Journal of a Busy Mom

living one day at a time

What is Dyslexia? Seminar

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Apart from your child having dyslexia, what do you know about it? As a parent, the more you know, the better equipped you will be to help your child manage its symptoms and create a reading and learning plan for school and future success.

Learning Ally is having  a webinar about dyslexia. I am not sure if you have to be a member. If you are unfamiliar with Learning Ally as I was up until October, Learning Ally is a national nonprofit with a defined approach to help support students with learning disabilities and their families. They provide audiobooks, kind of like audible.com. Please go to their website to see all they have to offer.

Dyslexia is a learning disability — the most common one — and there are certain interventions and accommodations that help make it manageable for your child.

  • What is dyslexia exactly?
  • Is your child broken?
  • How does dyslexia impact reading and learning?
  • What are its effects?
  • What interventions are there?
  • Where can you find the answers your child and your family need?

These questions and many more will be answered during Learning Ally’s “What Is Dyslexia?” webinar, being held on Thursday, March 27, 2014, at 12:00 noon and 3:00 p.m. Click here to get to their website.

High School Seminar Update

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I have become obsessed with planning my daughter’s high school course of study!

I attended a seminar this past weekend by Mary Schofield, author of  The High School Handbook: Junior and Senior High School at Home. It was an all day seminar of high school planning. I had read her book before so I kind of knew most of what she said, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t learn something new. So here are some tips for starting your high school journey.

  1. Find out what your state requires from homeschoolers. California allows private schools to decide their own course of stud.HSLDA and others suggest is to follow traditional high school tracks and what colleges look for. See that article here. I went to the California Department of Education to find my requirements.
  2. Decide how many credits you will require of your children. If California only requires 20 credits in science that doesn’t mean that my high schooler will only do 2 years of science. I decide what our bare minimum will be.  What I decide will be the minimum requirements for all students in our “school”.
  3. Decide what courses you will offer. Based on the credits you decided your child needs to complete, decide what courses your child will take. This is where it can change for each child. For example, my daughter will probably do several writing classes for her English Credits whereas my son, he will probably do more “Introduction to” Classes, etc.

So this is where I am at right now. I started my high school planning the minute I left the seminar. We are getting an early start on high school. She wants to start this summer so I need to have things thought out and in place by end of April!

By the way, HSLDA has a whole website dedicated to this topic! Check it out here.

Ligia

Gluten Free Croissants

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This recipe is adapted from the Living Without recipe here.

1 cup sorghum flour

1/2 cup chickpea flour

1/2 cup almond meal or additional flour

1 cup rice flour

1 cup cornstarch or tapioca starch/flour

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

4 teaspoons yeast

1/4 cup sugar

1 cup warm milk of choice or water

2 eggs (really 3 if you count the egg for the egg wash)

8 tablespoons butter, margarine melted

12 tablespoons cold butter or margarine cut into small pieces

1/2 cup fruit spread, warm, optional

Here is what I added:

cinnamon sugar

chocolate chips

IMG_26051. Combine first seven ingredients and blend well.

2. Scoop 1 cup of this flour mixture into a medium mixing bowl. Add yeast and sugar to this cup of flour mixture and blend thoroughly. Combine milk and eggs and add them to this mixture. Add melted butter and beat until smooth. Reserve.

3. In a separate bowl, cut cold butter into remaining flour mixture until butter pieces are the size of large peas. Pour liquid batter and stir or beat until moistened throughout. Cover and refrigerate for 4 hours or overnight.

IMG_2597

4. Remove dough from refrigerator and press into a compact ball on a surface that has been lightly covered with rice flour. Divide dough into 3 equal parts. Roll each third into a 12-inch circle with a rolling pin. Cut each circle into 8 pie-shaped wedges.

IMG_25995. Separate wedges and roll out each wedge through the length of the piece so that it is about 1/8th inch thick. Brush each wedge with warmed fruit spread if desired. Then roll up each wedge toward the point. Shape into a crescent by curving the edges.

6. Set croissants on an ungreased baking sheet or sheet lined with parchment paper. Cover with plastic and let them rise at room temperature until doubled. (This may take 2 hours if the room is cool).

7. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Brush each croissant wedge with egg beaten with cold water (this is called egg wash 1 egg combined with 2 Tbsp of cold water). Place croissants in preheated oven and immediately lower oven temperature to 350 degrees. Bake 15 to 20 minutes or until golden.IMG_2603

At step 5, instead of the fruit spread, I brushed melted butter, then sprinkled cinnamon sugar and added a few pieces of chocolate chips. Some, I only did the cinnamon sugar and once rolled up, brushed with butter again and sprinkled more cinnamon sugar.IMG_2606

IMG_2604This was my second time making these. The first time, I waited the 2 hours and my croissants did NOT double. Don’t know what I did wrong. This time, I was too IMPATIENT to wait 2 hours.  I will follow through next time.

Regardless, I think they tasted delicious.
I am sharing this recipe on Gluten Free Wednesdays.