Pumpkin Cookies

It is that time of year again! We made yummyy pumpkin cookies.



1st grade is going great. We have started learning about the human body. And of course talking alot about autumn.

Painting

We did some finger paiting and had alot of fun. After we were done Dorian sat there for about 20 mins just picking paint off his hands. He said he loved picking it off.

Dirt baby and flowers

The sunflower that grew from the seeds we feed to the birds!

Our butterfly garden also attracts these lil' guys.

Dorian's dirt baby has grown alot of hair!

Back to school

No back to school for us since we do year round school with Dorian.
Public school here in the US is starting back which will be nice for going to the Zoo, Omsi and the Children's Museum as they will be less crowded. Still quite a bit of kids from public schools go there on field trips and also homeschoolers. Autumn is around the corner so nature walks will be lovely.

We decided against a boxed curriculum for 1st grade. Now that we know his learning style it is much easier and fun to pick out things that suit him.
As most of you know Dorian has sensory processing disorder and we also think high functioning Asperger's. We are so lucky we can homeschool as Dorian does best in a small, consistent environment without a lot of change, distraction, noise and chaos.
We love to learn through daily life, but we also add in curriculum. We like to keep it fun. We want him to love learning. Right now we use:

K12 1st grade math
Headsprout Reading
Hand writing without tears
Rand McNally Geography
Kumon Telling time

We are also look at signing him up for some classes at a charter school for science as we thought it would be fun. The library is a huge resource of ours and of course field trips and just learning through daily life.
Right now math is his favorite subject, so that means he must be taking after Ash!

Fly Little Butterfly, Fly away ...

They hatched and we had 4 beautiful butterflies! It was so eat to watch them fly away.
One went right on a flower and sat there and let Dorian at it! Then he flew off into the sky.
After we watched them all leave "home" we found this beautiful butterfly, he must have got hurt by a bird or something. His little wing was injured on one side. We put him in a bush to hopefully get better.

We have buuterflies!

I just posted this morning that we were waiting, well we have 3 new butterflies!

Butterflies

We are watching the butterfly cycle in our home! We got this kit to study the butterfly cycle.
It is really neat! Right now they are in the chrysalis stage. This week they should be turning into butterflies! This was a photo from last week when only one was a chrysalis and the rest were getting ready to turn into them.

In the mind of Dorian, part 2.

Here is part #1 from March 19, 2007.

Dorian right now loves Star Wars and Lego!
He spends his days being a Jedi, playing the Wii, building things with his Lego's and counting his money.
He is counting down the days until he is 6, which today is only 4 days left! (Uh, my baby is growing up!).
His favorite animal are baby horses (he just told me that.). Although I think birds come in as a close 2nd.
He loves math right now, that is his favorite subject. He takes after his dad in this department. He also LOVES money!
He still only wants to wear his pajama tops that are long sleeve and tight. He needs his sensory input. He still only likes to wear jeans, although a few days ago he put on his track suit pants again to work out with Ash and I. His favorite shoes right now are his crocs and his Lego shoes.
He has a loose tooth, shhh, we have not told him! We want him to find out on his own.

Now he is almost 6, I just can not believe he was born almost 6 years ago now.
He brings so much joy, love and happiness to our life. He has taught us so much in just 6 years.

Time flies when your in love.