actually score him. After seeing the results and what they meant, I realize now how much he must be struggling! No wonder he hates reading and writing. He has been concentrating all his energy on trying to decipher what he is seeing that he isn't retaining the information he gathers. To put it more plainly, he is dyslexic. But, that can be overcome and corrected with vision therapy.

We go again next Friday and will continue, God willing, each week for six to nine months. We will know today what or if our insurance will cover this. My hope is God will provide this for him.

Yesterday, after I got back from the consult I looked up what it is like to have dyslexia. I was humbled to the point of tears. I watched these two videos {here}, and after, felt the worst mom in the entire world. Especially after the last video where the "teacher" is telling his "students", "Come on! This is easy!"

 I was that teacher! "Come on Wyatt! That word is easy! You did it last year, you can do it again!" "I can't! I can't do it! It's too hard!"  "You aren't giving me your best. You're not trying! Don't quit!"

Yeah. I cried.

While I can't take it back. I hugged my son with all I had after watching that and told him how sorry I was that I pushed him while he was struggling. He was so gracious and said, "It's okay mom." Love that  boy! Sometimes I think there is much we can learn from our children, they handle life better than us!

If your child is struggling in school. Get their eyes checked and don't wait! It may not be their eye sight that is the problem. There are 22 total processes that your eyes do to see and comprehend. If one of those are not working then you will experience problems "seeing".