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".

Family Fun Night!

Had a lot of fun last night! My mom and dad came over for dinner, we frosted sugar cookies, did face painting, gorged on candy, and played Aggravation. No, we didn't dress up, or go trick or treating. We are not sure where we stand  on Halloween at this time.We see both sides. So until we know for sure, we will remain flexible.

I splurged and got a 200+ piece bag of candy {we NEVER have candy}, my mom made a pumpkin desert and cookies for us to frost. So we had our sweet tooth satisfied for sure!

The kids had a great time. It was Wyatt's first time playing Aggravation, and he won! He wanted a shark painted on his face, and a piranha, and then he wanted an anchor on his hand, then a ship. I of course had to add the mom in heart "tattoo". I did the best I could!

I used milk, cornstarch, and food coloring for the paint. Josie's was a little runny.

At any rate, we all had a wonderful night. It was full of fun!

Pumpkin Time!

We carved one pumpkin this year to say we did it and painted the rest. It worked out good that way since Josie didn't want anything to do with the pumpkin guts, but she LOVED painting hers.

  

 

Annnnd... Just for fun...

 

Nick tried roasting the pumpkins seeds, but they got a little overdone. But that's okay, it was cool that he tried! This is probably the extent of our observance of Halloween, well, I plan on buying a bunch of clearance candy too. We're on the fence when it comes to doing Halloween. We can see the good and the bad, but we are good just doing our own thing.

What a Beautiful October Day!

It is gorgeous out!! So why am I not out there right now? Well, I'm beat. We raked. I mulched. We stained. We walked. Now, it is break time. 

The kids had a lot of fun with the leaves. The picture I got of them together, was the only one without them fighting. Yeah, that's real life right?

Happy Fall Y'all!

School House Rock

We are in our second week. I feel good about our layout. The new house has a perfect set up and it is working out great.

Now if we can only get our young student in the groove. Whew... This was a rough week. Today we may have had a break through. All week I have felt like a broken record: " The more you practice the easier it will be." Today I think it may have clicked! Yay!

Earlier today this is how we started. This is Wyatts cursive "A".

 

After a big battle and a talk...a long talk... He came back to the table with a whole new attitude. And this is what his "A" looked like then. 

 

So, tomorrow we will review his writing then Monday, back to business. Hopefully the ground we broke will stick.

Blast from the Past

I came across one of those weird, "I'm not sure why I'm saving these." type things today. Wonder what it was? Oh, you know, just my baby teeth I have lost over the years. Yep. I have them all. My mom saved them. Some of them are kind of endearing, with what I wrote on the outside of the envelopes. I figured I would archive these on here, that way I won't feel so guilty when I throw them away. I mean really, what will I ever do with them?

My first tooth was lost in 1988. Awwwweeee... I know I was asking for lots of money for these teeth of mine, but I think I got a dollar for every tooth.

Funny thing is my mom saved all our teeth. Wyatt has lost two, and I lost them both! Oh well, we don't do the tooth fairy anyway.

First Day of 1st Grade

We started school finally on Monday. I was hoping to stay as close to the local schools schedule as possible. I have this goal this year to not take advantage of our flexibility with homeschooling like I did last year. We went into July until I finally said enough. We only had a couple weeks left to do anyway.

This year will be easier with Nicks new job. He works M-F 7-4. None of that open/close business anymore! And with him not having his days off during the school week we will have less distractions. When daddy is home, kids want to play.

So far we are doing a lot of review. Which is good, because I can tell we are a little rusty in some areas. One thing I am not sure about is everything is done in cursive this year. I didn't know it was going to be that way when I bought his curriculum, but he actually is doing well with it.

Today he is full of funnies. I guess it started off that way when he got dressed: Blue plaid shorts, long-john shirt, green TMNT hoodie, and of course a blue striped tie. During school today he says to me, "Did you know 5's are girls. So are 6's. They look like they are having babies."

Then he asks me later, "Can we go running today?" Like we run? "Because I'm an experienced runner." Ohhhh. Got it!

I'm hoping this year we will keep a good momentum and routine. I'm hoping!

                                                     Favorite Things:

• Science
• Red and Black
• Spaghetti
• Soccer and Baseball
• Monkies

Wyatt wants to be a scientist!