Review Preview

I enjoy connecting families with resources. I get a kick from recommending a resource that meets a need when the family was not aware of that resource. I tend to find that school-building school families of children in special education often supplement at home on nights and weekends, purchasing products from special-needs catalogs and suppliers, families whom I consider to be part-time homeschoolers, but are generally clueless regarding products marketed to homeschoolers. I was clueless until I began full-time homeschooling. And I'm learning that a lot of homeschoolers don't know the resources for specialized education that are marketed to the school-building school community.

With the idea of connecting families to resources, I have several reviews in various stages of draft-mode that will be published in coming days or weeks.

I never know if I'll have just one or two or if I'll have many review items. I'm often surprised by a package in the mail. FYI: Currently, I have quite a few review items in my pending box.

The third voyage of The Old Schoolhouse's Homeschool Crew of product and resource reviewers has officially set sail with two reviews up and more in the works. This year, the Crew has twice as many reviewers, so I will likely receive fewer products than I did in previous years. Be sure to check the main Homeschool Crew blog for all of the product reviews. Some of my Crewmates have been assigned to products that I will not be reviewing.

My list of TOS Homeschool Crew reviews completed or in process is located in the right-hand side bar of my blog. (Links to reviews of the past two years are also in the right-hand side bar; simply scroll down to see them.) At this point in our new season of reviewing, I know that I will be reviewing Math Essentials, PyraMath, and Vocabulary Cartoons. The PyraMath game arrived over a week ago and I am previewing it at this point. I see some opportunities to adapt this one for a child with autism.

Travel, baseball, and illness (double ear infection, two antibiotics, with one of them upsetting my tummy bigtime) have me behind my own schedule for completing some non-TOS reviews. I have at least one more baseball weekend and a little more travel coming up.

These resources are in my current review pile:

Did you know that Paula Kluth's, "You're Going to Love this Kid!: Teaching Students with Autism in the Inclusive Classroom" has been published in a second edition?! I'm part of the way through this one.

I'm part of the way through this one, too: Teaching How to Learn in a What-to-Learn Culture by Kathleen R. Hopkins.

This one, which I've just begun, is going to be really interesting, I think: Education Nation: Six Leading Edges of Innovation in our Schools by Milton Chen, with a forward by George Lucas. I saw the forward and thought, "the 'Star Wars' George Lucas???" Yes, that one.

Diane Craft sent me a couple of resources. If you have a child with learning challenges or developmental delays and you've not heard of Diane Craft, I urge you to take a peek at her web site. One of my TOS Crewmates introduced me to her web site. I have the audio CD, "The Biology of Behavior," and Brain Integration Therapy Manual, 2010 Edition.

Hopefully, now that we're home for several weeks, I can begin to cook from The Autism Cookbook. The cookbook is beautiful; the reviews, notsomuch. Tis time to try some of the recipes at my house.

I have eight new titles coming from Wiley and/or Jossey-Bass that look exciting for those of us who work with and teach students. Book topics include two books about internet safety, grammar, literacy, pre-algebra, RTI, graphic organizers, and leadership coaching.

I'm also waiting for a couple of resources to help young ladies learn about their menstrual periods, resources that I hope are autism friendly.

I have to hit the road with my homeschooler to visit our "autism" consultant, and as we continue our developmental remediation journey, I hope to post more about that. I don't want this blog to be one review after another. I want this blog to be a place of encouragement as well as a source of information.