Our Morning Routine

My days are simple, but explaining what I do when and why can be complicated, so I'll break it up.

One way or another, I have to be up at 8AM to get baby up.  She needs to go down for her nap at 10AM, so I can do school.  But, generally, I am comatose in the morning, slurping coffee and whisper-barking at people hush, "It's MORNING, people!"  If I have the presence of mind to go ahead and take my shower when I get out of bed, I tend to be nicer.

By 8:30, we have to get moving.  Which means they move and I drink more coffee.  Have you said hello to Jesus in your heart this morning?  Brushed teeth?  How's your room?  Any laundry to throw in the washer?  Spread up the bed.  Alright, everyone hit the tubs, get dressed.  Now go back and fix the bathrooms you just killed.

By 9:30 I need to be feeding the troops so we can get the dishes unloaded and reloaded.  After that we do some cross-crawling and sing along with School House Rock multiplication.  I know that sounds nuts, but my third grader is an auditory learner and sings his multiplication in the morning. And see THIS article about the cross-crawling.

Hopefully, we head upstairs for school at 10AM.

Coffee and delirium

--------------------------8AM-BABY UP--------------------------

8:30-more sitting, but barking orders from computer

Morning prayer

Brush teeth

Clean room

Straighten bed

Get showered /dressed

Check laundry

Check bathroom and hall

Check living room and kitchen

9:30

Eat and chores

Schoolhouse Rock and Brain Gym

My Philosophy: Am I Montessori?

The short answer is: Nope, I just borrow from them.  


Besides, I think my kids are getting too old and lots of the traditional Montessori principles are geared toward pre-schoolers.


My longer answer is based on the10 learning principle list from Living Montessori Now.  See her blog for the fuller explanation of each principle, but here I'll respond to the naked principles individually:

1. Follow the child. 

KINDA.  Montessori schools let the child lead to a great extent.  I have BOTH free choice and assigned work.  Some work is not optional, regardless of the child's mood.  I do, however, try to build activities that correlate with the child's interests and learning style.  I don't make them swim upstream if I can help it.

2. Respect and encourage your child’s absorbent mind and sensitive periods.

KINDA...I'm not sure I completely understand what this looks like for a nine-year-old, but I do let them tell me what they're interested in when it comes to "entertainment" centers that I leave out while I'm working with the others.  Like last week, they all wanted to learn to iron, so we did that and I left out the iron for them to practice.  I do know that anything they perceive as BIG PEOPLE work, they are automatically driven to master, but if it's something they've already mastered, like fingernail clips..."Mom, that's baby stuff."

3. Allow your child the freedom to explore indoors and outdoors – as long as your child is safe and using the freedom in a positive manner. 

Hmmm...I don't really know what this means.  She says it has something to do with self-directed learning.  I'm all over that, but only when they aren't doing assigned school work.  There's no self-directed math around here.

4. Give your child as many opportunities for hands-on learning as possible. 

YES!  This is where I C.A.S.E. Montessori...Copy And Steal Everything.  They have manipulatives galore and every one is beautiful and AMAZING!  My oldest loves the sensorial manipulatives for free "play," but math and reading ones are super confusing to him.  He's a very traditional "drill" responsive kid.  Repetition and bribery is the way to go.  But for my younger two, they HAVE to have manipulatives.  You can repeat the same information every day for the 180 day school year and unless they had a beautiful, interesting, engaging manipulative...it's like pushing a wet rope uphill.  I'd rather just buy the pretty manipulative and avoid all the fights.  Learning  new concepts isn't the time for obedience training.

5. Emphasize practical life and sensorial activities in the preschool years. 

YES!  We aren't in the preschool years but we have sensory issues in the family, so we may never stop emphasizing sensory (smell, visual, touch, etc) centers.  Sometimes these are even assigned to help develop and desensitize them.  And the sensorial/practical activities are my go-to resource for getting them to voluntarily practice math and language foundation skills like sorting, grading, go-togethers, and sequencing.  Real lock and key go-togethers are just as valid as pictures.  Sorting objects by whether they are magnetic or not is just as valid as the traditional cut and paste picture sorting.

