Best Day Ever Academy

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It's really happening!

It's really happening! My book is going to be published!

Hello blog readers! Looooong time no talk! 🙂  I’ve been super busy, but I have results to show for it! Check out this video!!

Checkout the Kickstarter Campaign Here.

That’s right! My first book will be published by the end of July!!

So, there are different ways to publish – I’ve chosen to self-publish. It can take as little as 5 minutes or many hours to explain what that means. What it does mean…

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Repeat After Me: I AM A Writer.

Repeat After Me: I AM A Writer.

“I AM a writer.”

This is what I have to tell myself a lot these days. In my recent post “Master of None”, I talked about feeling like a fraud sometimes. Anytime I feel like I’m really into something, I tend to convince myself I’m really not that great at it. There’s a difference between being humble and lacking self-confidence. We need confidence in ourselves and our God-given talents. I struggle…

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High School is coming...

High School is coming…

I talk a lot on this blog about my youngest daughter. But today, what’s on my mind is what is about to happen to my oldest. I’m going to blink, eight months is going to fly by, and I’m going to have a high schooler.

So, in the meantime, in my typical obsess-over-what-is-on-your-mind attitude, I am obsessing over high school planning. Oh yes, I am diving into homeschooling a high schooler, and…

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Master of None

Possibly one of my most honest and personal posts so far. Because some days when you are a 'Jack/Jill of All Trades"... you just feel like a Master of None.

You’ve heard the phrase “Jack of all trades.”  It’s sometimes used as a compliment when describing someone who is good at several skills. I have often times been called a “Jill of all trades.” I work with computer repair/troubleshooting/IT stuff and am generally good when it comes to technology. I do graphic & web design/desktop publishing stuff. I do administrative assistant type work.  I write…

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Book Review: Turn by Emily Van Engen

Book Review: Turn by Emily Van Engen

Turn by Emily Van Engen

Damon is anything but your ‘average’ teenager – he’s an incredibly intelligent orphan boy who can’t remember anything that happened before he woke up in an abandoned home. As he’s attempting to cope with the one-year anniversary of his ‘awakening’ the police find yet another amnesiac in the same abandoned house. Does he continue living life as he has the past year –…

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The Creative Mind: How writing works for me

There’s a meme out there that I have always felt like fits my life perfectly. It says something to the effect of “My mind is like an internet browser with 32 different tabs open.”  Yes, friends & readers, that is my mind. Unfortunately, you, my blog readers, in many ways suffer because of this.  I write something like that magnum opus that was the “Homeschooling Children with ADHD” – a massive…

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Homeschooling Children with ADHD (and other kids, too) - Part 7: Movement

Homeschooling Children with ADHD (and other kids, too) – Part 7: Movement

  Kids with hyperactivity, sensory needs, or other neurodivergence, need to move in order to focus. Expecting them to sit still and listen for too long would be like expecting a pot of water on a high temperature not to boil. It’s just not possible, and you’re never going to get the results you want by repeatedly asking them to sit still and listen. Instead of forcing a square peg into a round…

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Homeschooling Children with ADHD (and other kids, too) - Part 6: Hands-on Learning & Participation:

Homeschooling Children with ADHD (and other kids, too) – Part 6: Hands-on Learning & Participation:

For all children, participating in the learning process is better than just having to sit and listen to a lecture. And for kids with attention and hyperactivity issues, it’s even more difficult to learn simply by listening to their teacher/parent, reading a chapter, or doing a worksheet.

Seeing a scientific concept in action, or a historical event visually represented, is always more impactful…

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Homeschooling Children with ADHD (and other kids, too) - Part 5: Location

Homeschooling Children with ADHD (and other kids, too) – Part 5: Location

In general, we always do our schoolwork in the same location in our home, and it always looks basically the same way, with minor deviations. As mentioned in my post about our school work station, I’ve done my best to provide an environment that is conducive to SuperGirl’s learning by reducing distractions. Here are some tips on how to improve the location of where you homeschool your child with…

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Homeschooling Children with ADHD (and other kids, too) - Part 4: Methods of Teaching & Instruction

Homeschooling Children with ADHD (and other kids, too) – Part 4: Methods of Teaching & Instruction

If you sometimes feel like you are talking to a brick wall when you’re trying to teach your child with ADHD, maybe what you need is some out of the box thinking and a fresh way of looking at how to instruct your child. Here are a few ideas I hope will help you on your teaching journey!

Directions should be simple and short.

Multistep directions are hard for kids with ADHD, so allow one step to be…

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Homeschooling Children with ADHD (and other kids, too) - Part 3: Routine

Routine

There are tons of articles about there talking about how important routines are for kids with diagnoses like ADHD. Routine doesn’t mean strict scheduling with no room for flexibility or change. It does mean giving your child the confidence of knowing what the plan is: a typical order of how things go.  Routine is the key to your ADHD/neurodivergent child thriving in homeschool.

Consistenc…

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Homeschooling Children with ADHD (and other kids, too) - Part 2: Behavior Reinforcement

Just a reminder, you might find both Amazon affiliate and non-affiliate links in these posts. Affiliate means I might make a few dollars if you purchase items I’ve linked to which will most likely go towards keeping my blog running! 

Behavior Reinforcement:

Once rules are established (Part 1 posted yesterday), the next step is to determine how to deal with good and bad behaviors using rewards and…

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Homeschooling Children with ADHD (and other kids, too) - Part 1: Intro & Rules

Homeschooling Children with ADHD (and other kids, too) – Part 1: Intro & Rules

Introduction

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ve heard the story about how and why we started homeschooling. I have about 16 months experience in homeschooling a daughter with ADHD (‘SuperGirl’). Reading that, it doesn’t seem like much, but some days it feels like an eternity. (If you homeschool a child with ADHD you understand). We began homeschooling in the last four months of…

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Post-Thanksgiving Update

Hello everyone! SuperDad, SuperTeen, SuperGirl, and I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Or, just a good week if you are in a country, or you personally, don’t celebrate it!

We’re visiting my parents this weekend. SuperDad had to work Thanksgiving Day and Friday,  so we had a bit of a non-traditional Thanksgiving. I was thrilled! Non-traditional doesn’t bother me in the slightest!

We…

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Happy Thanksgiving!

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The Grass is Always Greener on the Other Side: 'Working Mom' vs. 'Stay-at-Home Mom'

The Grass is Always Greener on the Other Side: ‘Working Mom’ vs. ‘Stay-at-Home Mom’

First of all, don’t kill me for the title. I know, I know. Stay-at-home mom’s work just as much as those who leave the home to perform jobs. All moms are working moms. But those are the age-old titles for the two categories that society has put mothers in, and so we’re going to use those a bit as I discuss a little of my own history.

EARLY MEMORIES

Some of my earliest memories are of my mother…

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How to Be Friends with a Neurodivergent Child

How to Be Friends with a Neurodivergent Child

Just a few posts ago, I gave a brief but somewhat detailed explanation of what neurodiversity is, and what it means to be neurodivergent. I’m going to guess that you probably know a child (or adult) that is neurodivergent, or at least you may suspect they are. I understand that it can be awkward to figure out how to approach and associate with a child with neurodivergent diagnoses, so I’d like to…

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