Merry Christmas!

It's a BOY! Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. Luke 2:11 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Isaiah 9:6 MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Merry Christmas Musings and Random Thoughts:

I enjoyed my morning coffee from a Christmas cup that belonged to my mother-in-law. I remember how she loved Christmas, how she loved family, how she enjoyed serving December meals in her Christmas dishes. We lost her too soon. My kids didn't get to meet her. She had the most marvelous tradition of decorating the whole house, top to bottom, inside and out, at Christmastime.

Christmas always meant lots of sweets. My mother made a chocolate fudge that I could probably adapt with coconut milk, but that is the only recipe I can think of that is easily adapted to our food challenges here. I've never tried to make it. It involves the stove top, lots of stirring, and a candy thermometer. My grandmother on my dad's side made the best divinity fudge. My mother-in-law made chocolate fudge, peanut butter fudge, and peanut brittle. When the kids were little and before the food allergies and intolerances, I made the sweets of my mother-in law to carry on her traditions, but now I can't bring myself to make those recipes when one of my kids can't enjoy them with us.

The girls and I made delicious gluten free, dairy free Christmas sugar cookies from a cake mix using Ann Byrn's The Cake Mix Doctor Bakes Gluten Free.

We have not yet seen any family. Some family members have the flu and we will wait to celebrate Christmas with them until they are feeling better. Makes Christmas last longer.

Meanwhile, I'm browsing my newest cookbook. The editors for the "Southern Living 2012 Annual Recipes" apparently love pimento cheese and bourbon. Who knew pimento cheese has so many uses in recipes? Does everyone keep bourbon in the pantry? (I don't.) If you put several tablespoons of bourbon in a salad dressing, can you serve it to minors?

This edition seems to use a lot more cheese, sour cream, sweetened condensed milk, cream of something soup in recipes than in past editions, pretty much impossible for me to substitute.  :(  

On page 118, chef Andrea Reusing says, her kids "...always like anything with eggs and cheese".  She's lucky. A lot of kids are allergic to them (I have one).

I'd like to see a cooking challenge series on TV that features allergen free food items. Can you imagine an Iron Chef or Chopped that has chefs creating allergen free meals again and again? I would love it!

There's a tailgate section in the September chapter that focuses on recipes from Southern colleges. Maybe they have no idea that marching band boosters feed the band by tailgating, and we have some of the best recipes under the sun.

The January recipe for Slow-cooked Barbecued Chicken makes me want to run out and get a whole chicken, cut-up, so I can try the recipe - but stores are closed today. (I have a day to think this one over. It calls for - yep, you guessed it - two tablespoons of bourbon - would we miss that if I left it out?)

and I really want to make some pimento cheese, but I don't have all the ingredients. That'll have to wait a day, too. All these recipes have me thinking about my grandmother's pimento cheese stuffed into celery.

 What are you doing on this Christmas day?

Navigating the Holidays with ASD

I have a new column up over at Homeschool Mosaics with lots of ideas on how to navigate the holidays with a child with autism or other special need. 

Go HERE to read it.

Essential Oils and Aromatherapy

I have been slowly educating myself about essential oils. I've discovered that lavender is quite calming to my child w/ an ASD. Last week, I used a blend that I mixed to calm coughs and open nasal passages at night, diffused with reeds in two kids' rooms.

I want to know more about them. 

You too?

J&M Botanicals is offering a FREE eight-week e-course in aromatherapy. Go HERE for more information.

Pancakes

Pancakes for supper sounded soooooooo yummy to me tonight. Since I have a King Authur gluten free flour mix, I chose a recipe from King Arthur (here). Without any milk-substitute, I used water.  The taste did not satisfy my craving for pancakes - something was missing.  Toward the end of the batch of batter, I dumped in a couple of tablespoons of syrup and that improved the taste considerably. My GFCF+++++F girl has eaten quite a few of them.  I'm glad she likes them!

Next time, maybe I'll try adding apple sauce (as per THIS recipe).

I very much miss a gas cooktop. This house came with a brand new glass cooktop and in 19 months, I still haven't figured out the temperature controls on the eyes - they do not seem consistent to me and I am frustrated almost every time I cook on them. Wish gas stoves were more common here. (Yeah, I know. First world problem. I am blessed to have such servants as an indoor, electric stove and I know that.)

Math.

Teaching math to my daughter continues to challenge me. In August, I purchased MathUSee Delta at a consignment sale. As I watched the Delta video, I realized that my daughter's shaky foundations need to be strengthened, and I ordered Alpha directly from MathUSee. We have been working our way through Alpha together. A couple of weeks ago, while I was gone for a long weekend chaperoning a marching band event of my high schooler, my homeschooler took her MathUSee workbook to her bedroom and worked through the whole thing. Arg.

Interestingly, I see her strengths and weaknesses by what she got right and by what she skipped and by what she attempted but got wrong.  Makes my job a bit more difficult sorting through it all.  Working through the workbook in order would have been easier for me than sorting through to find the concepts that need practice.