.6. Provide child-size materials (and real child-size tools) wherever possible. Place materials on trays on low shelves, allowing your child the opportunity to choose his or her own work and to repeat activities as often as needed.

NO.  I left the rest of her explanation on there because this is where we really differ.  I don't have a dedicated school room, so there's no leaving out anything.  And I only have a limited number of centers I set out each day, like ten.  These are on the dining room table, floor on mats, and the fireplace.  At the end of the school day, they're all packed away into a crate.  And we don't have child-sized materials and tools.  But, my kids are pretty big, so it's not a big issue.  And as I said above, this all refers to the free-choice busy centers in the living room.  There's no free choice when they're working individually with me in the other room. They might have some control over the order, but not whether or not multiplication practice happens.

7. Don’t interrupt your child’s work cycle. Let your child develop an ever-increasing ability to concentrate. 

NO and YES.  I definitely interrupt certain subjects.  I won't let a child practice making his letters wrong or reading wrong words out loud.  But as for the free-activities, I leave them to it until it's time to come work with me.  For our school work, I let them think as long as they need or work on a manipulative without interruption.  And, if something really captures their fancy in the language or math lessons, I'll adjust the rest of the day to give them more time. A good example is the object boxes, my daughter will spend lots of time with them, making up and writing down songs, rearranging the words so they make funny compound phrases, and since she struggles in the phonics area, I generally leave her alone to "work."  I just usually put that lesson at the end of the school day so she doesn't have to do anything else afterwards.

8. Make your child’s environment as orderly and attractive as possible. 

YES!  I love how a Montessori school looks.  I use the heck out of all those orderly little trays and mats.

9. Demonstrate how to do an activity. 

YES!  This is my very favorite thing I've learned from Montessori folks.  But it's not something we use during school much.  Before I take the first kid away to work, I demonstrate any new activities, but it's not usually necessary.  My kids can figure most things out since they're older.  However, around the house we use this constantly.  One day, Middle Kid was struggling with sweeping, so I put tape on the floor just like a Montessori school and demonstrated step by step, letting her toss rice krispies on the floor as many times as she liked to practice it. Same for anything else around the house they want to do or "have" to do for chores.  I've done "fixing yourself cereal" demonstrations, "cooking yourself eggs" demonstrations, and we love the Montessori courtesy lessons.  My kids know how to politely interrupt because I demonstrated it and we practiced it.  

10. When you offer an activity, check that the difficulty is isolated (for example, it helps if only the color – and not the shape – varies if you’re introducing your child to colors), and there is a control of error (instant feedback built into the activity) whenever possible.

YES!  This is another favorite principle.  I love isolating skills.  This is why I don't cross over between kindergarten writing and reading.  We write uppercase with no discussion of sounds.  We read lowercase, with no attempt at pencil skills.  In older kid phonics, if I'm working on one phoneme, I do my best to exclude all others from the practice words.  For lots of the manipulatives, the activity itself provides the instant feedback, but if not, I mark the underside so they can check themselves without my help.

My Philosophy: Imagination is Morality

rickerbh

Whether your child is homeschooled or homeworked, it's a sacred parental responsibility to ensure that the child's mind is filled with noble stories. K-5 kids don't understand abstract concepts (like justice), so they're moral system is based on the stories they know. Fairytales, true tales of heroism, and the like are important for the child to align himself with proper values. If his mind is filled with stories of children sassing their parents and teacher, being poor friends, or telling white lies without consequences--his behavior will reflect that value system.

Here's how to choose good literature and television for your child.

• Characterization. A child may not understand the broad concept of a value, but he knows that he doesn't want to be the evil queen in Snow White. In a morally healthy story, the bad are bad and the good are good. Bad guys aren't the heroes.

• Consequences. The good are rewarded. The bad are punished. If the hero tells a fib in the course of saving the princess, there WILL be a comeuppance at the end.

Watch out for stories that show "good" consequences from bad choices. You see it in adult television. People have serial one night stands and experience no emotional damage. That's a lie. Live that way for a while and you know it starts to eat your soul. Duh. Same with these ridiculous stories where children talk down to adults or sneak around disobeying in the name of saving something...and there's no comeuppance. In some stories, that behavior is actually REWARDED. That's a lie. If your child tries to live that way, he won't be happy. So, while he's young, make sure he has good stuff going in.

