I just completed the first week of my twenty-five year homeschooling. That is a sentence I didn't expect to ever write. Our seventh child, Josiah, graduated high school in the spring of 2016, and I anticipated for over a decade that his graduation would end my homeschool teaching. Decisions about our son Nathaniel's education have been a long (mostly kept private) wrestle over the last few years. Perhaps in time I will share more about the small decisions that landed us at last Monday - Nathaniel's first day of Kindergarten in our homeschool. But for today, I just want to share about that first week.

When we decided to homeschool this year, I did not want every piece of our day to be remedial and fixing weaknesses. I wanted to do something that built on Nathaniel's strengths and things we enjoy. His receptive language skills are fantastic. He loves stories. He loves being outside. This intersection is where I am building some fun learning into our day.

"Backyard Visitors" is the name I am giving to our nature study. We are learning about one animal a month through children's literature, crafts, and time outdoors. We are working on core AAC vocabulary. The first critter that we learned about was the firefly.

I am learning a multitude of ways not to teach and help Nathaniel. I wrote a lengthy blog post in September about starting to memorize bible verses with him. Seven months later, I have learned that approach did not work. Or perhaps it is better stated that in recent months my goals have changed, and so my approach needs to change too. If this topic is new to you, click on the link above to learn where we started.

For the last three months, Nathaniel has benefited from a very brief time of rote drill or recitation with me every morning. Using his talker, we count to ten, say the ABC's, and practice questions and appropriate responses. For example, I will ask, "What is your name?" to which he selects the one button on his device to respond, "My name is Nathaniel." Drawing on this skill yesterday when we were at a Labor Day picnic, he introduced himself to new friends. Within the last month he has shared his name with strangers at a playground. I do not believe these small social steps would be taking place if we were not working daily to recite.

Just as young children frequently memorize nursery rhythms and songs through repetition, the preschool years are often the time when children raised in Christian homes begin to learn their first Bible verses. Spiritual growth is as important to us as Nathaniel's emotional, physical, cognitive, and social growth. For generations of Rankins, the tool to encourage spiritual growth has been memorizing Bible verses. As a child and young adult, my husband memorized Bible verses weekly using Bible Memory Association, now called Scripture Memory Fellowship. Our children memorized Bible verses weekly through participating in the AWANA program. When they were small, we memorized the Sermon on the Mount as a family. We used motions, not American Sign Language, but our own creative fine and gross motor movements to help with the memorizing. The children were three years old to eleven years old when we recited the chapters of Matthew as a family standing in front of our church congregation. I have sweet memories not only of their incredible ability to learn and share long passages of scripture, but of working together daily after breakfast on the verses. The discipline of daily scripture memorization was formative to the children's minds and characters; the words they memorized had value to their souls.

At our last augmented communication team session, one of the therapists asked me how Nathaniel does with books. "Oh," I thought to myself, "we're doing great here. They will be so impressed!" Out loud I said, "Really well! We read ten to fifteen books a day. We get books from the library. We have set times through out the day when we read. And we use the talker while reading too!" They asked for further explanation on my last point.

I have read to Nathaniel since his first day home. Shared moments of reading between parent and child is foundational to my understanding of child rearing. My mother read to me. My Aunt Beccy kept stacks of books in her car for her children and other young riders. My mother's cousin was an elementary school teacher and gave me most of her classroom library when she retired. I was nineteen. I had children's books before I had children. Through our years of homeschooling, reading books aloud has been a pivotal aspect of our curriculum and our family's day.

Nathaniel was scheduled for hand surgery the last week in September. He was diagnosed last spring with "Thumb in the Plane of the Hand" on his right hand. It is exactly what it sounds like - his right thumb is in the same plane as his other fingers on his hand. He does not have thumb opposition with the right hand and the web space between the thumb and index finger is not as deep or wide as it needs to be. The finger painting photo above shows the abnormality pretty well. Consequently Nathaniel's grip with his right hand is very different. He tries to hold things between his index and middle finger using the thumb and index as a claw. Frequently he initiates play or grasping with his right hand and then transfers to his left. More often he just lets his right hand rest and uses his left as the photo below, taken last week in the St. Louis Children's Zoo, shows.