The ironic thing is that if I'd asked her to work through the workbook, she would have resisted, screamed, screeched, protested, thrown a big fit. When working through it is her idea, she's fine with it.  I do understand that a lot of her resistance is about working alongside me, that she is anxious that I will move too quickly, expect too much and that she will feel incompetent.  So, moving forward, we will work toward my being a good guide, someone "possible" for her, as we tackle the concepts of math that need practice.

Freebie Alert: Write Shop

Write Shop has a free writing game available now, along with a 20% off coupon for purchases. Go here for more info.

Scholastic Warehouse Sale

Now is the time to find a Scholastic Warehouse Book Sale near you and register. You qualify to attend a warehouse sale if you volunteer at Scholastic book fairs at your child's school, if you are a teacher or librarian or school staff or if you are a homeschooler.

Click here for more information.

Learning from a Master

Today, I am a featured columnist at Homeschool Mosaics. 

Today's blog post is titled,

"Learning from a Master".

Try Reading Again

My homeschooler with an autism spectrum disorder is one of many children with ASD who find reading a challenge.  We continue to work hard to close the gap for her.

I opened a package from Woodbine House recently that is a fun surprise:  Try Reading Again, How to Motivate and Teach Older Beginners, Age 10 and Up by DeAnna Horstmeier, Ph.D. The book is a 297 page, easy-to-photocopy paperback of how-to and activities that includes a CD-ROM of additional resources, all aimed beginning readers who are older.

The author's approach is three-pronged, a triangle approach, that focuses on phonics and fluency on a base of language experience stories.  

The book is more than reading; Horstmeier gives us direction on creating "language experience stories" with our children as well.  We learn about phonics and vocabulary, too.  The gems for me are the structured stories and the back part of the book, the appendices of lists and flash cards games and activities that are beginner reader friendly.  We need to work on prefixes and suffixes here, and contractions, too and there are pages that guide me through that as well. I realize I've never taught her about digraphs.  We have work to do.

Try Reading Again is a thorough resource that covers a broader range of development than I thought on first glance.  My first flip-through impression was that it is too beginner for us, as my child can rhyme, knows letter sounds (her phonemic awareness is quite good), knows beginner sight words, etc., but as I look more closely, I see more advanced activities for my girl and as I look over topics and activities, I recognize more gaps that we need to address to make her reading experience more full, less challenging.

The activities and exercises are arranged developmentally, building foundations and growing them.  If I had to choose a favorite thing inside, it would be the structured stories.   Or maybe my favorite thing would be the companion CD-rom that gives me forms, worksheets, more stories.

The introduction is located here for folks who'd like to look before they buy.

Students on the autism spectrum often have such scattered skills that we see the splinter skills without recognizing shaky foundations beneath them.  I am digging in with enthusiasm as we strengthen foundations and move forward in all things reading. The activities and ideas are practical and provide in-context learning opportunities - and the activities are short yet packed with practice and experience.  We need work on stories. 

The book is priced at $24.95, on sale at the moment (check the web page for current pricing).  A keeper, for sure.

Woodbine House sent me a review copy of this book at no charge to me. I am not paid for reviews and am not obligated to provide a positive review.  RE: Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising." 

Social Skills and Adaptive Behavior in Learners with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Brookes Publishing sent me a review copy of Social Skills and Adaptive Behavior in Learners with Autism Spectrum Disorders by Peter F Gerhardt and Daniel Cummings. (Web site info here.) The book is a compilation of research that may or may not be helpful in determining an intervention pathway for a particular child.  It is a 308 page paperback featuring multiple authors on a wide variety of topics that fall within the umbrellas of social skills and adaptive behavior.

Behaviorists and medical types, I predict, will *love*  it.  Behaviorists and medical types love anything that has a completed scientific study behind it, and this book is full of research.  Any intervention that is in the process of gathering research as it applies to autism is labeled "pseudoscientific".

The danger in a book like this one is that parents and professionals stick with approaches "proven" by science while refusing to consider what this book calls "pseudoscience" and those parents and professionals risk what we experienced, a behavioral program that was considered successful by the fact that my child learned everything we taught her, except we taught her out of developmental sequence and created a long list of bizarre splinter skills that translated into NON-success in a traditional classroom.  We are still unraveling some of the damage we did by well-meaning behaviorists who understood the "science" but did not understand development.

If you want to see what research is and is not available, here's your book.  Personally, I would not spend $35 on it. I wasted too much valuable time and money on interventions "backed by science" and did not get in return what was promised. I got prompt-dependent and robotic, lots of words without comprehension or conversation.  Mom-to-mom, read this information with a grain of salt.  Absence of proof is not absolute proof.

The value in the book for me is on page 293, at the very end, where the discussion turns to the fact that "The research in this volume demonstrates that we have made significant gains along several dimensions and are moving in a number of positive directions:" that include a shift to a focus on social competence and the role of joint attention in the social piece and cites the need for more research.

Brookes Publishing sent me this book free of charge to review for you here. I am not paid for reviews and am not obligated to provide a positive review. RE: Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."