So, it's important during these early years to fill the young mind with plenty of noble stories. Don't worry about whether or not there's magic in it as much as how the characters behave. The author's value system is communicated through the story's events.

My Philosophy: Kinesthetic Learning Strategies

My youngest boy is VERY physical. If he doesn't get enough heavy work and deep pressure activities in a day, he seeks them out in all of his school work. So, the more ways I can find to incorporate physical force into his learning, the happier he is with the schoolwork.

Additionally, heavy work and deep pressure activities are bottom-up up solutions for concentration. These activities calm the system and help reorder the senses. It's not just about burning energy. The propioceptive and vestibular systems (joint and inner-ear senses) do not get enough activity in our culture so a child starts to instinctivly seek motion if he's not getting enough. Assigning something along these lines for 10 minutes or more (it's like hunger, the child can tell you when he's done enough) to buy yourself some effortless full-attention concentration time from a wiggly kid.

Content Oriented

• Sidewalk Smash or Dash: I draw letters or numbers on the driveway in chalk and call out names. He "smashes" the correct answers with a big ole' river rock until the rock is dust or he's sick of it.
• Pillow Crash: I call out questions and he answers as he runs full force into the couch or leaps off the stairs onto a pallet or falls backwards on the bed.
• Tamborine or Wrestling Recitation: We do review of his poetry or counting in rhythm while I smack him all over with a tamborine or jar his arms and legs, throwing them around roughly.
• Water bottle toss: My oldest loves this. When we're reviewing something, we play "catch with a half full water bottle.
• Crashing Rewards: When Little Kid is finished placing all the magnets on his numbers, he holds the pan over his head and I beat on it to make the magnets fall on him. He loves it. That or I tell him, "After you finish your reading, I'll swing you upside down for a minute."

Content-Free Brain Breaks

• Rock walk: We have lots of river rocks and bricks in our yard. I send him out to make a path from them (propioceptive: heavy work) and then to walk or hop them back and forth (vestibular: balance)
• Hammering: Teach the child to set nails in a stump with a clothespin and let them hammer their brains out.
• Trampoline or Punching Bag: If you don't want to do this with content, just sending them out to beat the tar out of the bag or jump their legs off for a while makes a great brain break.

In addition to whatever, spontaneous nonsense I employ during of after learning, I also keep fidgets around for them to fool with while they're working on other subjects. Kinesthetic learners incorporate information faster if they can move their hands. So, I don't make them look at me or stop fiddling during work. I just ask questions periodically to make sure they're actually paying attention (in their own way).

My Philosophy: Skills Versus Content

Any of you who are using the classical method of homeschooling already know something about this distinction. Classical ed presents children with beautiful, important content for observation, imagination, and memorization, but the complete absorption of the particular content itself is not the goal.

Example: It's great to know the fifty states and capitals in second grade, but exercising that memorization muscle is the key. Training that little developing brain. We want them to have something beautiful and important to work that muscle, but it's no sweat if they practice the whole year and only get ten of them.

However, there are several primer skills that must be in place for the early grades to go smoothly. Verification and practice on these skills helps ensure a smooth acquisition of basic reading and writing skills. I mention activities to acquire and strengthen these skills in this posts, but click on the links provided to get a fuller list with pictures and instructions for implementation.

(As I've said before, I am not a special ed teacher. I am just an opinionated mama with a rusty MA in Counseling on the shelf and a whole lot of "special" up in my house, so this list is not comprehensive.)

1. Patterning, Go Togethers, Opposites: The concept of things "going together" or fitting a pattern is VERY important for reading and language skills.

Example: Think of the last time you talked to a non-native English speaking customer service representative. You needed to have a bank of realistic possibilities and a way to eliminate the outlandish options, if you had any chance of getting through that conversation. If "put toffee in the border" is just as likely as "turn off the recorder," then you had no hope. Same for your kids. Words and sentences have patterns as do math problems. Developing the skill of detecting and working in patterns is SUPER IMPORTANT for reading and math.

