November 22, 2020

Robert continues to spend his days at home. As the number of COVID19 infections in US increases every day, we have confined ourselves to our home. No hotels, no day long trips, and no restaurants. However, Robert still goes for one or two walks each day. There are a few trails he frequents at Blue Hills  and  Borderland State Parks.  He visits either Stony Brook, Moose Hill, or Broadmoor Audubon Sanctuary, although his favorite Wellfleet Audubon Wildlife Sanctuary is beyond our reach in the COVID-tainted world. The newly-acquired membership in the Trustees of the Reservations allows him to hike in World’s End and Noanet parks.  Nonetheless, even the places we frequently visited in New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont are now beyond the radius of our constricted world. In April, it became clear that we had to find a new way to enrich Robert’s life and… ours. So in May I ordered the first Kiwico Crate.

It was not easy for my husband to assemble with Robert the color-changing crystal, which arrived in the first Kiwico crate.  In the past Robert connected some electric circuits to turn on tiny fans, or light a lamp, but he had never seen resistors before. He seemed slightly confused and distrustful. It didn’t help that Jan needed more time than usually to grasp how all parts should be connected. A few times Robert left the project and returned reluctantly only after being called many times. But the crystal, although the paper one, was magical.  By setting each of the three levers in different position, Robert could change its color.  It could be blue, green, red, orange, yellow, and of course, his favorite – purple.

Robert was slightly more patient and more cooperative while building with his dad the glowing pendulum. Couple weeks later he became very engaged while constructing with me the wooden automaton.  He found it funny that by turning the knob he made the stairs move up and down, allowing the three balls to move to the top then to slide down to the bottom. However, he constructed most of Kiwico gadgets with his sister, Amanda. They built together two racing cars (with balloons as a power source) and two shuttles. Together they read instructions and then each of them built one item. Of course, Robert was watching Amanda’s movement very attentively and followed her lead.

With each of those projects, Robert’s world became deeper and richer. But so did ours. Robert’s dad, his sister, and I, we all, caught a whiff of refreshing air passing through our stale everyday routines.

Robert likes best those crate which are devoted to and inspired by different countries. Yes, he needs an encouragement to glimpse at the pictures included in thin booklets describing specific places but he doesn’t need an invitation to build a jumping kangaroo or make a coral reef panorama included in Australia create. For three days he patiently colored and assembled all the chapels of the Saint’s Basil Cathedral from Russia box.  After completing the tiny hockey set from Canada crate, he made a few successful shots and he defended one. He built a pizza oven with turning pizza dough and moving flames – part of the Italy crate.  Yesterday, to my surprise, he was very engaged in weaving a small rug to be placed on the back of the white alpaca model from the Peru crate.

In a way, Robert visited all those countries and had a close contact with one or two aspects of their culture. Most importantly, every completed project left him proud and happy.

November 20, 2020

There are days, although few, which we don’t begin by studying together. Today was such a day. I shopped for groceries then rushed to make lunch. It seemed I was late with all my chores. Luckily, Amanda took Robert for a walk.  When they came back I was still preoccupied  with hundreds small tasks. After dinner, I sat in front of TV to watch the last half of the old movie, Charade, when Robert approached me, smiled, and said, “Work, work”. That was his way od reminding me that we hadn’t studied yet. 

Robert words, “Work, work” have a magical effect on me. I leave everything, follow Robert to our overused dining table, and help him learn.

1. Today Robert practiced dividing fractions with a page of problems from Spectrum Math. Robert had problems with division when divider was a mixed number. He wanted immediately flip over just fraction part. Thus we practiced changing mixed number into improper fraction BERFORE replacing division with the multiplication and replacing improper fraction with its reciprocal.
2. I have two workbooks Skill Sharpener Geography. One for grade 4 and one for grade 5. I wanted to start with the higher grade as the first lesson in it was about using GPS. From time to time, while we are traveling, one of us attempts to demonstrate to Robert how the GPS locates our destination and tells us  how to get there.  I should start with that, but, for reason I don’t completely understand we began with reviewing parallels and meridians. Oh well.
3. We are almost finishing No Glamour Grammar – the last worksheets in the book are devoted to additional reviews of previous concept. However, no grammatical concept or rule in this book was new to Robert. He loved that it was easy.  I loved that it was easy. today, he was finding adverbs in sentences.
4. Still pronunciation. Still page from old Weber book. Today, Robert practiced “cl” and “gl” in words or phrases.  However, I found pages of short but frequently used phrases among the materials Robert must had gotten from his school speech pathologist. So useful! So easy! Most importantly, Robert liked practicing them much more than words, phrases or sentences from Weber. I don’t understand why I didn’t use them before.
5. I stopped using exercises from No Glamour Following Directions.  Robert still has difficulties with one step directions given in this book, so there was no point of going further toward two and three step directions. Instead every day, I give him from 2 to 10 directions. I start with two but if he is not answering correctly, I quickly make additional exercises emphasizing just one concept but mixing it with other. If Robert has problem with “draw a circle AROUND” I ask him to draw a circle around or square around  something different. I add a few other directions, but the one Robert already knows well.
6. In the past Robert drew people following instruction from Usborne I can draw people.  We returned to the same book, but this time Robert is drawing scenes with two or more people.
7. For the last couple days we were also completing pages from Banking Math, old PCI publication. After reading the short text Robert had to do a simple calculation and then either write a check, pay by his ATM or withdrew appropriate amount of money from the machine to pay by cash. The hardest part of each assignment was to decide which numbers provided in the text relate to his calculations as they were many additional information. Over all, he was doing pretty well.  Maybe because each month, Robert pays by check for one of our monthly utilities.
8. Web Sudoku! It is getting better and better. Robert very quickly (before I notice) find first 10 -15 numbers, He is also very quick in finding last 10-15 numbers. He also quickly notices when something is wrong on the grid. We are working on noticing that the number must be in a given row or column and writing it besides the edges of the frame. Most importantly – Robert loves it.