Hormones, the Sun, and a Cheiroscope

Last week I talked about our slow-moving progress. This week, I may need to mention the slow-moving child, or should I say young man, or is it pubescent adolescent? Sheesh. Couple that with a little mom-type PMS and what a time we've had!

Three weeks ago when we started homeschooling, I told friends who were amazed by my energy that it would last about three weeks. It's been three weeks. I know myself that well. Never fear. I will plod ahead, making grace-filled amends for the molasses moments, keeping my eye on the reason we're doing this. If he is this goofy and distracted at home, how much worse would it have been in a classroom?

If you saw my last post, you would have noted that our friend, at least my friend, the sun has arrived in force. Longer days, better weather. It's all good for us here. Not bad for business either. :-) (If you wonder what we do, visit http://espoutdoor.com.)

In a bit of bummer news, we visited our Vision Therapist, Dr. Curtis Newcomb at Shasta Professional Eyecare, where he conducted a bit of refresher testing. I want to incorporate some of his VT exercises in our daily work and wondered which would be the most effective. SJ is suppressing his left eye again when he reads--not too badly, thankfully, but still. It's never fun to move backward. So, it's back to the cheiroscope which, I have to say, is probably one of our favorite exercises. Well, at least I think it's fun.

Here is a picture of the contraption we use:

He looks through the eyeholes in the top and this is what he sees:

If you will notice in the first photo, the little drawing is clipped to the side of the cheiroscope but the image is reflected by a little mirror as you can see in the second photo. SJ folds a piece of paper in quarters, puts it under the image, tries to center the image on the paper, and has to trace what he sees with a pencil. This is one of the beginner images. They get more detailed as he improves. He has to draw this four times: left eye, right hand; left eye, left hand; (turn the chieroscope) right eye, right hand; right eye, left hand. If he is suppressing, the image will disappear and I use the tip of a colored pen to mark the spot and help him regroup his vision. I know from our first round of therapy that the drawings will go from rudimentary to neat and balanced. It's a pretty cool progression to watch.

Our final dilemma this week came as we were feeling all smug about finally disconnecting our phone land line. We realized, too late, that our Tivo relied on our phone line. We are in danger of missing important and educational shows such as American Idol and my personal favorite, Millionaire Matchmaker. :-) I know many of you would be thrilled to ditch the TV altogether but in our home, especially as we approach July (Tour de France)--not an option. Now we must decide whether to go with Dish TV or Direct TV. Really saved money by disconnecting, didn't we? Oh well. We are all pretty excited about the prospect of having Discovery Channel as we've had only the very very basic cable plan for years.