2. Order in Problem Solving: Have you ever told your child to go look for an object and see them run from room to room without systematically searching any one room? Children have to learn that there is a system to problem solving, or it takes, like, a billion times longer to do anything, including school work. Skill one is about learning that there is a pattern, this skill is about learning how to systematically work the pattern to efficiently find answers. Luckily, this skill is developed in the presentation of the other tasks on this list. Teaching a child to line up the options and try them one at a time from left to right helps develop mental order, systematic problem solving, and correct eye-teaming for reading.

3. Rhyming, Isolating and Ordering Sounds: Skills one and two teach the child how to detect and orderly work a pattern, whereas this skill works on the specific patterns involved in reading. A child may be already skilled in this area, but it is important to verify these skills before a child can be expected to read with any kind of fluency. This can be done with or without knowing any letters. Kids can sort objects or pictures based on rhyme or beginning sound well before they can identify sounds with the written figure.

Example 1: Cards depicting bear, chair, pear, hat, rat, cat, dog, log, and frog can be sorted long before letters are learned.

Example 2: A small box of real and toy objects like nut, nail, nickel, dog, duck, deer, rat, ribbon, and rake can be sorted by beginning sound into three piles long before letters are learned. After letters are starting to be learned, simply include letter tiles along with the objects.

4. Three Dimensional Fine Motor Development: Mastering the pencil grasp is the main fine motor skill for early learning. However, there is more to writing than grasp and it's frustrating to be mastering letter forms while trying to acquire pencil control skills like wrist twisting, pinching, and pressure skills. Again, your child may have already mastered these, but verifying the skills is recommended.

• Placing your child's paper on a styrofoam surface encourages gentle pencil pressure and force
• Spooning beads from one container to another or using a manual egg beater work on twisting motions
• Designing with perler beads and working with tweezers, tongs, chopsticks, fingernail clips, and clothes pins all help develop a controlled pinch.
• Punch pin tasks directly strengthen the tri-pod pencil grasp.

Now I don't use these with every child. I leave them out to play with while I'm working with another child, but the only kids that "have" to do these as a part of school are the kids who need some support in that area.

My Philosophy: Top Down Versus Bottom Up Solutions

Top down is the hardest way to solve a problem. When it comes to mental and behavioral disorders, most mental health and medical solutions for are top down solutions. They start with the symptom and work the problem from the outside in.

Bottom up solutions may not eliminate the need for a top down solution, but they make those solutions work, like a billion times better. This is because the bottom up solution addresses the CAUSE whereas the top down solutions address the EFFECTS.

Lots of times if a problem is ingrained or there is a genetic tendency towards it, you can't completely eliminate the symptoms so you will need top down solutions. If you use those alone, your child may keep his head above water, but there will be something still pulling on his feet.

For water safety, we want a flotation device (top down solution) AND cut the ropes that are pulling you down (bottom up solution).

Example 1: Can't concentrate.

Top down solutions: coping strategies, self-talk, rewards and incentives, punishments, medication, eliminating environmental distractions.

Bottom up solutions: heavy work to re-regulate the sensory system and give the body what it needs, lots of protein, other high nutrient foods, elimination of heavily refined food trash at least until school work is done (for the week, if possible)

Example 2: Child is picky about food, clothing, and melts down easily.

Top down solutions: elimination of offending objects, talk therapy, punishments, bucking-up, rewards, desensitization

Bottom up solutions: Increase physical activity until, symptoms subside. Heavy work. Trunk work. Brain gym exercises. Plenty of opportunities for physical activity, like every 2 hours.

Example 3: OCD tendencies

Top down solutions: therapy, visualization, medication.

Bottom up solutions: SCD diet, repair nutrient deficiencies, increase activity, avoid refined foods.

Example 3 is me. I had horrible PPD after my babies. All the medicine and talk-therapy in the world just kept my head above water. Something was pulling on my feet. My diet was barely nutrient dense enough to keep me afloat, much less support a baby. Additionally, I have horrible digestion, was absorbing little of what I ate, and the gut bacteria blooms were wreaking havoc with my brain. All that and I was getting no movement in the day to re-regulate my sensory system. I was sensitive to noise, light, and any stress sent me reeling.

