Scheduling Conflicts

I'm still working on getting a good schedule going here at home for all of us. I just made some changes to the time of some things, so I'm working out the kinks still almost a week later. Right now, the schedule is a follows:

7AM: I usually hear Alan get up and begin to play in his room and go to the bathroom and pee. I stay in bed and pretend I'm sleeping.

7:30AM: This is what my alarm is currently set to. I typically get up somewhere between 7 and 7:30 AM and get mildly ready (I dress, take my allergy meds, and pee).

Whenever I'm done in the bathroom to whenever Alan gets out of his room (it's usually around 7:45 to as late as 8:00): Alan does his new chore of putting dry food in the cats' food bowls and I fill their water fountain, then I get breakfast ready for Alan and give it to him while he watches some TV. I go on the computer to check email and facebook and have my breakfast.

9AM-11:00AM: Alan finishes breakfast around 9ish and clears his plates and silverware and cups, etc. He gets hungry again around 10:30 (this kid grows like a weed, and I give him a light breakfast). I give him lunch at 11:00. This is typically a PBandJ sandwich, water, and something else (like fruit or veg or crackers).

11AM-1:00PM: Alan free playtime and I will generally play with him or do an activity (like a craft) with him.

1:00PM: Alan goes down for a nap. He must stay in his room and relatively quiet for 2 hours. I just switched nap back from 12 PM to 1 PM because he did not sleep at 12:00 and then was getting up later, like 4:00 or 4:30 because he fell asleep later. I also switched to only giving him water or milk for lunch so he doesn't have the added sugar of juice. The nap is the biggest struggle of the day because he never wants to go to his room, he doesn't nap right away, and gets up at weird late times because it takes him forever to fall asleep. But TRUST ME, he needs this nap or else he is just a terror the rest of the day and is overtired for bedtime and then doesn't go to sleep until like 10 PM to 12 AM. I know, it's weird. I also like him to nap because this is when I do my situps and exercises PEACEFULLY by myself, unless the cat also has to bug me. I also load/unload the dishwasher and other odd jobs.

2 or 3 or 4 or even 4:30 PM: Alan wakes up from nap. He has a snack and watches TV for about an hour.

The Past Few Days It's Been 5:00 PM: Start Alan's school work with him. The work I do with him takes about an hour to an hour and a half. Then, he's burned out and done so I stop so we both don't get frustrated with each other.

It there's time before 6 PM (it hasn't happened yet), we go outside and I want nightly walks to happen. Right now, this isn't happening.

6:00 pm: make dinner
6:15 pm: eat dinner. Dinner lasts about an hour.

7:00 pm-ish: Alan must start cleaning up all the toys and books and junk he got out during the day so the place doesn't look like a tornado hit it. I also give him baths at this time every few days.

about 8:45-9:00: Alan must get dressed in pjs and go to the potty and brush his teeth and get ready for bed in any other way. He gives kisses to Daddy, then picks out a book and gets in bed and we read together for a while. Then, I tuck him in and say goodnight!

I try to go to bed between 11:00 pm-12 AM. Then, it starts all over again the next day! :)

School Day 3

I need to think of some more clever titles, I think. ;)Below is what I posted on facebook today about Alan's school day. So now I'm all caught up, and you are too! Tomorrow I will post right onto here about what our Friday school day will be like! Now I have to go make spaghetti because a certain 5 year old is requesting it for dinner! :)
Today for Alan's home school, we added a number "4" to his calendar and he wanted a special mark on it like on the first two days, so we used the "sunny day" magnet to note that today was sunny, and I said that every day we have a sunny day all year, he can move that magnet to the next day. We also talked about how there are 12 months in a year, and 30-31 days in a month (except Feb), and how there are about 4 weeks per month. Next we sang through the alphabet twice. He's getting the hang of it more with a visual, but still messing up a few letters (like H and I and J). I want to get him a bit more confident with the visual first, then test his memory without it in the coming weeks. We also finished the powerpoint I made him starting with letter M on phonics of letters and pictures that start with each letter. He's more getting the hang of listening to the sound at the beginning of the word to determine if it goes with a certain letter. I then had him trace numbers 1-10 in his workbook and had him write them on his own. After he traced and then I traced one with him (both of us holding the pencil), he did pretty well at the numbers he wrote on his own. Lastly, he did a trace the dots picture 1-10 of a dinosaur in his workbook so that I could segue into some "current events", an article I found this morning about dinosaur bones that were discovered, because Alan is pretty into paleontology stuff right now.
Article:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/09/04/dinosaur-skeleton-discovered/15031803/?csp=fbfanpage
 

