Like Peanut Butter and Chocolate

We would be lost at this point without IXL.com and Khanacademy.org. When we started using them both several years ago, I thought we were just having fun. I never realized I would rely on them for Alex's education. Alex has pretty much given up on school. He promised himself throughout kindergarten that first grade would be more challenging and that he would find it interesting. But here he is, into his fifth week of school, and his disappointment at the lack of educational challenges has left him deflated. Every morning I have to hear his complaints about what a waste of time it is to go to school. I'm not entirely sure what the answer is to our dilemma in the long term (private school?), but thanks to IXL and Khan Academy, I have the tools to teach math to Alex in ways I could never do on my own (he is actually surpassing me in math at this point...), challenge him to work on his own in very rewarding programs (you earn stars and banners flash at you with words of praise), and allow him to soar. "Yes," I tell him. "School is boring right now, because you aren't yet in your place. You haven't found your people. Why don't you help the other kids catch up with you. And when you get home, we'll do the real learning." He sighs. "We'll work on converting fractions to percentages," I promise. He cheers up slightly. "Well, at least I have music today," he concedes. "Maybe I'll win another participation award." Thank goodness for music class.

Run 7 for 7! with Alex

Alex will be turning 7 next week. I remember on his first birthday how I breathed a sigh of relief because we had gotten through that first, hard year. Now that he is older, he is able to articulate how his body feels, whether he is sick or has a headache, if his limbs or back hurt from the pull of cerebral palsy, and he can share his frustrations and triumphs. As a baby, we just had to guess if his crying meant serious problems and pain. We had one trip to the ER that was completely unnecessary, and one horrible night when we realized we should have taken him to the ER days before. This year, as we celebrate all that Alex has overcome, we are doing what Alex loves most, running. Join us during the week of September 23-28th, for our Baby Alex Foundation event, Run 7 for 7! to help us raise money for pediatric brain injury research and support. Alex will be out there every morning running before school and participating in this event. He will also be having sugarfree cake and sugarfree ice cream and doing what 7 years olds do on their birthday, opening gifts with friends. For more info, visit our donation page: . Thanks for running with us.

Go Team MAD!

The Baby Alex Foundation was fortunate to have been chosen to be the 2014 recipient of the fundraising efforts of Team Making a Difference (Team MAD). This team of runners races the Hartford Marathon each year and raises money for a worthy non-profit that is doing something to change the lives of individuals in CT. The donation will go directly toward funding our first Alex's Library project at the CT Children's Medical Center NICU in Hartford. If you are a runner, help us raise money by joining Team MAD this year. To join, go to www.goteammad.org. The team provides fun training runs, a t-shirt and pre-race party. We hope to see you there!

The Value Tree on TV

If you live outside the Fairfield County vicinity and have any interest in learning more about my publications, The Value Tree series, tune in on September 2nd at 1:30pm or 10pm to www.soundviewtv.org, and click on the top left icon "on air", to hear my most recent interview with Herbie Bagwell. We take a brief look at the lessons and discuss the importance of teaching values to our children. For those in Fairfield County, the interview will air on local access TV on the 2nd, at 1:30pm and 10pm. Thanks for watching!

The Run Baby Run Baby Ultra

The inaugural Run Baby Run Baby Ultra was awesome! The race took place on August 9th in the beautiful lakes region of New Hampshire. We had 25 enthusiastic runners, including a team of kids, and loads of supporters. A huge thank you goes out to The Poor People's Pub in Sanbornville, NH, where the race started and ended. The Pub provided us with an indoor space for registration, lots of prizes for our raffle, pizza and sodas for our post-race party and a cheering squad. Thank you, thank you, thank you Poor People's Pub! We packed about 50 people into the back party room for an hour of eating, drinking and prize-giving. Our sponsors donated loads of gift certificates for our first place winners and fundraisers. This was our second highest fundraiser of the year, and we hope to grow it next year to be the biggest.

Coconut Oil - Fuel for Thought

Alex had a good summer, a complete 180 from last summer when we were still trying to figure out his nutritional needs. Over the last 12 months, we have figured out his diet (at least we think we have) and have gotten much better at following it. If he gets off the diet, as he often does while traveling, we are usually able to get him back up to his normal energy level after a day or two. One of our miracle foods is coconut oil. For the past year, I have been cooking everything in it: french fries, popcorn, pancakes, everything. I also add it to everything I can think of: pie crust, pizza dough, bread, cookies, muffins, smoothies, etc. It's nutty and sweet and is easy to get used to. There is a new product on the market I haven't yet tried, but which looks very promising. It's called Fuel for Thought. It's a small drink, made of coconut oil and some sweeteners (and probably some other stuff, because try as I might, I can not replicate it at home). My only problem with it is that it is too high in sugar for Alex to safely consume at school, when I am not around to monitor his sugar intake. I have written to the company and am hoping they come out with a version fit for epileptics, and everyone else who suffers a disorder that worsens with an increased sugar intake.

Mommy Summer School

I've had loads of inquiries about summer school this year, so I'm setting out our schedule here. We have had a lot of camp this summer, first with 3 weeks of cerebral palsy camp for Alex and day camp for Izzy and then another week of lacrosse camp for both kids. During camp weeks, I don't worry about teaching anything. I just try to read with them at night. Now that camp is over and we have 4 straight weeks to be together, we have our summer school schedule worked out. This summer our theme is Greek Gods and Mythology. I purchased the student copy of Greek Gods through Calvert Education. Calvert is a private school in Baltimore that has a homeschool division. I find that my kids are ahead of their grade level by at least a year with the Calvert products, but you can give your kids an online test to see where they are. I jumped ahead to the 4th grade supplemental materials and purchased the Greek God curriculum. It's simple, clear and comes with fun pictures to color. During the first part of the summer, I read 2-3 stories aloud each day while the kids colored the gods from the stories. We discussed the stories and reviewed what we had read, talked about where we often see Greek Mythology (Harry Potter), and related some of the stories to our lives. Once we finished the book, we went back to review them and create our own gods. So, our Monday-Thursday goes: I. Greek Gods (our Greek Gods curriculum from Calvert supplemented with free videos, mostly from YouTube, about specific gods - on Mondays they design a poster about a favorite god, on Tuesdays they create a poster of a new god from their imagination, on Wednesday they are doing clay art where they make the gods out of clay and on Thursday, they finish up their projects and practice their presentations which they give on the weekend to their dad), II. Language Arts (various early reader books, rhyming books, poetry, etc--the kids read, write and draw about what they read, write in their journals, write down words they know or don't know, create their own poetry, etc), III. Math (from Singapore math, purchased online, mostly workbooks, or IXL online math with Kahn Academy to supplement) - then we take a big break to run, swim, etc. In the afternoon, we have a babysitter who is also a preschool teacher, who is teaching the last two lessons: IV. Values (straight from The Value Tree Summer School Series Volume I, which means they will cover 10 values this month, draw pictures and keep journals on their efforts to live a value-based life) and V. Art (mostly watercolors this summer). Fridays are called Science Fridays and they are all about math and science. I bought several science kits and we will work our way through these. Plus, we are listening to Brain On!, a free podcast for kids, about topics related to our science kits. I've adopted podcasts this summer and am in love with them! There are so many amazing podcasts out there. If your kids are older, and they love science, Science Fridays is awesome. I love listening to podcasts while running too! Great for entertaining kids in the car too, if you have long holiday drives. I love sharing Mommy School, so if you have questions, shoot me an email rather than a blog comment at: nickyschmidt@gmail.com.