But, once I got my diet under control, I felt FANTASTIC. I came off about half my medication and started smiling again. However, I don't think my body will ever fully repair from the damage, so I will likely be on medication for life. I'm okay with that.

• Top down solutions alone can be an exercise in futility.
• Bottom up solutions alone can be an exercise in pride and denial. Not everything heals 100%.

So, don't abandon top down solutions, just use them in concert with bottom up solutions.

My Philosophy: Causes of Disorders

There is a tendency to want to eliminate problems. "Oh, if I could just find what it causing this, we can stop the medications, accommodations, etc."

Well, yes and no.

Every family has they're genetic challenges; some members of the family suffer more than others. These sensitivities may be aggravated by nutritional, physical, or emotional deficits, but the sensitivities themselves are usually written in the DNA.

I have OCD tendencies, especially post-partum. Medicine gives me guard rails, but I still feel like something is pulling on my feet. My mental struggles are a symptom of some other medical issue. Over the years, I've found that avoiding sugar, grains, and milk dramatically reduces my symptoms. Eating these things almost guarantees that I have some kind of brainlock that day. So, it's likely that there's an underlying digestive issue. But what's causing the digestive issue? Likely a nutritional deficit or some injury to the digestive system from eating milk all my life when my body hates it. Now, even if I "cured" ALL that underlying stuff (which has been there for over 30 years, so full recovery is unlikely), any time my body gets hacked off at me, it's going to go the anxiety/OCD direction....just like the rest of my family. I will likely never be cured of the tendency.

My family of origin has three main struggles: allergies, digestive cancer and hormone-related OCD/anxiety. It goes back generations. So, it's no surprise that spent my whole childhood on allergy shots, have HORRID digestion, and totally "dropped my basket" post-partum. It sucks to have problems, but I'm glad to know what's ahead. Menopause is murder in my family. I should just go ahead and reserve a bed at the hospital.

It's also no surprise that at least one of my children had allergy-induce asthma, is already showing OCD tendencies, and that NOBODY in the house has normal bowel movements.

Over the years, I've discovered all kinds of digestive and OCD hacks. I hate that my kids have problems, but I'm relieved that it's something with which I'm REALLY familiar. I'm always searching for new and different ways to "cure" the underlying problems in myself and my kids, but regardless of how far I make it down that road, when the bodies and minds in my house are under stress, I know they will be heading a familiar direction.

This is good news and bad news. The bad news is that it's unlikely that your symptomatic child will get over his issues 100% cured of whatever physical/mental struggle tendencies he's got. It will come back off and on in his life, especially during times of stress. But, the good news is that he will likely not have anything BRAND NEW to deal with. That's good news for parents too. Pretty much anything your child has, you've seen it already in the the family tree. It's pretty rare for a child to exhibit tendencies that his biological family has never seen. "Ooooh, Little Bobby is lining up his toys JUST LIKE grandma used to do with her knick-knacks...I just thought she was mean."

So disorders can be cured, kind of. Depending on what you're family struggles with, you may have to keep your eye on it for life. I will likely never be at a point where I have brilliant digestion and can eat anything I want, but I have a LOT more freedom than I did five years ago. And my children won't have to wander around wondering what's wrong with them for 30 years like I did. They'll know their limitations and learn to live with them...or at the very least, we'll all know why they're going off the rails.

My Philosophy: OCD Tendencies

King Chung Huang

(Disclosure: I have OCD tendencies, my family has tendencies, and my child has it worse than the rest of us. None of us are counting and checking, but we get really bad BRAINLOCK and have situational anxiety. I am on LOTS of medication, but my child isn't impaired enough for me to risk putting head-meds in his developing brain. So, unless something goes south in a dramatic way, we're just going to have to cope together till he's 18....when I shall then hit him with a large brick of Zoloft.)

OCD is a disorder of the novelty gland. The novelty gland is the thing in your head that says, "This is out of the ordinary! Is this an emergency?" With OCD, the brain screams "YES, THIS IS AN EMERGENCY! DO SOMETHING!" So, once a routine is established, any change in that routine is "out of the ordinary" and therefore AN EMERGENCY. This is important as life is pretty routine and without attention, so OCD can gradually eat more and more of your life.