Some Cuddlers

Hey! Here is some other update news I forgot to share! Since 2012, we have added to the family! We have adopted 2 cats to the family, Jean and Jasmine. Here is a picture from today of Alan cuddling our smaller and younger cat, Jean.

Second Day of School

Today for Alan's home school, we added number 3 to his magnetic calender, and talked about how there are 7 days in each week, and what the days were called. We sang the days of the week song to the tune of the addams family (you can look it up on youtube). We talked about yesterday, today, and tomorrow and what they mean. I went through a page of questions about what day comes after which, and then we put a page of mixed up days in the correct order. Then, we did the alphabet song a few times and did phonics up to letter L where I showed him pictures and we made the letter sound and I asked him if each picture started with each letter. Last, we did a math activity with play doh, spaghetti, and fruit loops where we made a number line 1-10.

Alan's picture of a zombie alien

First picture I've really ever seen him draw. It is really rare for him to not just scribble, so this is a good sign.

First Day of School!

So back to school started for most people today. It feels a little strange still that I am not taking any classes. But it is really good that I get to focus on Alan and work on the next chapter in my life. Alan is still struggling developmentally in some areas, so we're still doing home school for now: working out of a workbook as well as doing some activities I get online. Today, we got off to a good start working with a magnetic calender he got for his birthday and talking about September and days, months, and years. He got to mark off Labor Day as a holiday for yesterday's date and for today, we marked "first day of school". We also already talked about Michael's birthday that's coming up and marked that off so we'll do a countdown as he is very interested in who's birthday is when nowadays. We also went through the alphabet several times because he struggles with alphabet order and recognizing some letters and he doesn't quite grasp the phonics angle yet with how letters sound. We went over some numbers next and he seems to understand a bit better the differences between 0 and 10 and all the numbers in between! We also did some greater than or less than and he did REALLY well with that! We have a budding math wiz in the family here it seems! We also talked briefly about nutrition and food groups as he is very interested right now with what's in his food and how and why it's good for him and helps his body, like yesterday he asked how cheese was good for him. So that's all for the first day!

An Update!

So I haven't written a post in a while, and this was a DEAD BLOG, but I realized that I should post on here because I have been writing facebook posts every day this week of my son's school stuff. For a basic quick update, he turned 5 in August. We have been noticing certain developmental delays, such as he is still not completely potty trained (he pees in the toilet all the time and can wear underwear to bed and very rarely wets himself, but he poops in his underwear EVERY SINGLE DAY still. Sorry if that was too graphic for some people.), he doesn't draw pictures, just scribbles, and can't write his name or anything, just "A" and "L" and "X". (Guess I should have named him Alex, or better yet, Alx. lol) We have Asperger's Syndrome in our family (my brother and cousin have it), so we are talking seriously of getting him a psych evaluation in the near future to assess problems. Anyway, because of these delays, but especially because of the potty training, we aren't sending him to school right now, and instead, I am still homeschooling him for this year. He is five, but I am teaching him a preschool curriculum since he still needs help in numbers and letters. That's basically catching you up to date as to where we are now, so I'll post blogs on the past three days of school for you and then hopefully keep this up to date with all things about my son and his schooling! :)