Sensory Friendly Guide to Hurricanes

A little humor to go along with the stress and mess of Hurricane Irma! By the fifth and sixth of September, most Floridians were in serious Hurricane supply and stock up mode.  It went from a calm and fun Labor Day weekend to a straight havoc and mayhem!  Monday, no work and holiday.  Tuesday, everyone…

5 Ways Public Schools Fail Special Needs Children

original blog post: How Schools Fail Special Needs Children In my original post regarding how the school system fails special needs children my primary focus was around communication.  Communication on multiple levels and capacities.  I have refined my list for five ways our public schools are failing special needs children. Thinking one size fits all…

Stop Classroom Behavior Charts

I already dislike behavior charts that rank or rate children based on a color wheel and was planning to write this post all week.  Then Friday evening I hear my (typical) daughter playing with her toys in the bathtub.   She is playing and then I hear her say, “You have to be nice or…

Back to School: What to do when the Going Gets Tough

We are going on week two for school, really only day three come Monday and teachers have to hit the ground running teaching students how to follow rules, procedures and schedules then add the curriculum content and all the mandatory pre-testing, benchmark testing and assessing required.  I teach high school and am completely outnumbered and…

Tips to Transition Back to School

Heading back to school this month?!  Florida schools are. When school starts, I feel that there is a lot of stress surrounding the event.  When you are starting a new school or even moving up a grade to a new teacher kids can be nervous, excited, scared or disinterested.  I started thinking about this topic…

A Sensory Friendly Guide to Sea World

Sea World (Orlando) has been awesome for our family!  Sea World gives out teacher passes to all state educators and we take advantage of going at least once a year.  The other great deal is that from year to year Busch Gardens and Sea World offer a preschool pass, the pass gives children five and…

Summer Swim Safety

It’s summer time!  Time to cool off in the pool. When you have kids with or without special needs, we all have those worries about drowning.  There are always more concerns about children with autism that have a history or a tendency to wander.  There are strict rules about enclosing pools but kids are very…

The Greener Grass

The grass is greener on the other side… the perspective and belief that what others have is better than your situation.   How often you have these thoughts?   Confession.  I do have these thoughts in relation to my life.  It most certainly always relates to my special needs child and our family.  I don’t…

File Intent for the McKay Scholarship

The deadline to file for intent to use the McKay Scholarship is July 3, 2017 for the 2017-2018 100% award amount.  Parents have to file for intent by July but the paperwork for admission and enrollment at their private school by August 2nd. Just because you file intent does not mean that you have to…

Learning Through The Mistakes

Pretty sure that I have made a big and costly mistake!  Can you help me fix it?! So, this McKay Scholarship is all tricky and complex!  There are all these rules and processes and no real human to walk you thru the system.  It’s one thing to just file intent and fill out some private…