The golden opportunity of summer
is the perfect time to
identify, explore, and encourage
your homeschool child's special gifts.
Erin Peterman,
who serves as a
Homeschool Iowa Special Needs Advisor,
encourages you to use this special season
to its best advantage.
The golden opportunity of summer is here, and my sidekick and I stand in our milkweed bed. We are as still as possible, because a monarch butterfly flutters around us, and we are mesmerized.
I am somewhat obsessed with
monarch butterflies.
Every year, I nurture my milkweed, hunting for eggs and raising caterpillars through the creepy-crawly stage to chrysalis, until we release butterflies into the sky.
My sidekick – my daughter – is right by my side. She helps gather milkweed leaves, caring for the single monarch egg laid on each.
Lessons from the Monarch
Yesterday, I watched her in my milkweed bed, standing stock still as a monarch flew around sipping nectar and laying eggs. It reminded me of all the things we’ve learned about: development stages, ecosystems, predators, and migratory patterns.
As a mom of special needs children, I have known the temptation to use the summer as a time to “catch up” – to have year-round school with no breaks to try and achieve some magical grade level.
But the butterflies are a lesson in what’s important.
Discovering Special Gifts
All of my children are gifted, even if some of them will never receive advanced test scores or stellar grades.
Without taking the time to learn from real life,
how would I know what my children’s gifts are?
I could lament the test scores or the fact that their curriculum levels are not "where they should be.” But those numbers are not who my kids are.
Children are blessings from God
whose value can’t be measured
on any standardized test.
Where on that test is my daughter’s knowledge of monarchs? Or the fact that she memorizes every illustrator of every book she reads, or how she, by ear, somehow knows what key every song is written in? God did that.
So, as a mom of special needs children, I encourage you to take the time to develop your child’s gifts. Those are found in real life, not in tests.
The golden opportunity of summer is the perfect time to relax and encourage those gifts and passions (or maybe even obsessions) that we have. And, as you begin to identify them, you can consider how to develop them throughout the rest of the year as well.
Releasing the Love of Learning
As a homeschooling parent, you hold a privileged position.
You see into your child’s giftedness in a way no one else does. Rather than lamenting for what the educational bureaucrats miss, recognize how God has gifted your children, and lean into that.
Besides, you'll find that pursuing endless school is an easy way to squelch the love of learning.
Trust me. There’s no better way to spend your golden opportunity of summer than with dirty feet in a milkweed patch.
Erin Peterman
Erin is a wife and stay-at-home homeschooling mom to three of her five children, two of whom have graduated from high school. Three of her children have special needs, and she has gained extensive experience in meeting special learning challenges and adapting a homeschool educational setting to the needs of special learners.
Using these experiences, Erin serves as one of our Homeschool Iowa Special Needs Advisors. She has also been a presenter for one of our Homeschool Iowa Conference Make & Take workshops offering training on how to create lapbooks. Erin has also shared her creative ideas for "Gameschooling" on our Homeschool Iowa blog.
MORE FROM OUR WEBSITE:
