While hunting for a doll pattern (see previous post), I found another pattern I liked. I decided to make it in all three sizes for my newest granddaughter. They looked so cute together that I used the grouping at my daughter’s baby shower. You can find the pattern at Craftsy; it’s a free download, but you have to give them your email address. Totally worth it, I thought!
I wanted to make a baby-safe baby doll for my little granddaughter, but I couldn’t find a pattern for one in my pattern collection, and I was too lazy to go to the store. So once again an Internet search yielded the perfect pattern, and it was free to boot. I enjoyed making this little doll for a very special little girl.
We have another grandchild on the way, I’m tickled to report. In fact, Grandchild #3 is due to arrive within a month or less.
Several months ago, I decided to make some baby booties for her that I had seen in a wonderful book called Amy Butler’s Little Stitches for Little Ones
I gave the booties to my daughter at her baby shower a few weeks ago, and she was delighted with them. The first pair was made from vintage fabric, and the second pair was made from the scraps of the Star Wars quilt I made last Christmas. I can’t wait to see my little granddaughter wear her booties this fall!
This little deer statue came with our house. I left it in the yard for a few years without really thinking about it, but one of its ears is missing and it’s kind of cheesy-looking, so I figured I’d get rid of it before long.
But that was before I discovered that when my grandson comes to visit, he says “Hi, Reindeer!” to the deer before coming into the house, and bids it “Bye, Reindeer!” when he leaves.
Grandma says the deer gets a reprieve. 🙂
I have an email from Catherine, who writes:
Hi Barbara I came across your blog today so glad I did
I am homeschooling my son aged 10yrs who also had Down syndrome he pretty much refuses to engage and am looking for any advice thanks
I’ll answer this publicly, for the sake of parents who may find this post in the future.
Catherine, when you say your son “refuses to engage,” I’m assuming you mean he’s not interested in sitting and learning with you.
Of course, there’s a wide variety of abilities and behaviors among 10-year-olds with Down syndrome, so it’s hard to know exactly what your son is like, but I do recall that Josh, my son with Ds, was not very interested in many of the things I did with him during our years of homeschooling, even though I tried so many different things in an effort to pique his interest and get him involved in learning.
Perhaps our greatest successes were spurred on once I discovered how competitive he was. I learned this by accident. A relative gave us a gaming system, something I’d successfully kept out of our house while raising our three older children. Once this thing was in the house, it quickly became the favorite new toy of all the kids and my husband as well, and the next thing I knew, they were teaching Josh to play on it. He became very good at it; in fact, his love of video games continues to this day.
But what that showed me was that I could reach him through games. I bought some “Concentration” type memory games, and we began playing those at the end of each day after he had successfully completed his schoolwork. This gave him an incentive to get his other work done. His goal, of course, was to beat me. Given the state of my memory after raising four children, that wasn’t hard most of the time. His love of winning fed his desire to play the games.
I also used flash cards as games. I’d hold up a card, and if he got the problem or question right, he kept the card. If he got it wrong, I kept the card. Whoever ended up with the most cards, won. He just loved doing flash cards once we scored in this way. Again, his desire to win kept him engaged.
Another technique that worked for us was using his interests to make lessons easier for him. For instance, he loved doing jigsaw puzzles. Since he needed to practice his speech sounds each day, I had spent years trying to get him to repeat these sounds back to me. But once I began rewarding each successful speech sound with a puzzle piece, practicing his speech sounds became so much easier. He quickly worked through the list, amassing pieces that he could then assemble when we were through. It was amazing how much better that method worked than all my previous years of verbally coaxing him.
Ultimately, I just had to keep trying until I found things that worked with Josh. For instance, I tried for years, from the time he was tiny, to teach him the alphabet. I used every method I could think of, and more that I found in books. But after he got an “Arthur” software game for his birthday, he learned his alphabet quickly, because one of the screens on that game showed Arthur in his room with the alphabet arranged around the top of the walls. All Josh had to do was click on a letter and he would hear the name of the letter in Arthur’s voice. I couldn’t believe how quickly he picked up all the letters once he got that game. Clearly that was the way to reach him when it came to learning the alphabet. Who knew?
The bottom line, Catherine, is that you must keep trying until you find something that works. This will always be true with your son. Even now, there are times when Josh challenges us in various ways and we need to keep trying until we come up with a solution that works for him and us. This is just life with our son, so we’ve gotten used to it. You will, too.
Best wishes on your homeschooling journey, Catherine!