Example: Child has cereal every morning for weeks. One day, you're out of cereal. Not having the regular bowl of cereal is out of the ordinary. The novelty gland screams, "THIS IS AN EMERGENCY! SOMETHING TERRIBLE IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW DO SOMETHING!!!!!!!" From that day forward, child obsesses about whether or not there is cereal in the house.

The first step is to keep a lot of variety in the environment. This is really important! The child becomes accustomed to the little rises in adrenaline and learns to not fear them so much.

Fearing anxiety makes this all a whole lot more complicated, so it's best to get used to mini-attacks. A person is not likely to ever totally heal from this tendency and switch to some other problem, so getting accustomed to the negative experience of small bursts of novelty is important. As an adult, I am really used to my anxiety kicking off at say 25%. I know the feeling and I know it's nothing. If I hold on or distract myself, it will eventually go away.

Second, if you suspect or KNOW there's an existing ingrained routine or fear, gently disobey the novelty gland on a regular and frequent basis.

1. Start with just imagining breaking the routine or performing the feared activity. Let the anxiety rise and stay in the thought as long as possible.
2. Increase the amount of time spent imagining until the IDEA has stopped being out of the ordinary and no longer dramatically sets off the novelty gland. (Child finds the small rise in adrenaline uncomfortable, but manageable.)
3. Next, try delaying the routine a couple of minutes or standing NEAR the feared situation as long as possible. (example: going to a building with elevators and standing in the parking lot)
4. Do this regularly, until the delays or nearness to the feared object has stopped being out of the ordinary and no longer significantly sets off the novelty gland.
5. Repeat the process IN BABY STEPS standing closer and closer (eventually DOING the feared thing or VIOLATING the routine) until the novelty gland reacts at a tolerable level.*

*Note: for a significantly established fear, this process can take MONTHS.

This is a lot of information, I know. I recommend reading The Anxiety Cure for Kids a lot. You can get it here. Just remember that CURE doesn't mean your child stops having the tendency, it means that he learns what to do WHEN his novelty gland starts malfunctioning again.

My Philosophy: Flavors of Special-ish

What do I mean by that?

It's really just my tacky way of saying "intense learning preference" or "significant quirks." We're all on the impairment spectrum somewhere, it's just a matter of flavor and severity. Figuring out your child's tendencies can help you and he avoid LOTS of frustration at the homework table.

Lemme 'splain: A kiddo can be a visual learner (me). She could also be a NO WAY JOSE auditory learner (also me). This doesn't mean that she has a significant auditory processing disorder, but she's got the tendencies. As her parent, your and her life will be much more pleasant if you take steps to strengthen her auditory skills and can recast difficult concepts/subjects in her preferred style (visual).

'Nother example: A child (mine) can be a lil' OCD. He's not flipping light switches or obsessively washing hands yet, but he may be really anxious about the idea of breaking routines. Shaking up routines, exposing him to very mildly anxiety provoking situations, generally strengthening his ability to deal with his anxiety will help in the long run. But I don't do that during school time. That's the time for coddling. Whatever he finds upsetting should be eliminated while we're learning long division. Fight-the-OCD-tendencies time is the rest of the day.

'Nother example: A child can be a lil' SPD (other son). This is sometimes difficult to distinguish from OCD. (The difference is this: Does the child ACTUALLY have a harder time managing himself without his morning run, or does the idea of missing his morning run upset him? Does the idea of wearing different shoes bother him, or are those the only shoes that don't itch?) The SPD-ish son can't function if the seams of his socks are bothering him, if his food is too squishy, or if he hasn't had enough crashing today. We can do things to help him out. Of course he can "buck up" and sit still, but when it comes to school time, we want him to be working on assimilating information, not "bucking up."

So, on this blog when I'm talking about "the special", this is what I'm talking about. Dealing with wherever the child is on the spectrum. People who might be diagnosable if they went to the doctor, but aren't impaired enough that they're likely to go. As a mental health professional I was trained to diagnose based on two criteria: symptoms and level of impairment. If symptoms presented but the patient was coping just fine, then I couldn't give them the diagnosis. Same with learning issues. Your child can have tendencies, but without significant impairment, you might never know all the things you can do to help him (and yourself) out.

Deanna