First Day of School 2012

The Muller kids started school today!  We were about a week behind the rest of the neighborhood, but that flexibility is one of the joys of homeschooling!  We normally start the Monday after Labor Day, but the teacher got a bad cough that lasted for over a week and fell a bit behind schedule.  :)

One of the things on the schedule was some back to school shopping....

Set up some fun things on the kitchen table for them to see in the morn...

They were quite happy with what they saw. 

Caleb said to me "I thought today was gonna be boring, I didn't know we were getting presents!"  :)

Before breakfast - some fun coloring!

Kid's choice for breakfast....

Why Cheerios of course!

 Caleb asked for a picture with his presents...

 ...and Emma needed one too!

Dressed themselves... pretty good!

All dressed up and no place to go :)

Most days you will find us in jammies or sweats, but today was a special day!

Then we got to work! 

Caleb is working on mostly 3rd grade work and finishing up some 2nd grade work. (If he were in public school he'd be starting 2nd, so we're doing ok :)

Emma is starting with 1st grade this year.  (She'd be in Kindergarten)  Her learning style is quite different than Caleb's.  She seems to not get frustrated as easily as Caleb, but her attention span is a bit less focused than he was at her age.  

Love learning their little quirks... the fun has just begun!

(Sorry no pics of actual school, we just got busy and I forgot to keep snapping pis)

Eye doctor hat?

One afternoon, a couple years a ago, I noticed Caleb would occasionally mistake the color purple for blue or blue for purple. Growing up with a dad who is color blind I knew pretty quickly what this means.... MY BABY IS BLIND!
:o) Not really, but I did find out that day that Caleb is in fact colorblind. Looked up colorblind tests on the web and found some that both he and my dad ?failed? miserably.
Here's an example of one...

In this image if you see normally you will see a yellow square and a faint brown circle.
If you are colorblind you will only see a yellow square.

In this one, normal vision sees a 5
Colorblind individuals will see a 2 or extreme cases will see no number

In this one, normal vision won't find anything
Colorblind folks see... Well the website didn't say, I'll have to ask Caleb in the morn :)

The way normal folk see color

The way colorblinds see color :(
I'm not totally convinced this is how Caleb sees red, because he will identify red in some cases, though at times it does look brown. It's very interesting that some shades of color are no problem but a slight change in shade and it totally changes things.





We have come across some little hiccups in our homeschooling adventure where color is a bit of an issue. Like for example, at times his phonics book asks for him to color certain sounds in various colors to color in a picture...

On such pages I do not require neatness :)

Another subject affected by this is math. We do a curriculum called "Math U See" which uses manipulatives that are of course color coded :o/

So in this bunch there is the 7 manipulative that is a cream color, Caleb cannot see the difference between 7 and 9 -which is the mint green color. Also 5 -light blue and 6 -lilac. But this has not be as big of an issue as expected, he's just learned to look at the length not the color (which I see as kinda good anyway, since that's what maniplulatives are all about - seeing the numbers)















So these are just some examples of how life is affected by being colorblind... Nothing to inconvenient, yet...not looking forward to when he learns to drive! Just hoping he can tell the difference between stop and go lights!

Caleb quote: (reminding me after he got a color wrong) "Mom, I have colorblind." :)