Please share your daily routine

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Especially if you are homeschooling your child.

Please state age of child in your response and level of functionality. I need advise to structure my own days, hence the question. Thank you !

I don't homeschool.

I have a 7 year old AS/high functioning son and a 4 year old NT daughter. To be honest, *I* am the lowest functioning in my family.

But here is the gist (on a perfect day, which no day ever is, but here is that hypothetical planned day):

Before school
-kids do their morning "chores" (which mostly consist of getting ready for the day, but each has one small household chore also) these are on little laminated picture cards on a ring on a hook on their bed (on the back of each card is each step for doing the chore...which helped me show them how to do it initially)
-family breakfast at the table
-breakfast clean up, go to car for drop off

After school
*one day a week my daughter has violin lessons, and one day a week my son has chess club (wish they were on the same day!)
-put school things away and shoes, if desired (very, specific and convenient area for this)
-homework
-unstructured play time (it works fine now to do homework first, but in the past, my son needed an hour or more sandbox time after school to decompress)
-dinner at the table
-dinner clean up (used to have assigned chores, but now we just work together to get it done. I have little cards for every chore in the house, and anally take notes on who has been shown which chore and a firm belief that children shouldn't be expected to do chores that they don't actually know how to do or don't have the proper tools for. Everyone in the family knows how to do everything after dinner. Just working together is what works right now.)
-violin practice
-reading time (kids each read aloud to a parent, then a parent reads aloud while kids eat dessert)
-brush teeth and bath (if they need it)
-bed

7th grade son with AS - homeschooling on an online public school. He is pretty self-motivated, highly intelligent, though horribly organized.


Print of his daily plan and he picks the order he wants to complete tasks and numbers them. I print off any supplementals, highlight questions and assignments and help him place each one in the correct book/page, (he also has a journal type notebook for each class) to write his answers in. After each class, he takes a 5 to 10 minute break, and every two hours he takes a 15 minute break and takes the puppy outside. At lunch, he takes an hour break, does a chore, and then has some free time during that hour. After lunch he completes any work he has left. He sometimes has online classes too. He usually finishes about 2 o'clock. He takes Tae Kwan Doe 3 or 4 evenings a week for PE. During the day, I check work and sign him in for quizzes. BTW... we don't do every subject every day, just depends on the objectives and percent toward goal he is at in each class.

We go over any difficulty understanding when needed, which is rarely for him, even with complex math. He struggles most with Writing essays, writing paragraph responses, backing up his answers, poetry, and grammar/mechanics of writing.

I am not sure how much detail to provide.

When my son was in PS pre-k, he was in school for 1/2 day just to get accustomed to school, and it was SPED b/c of adaptive issues so there were basically zero academics as apparently being in SPED precluded this. I spent the other half of the day doing the academics, myself. We did what I think is considered a child-centered un-schooling approach, which basically means I winged it, based on the windows we had and his special interests. When he was put in inclusion the following year, we unschooled during the summers.

Because of all the c*ap last year, I had to basically undo all the damage they did, and so last summer was more relaxation oriented.

This was my first homeschooling year (3rd grade) and I had a fairly rigid schedule. We start at 7:30 AM, after his morning routine at 7. The first part of the morning, we do his favorite subjects so we start the day well. Right before lunch and right after lunch (middle of the day) we do his less favored subjects, and then the last part of the day is the creative stuff and P.E to wind down. We knock off at 3 PM, as per his old school schedule, b/c ... rigidity. That gives me plenty of time to shove in tons of downtime into all segments of the day. I don't have to stress about time at all, which I like. We have plenty.

We do homework at 3:30, and he is done at 4:30. He does not have an hour's worth of hw. He has an hour to do the day's assignment or it rolls over to the next day. I only assign 3 days worth of hw, so if he does it, no hw on Thursday,. If he does not complete it, he has hw on Thursday. Natural consequences and it keeps me from nagging.

Then he has off, other than dinner, and then he reads 30 min to an hour before his night routine.

DS is homeschooled, he is 8 and in 3rd grade. We do writing and spelling first, then we have an activity depending on the day, it can be zumba, chess club or friends over. After the activity he then finishes work, math, social studies, science, reading...then after school he has karate, social skills group or a friend over depending on the day.

that is the way short version...lol

I also have 2 other kids of my own and 1 more that I babysit, I spared you all their details!

Hey all, thanks for sharing your daily routine.

I am planning on home schooling, but I might opt for support services like OT & ST through the district, especially as insurance won't cover it. ASDMommy, your experience in the pre-K is pretty much what I have been told to expect, since my son is still nonverbal AND has limited receptive language. I was told he would be placed in a self contained class with a group of 10 other kids, with an adult : student ratio of 1 : 2.

I still have time to make up my mind about sending him to K later this year, but will probably hold him back, at least until he has some self help skills under his belt, AND is toilet trained on a schedule. I don't want the district writing goals for self help when they could work on academics instead. I am insistent on academics because if - God forbid - speech never emerges, I want him to be able to communicate at least via writing. ASL is a wash out, as well, due to dyspraxia, so basic literacy skills are top of my list of priorities now.

I realize that it has been a while since your children were in K, but would any of you happen to remember your IEP goals from K ? Just want to know for information's sake, in case the new district tries to pull a fast one on me.

Thanks again, everyone. Oh, and Dara, your "short version" was still very informative but do share your routine with the other kiddos, too ! !

I don't remember them specifically. They were largely centered around getting him to communicate and socialize in an expected fashion and to follow directives, as that was their biggest priority. If they felt a skill overlapped with the general state goals for his grade they would try not to include it in the IEP, even if he was behind in it. (Unless it was a goal meant for their convenience and was designed to hold -him- accountable) If he was behind in something, that I was aware of, I made them put it in order to track progress.

The hardest part for me was the subjectivity involved in any goal that was not actually tested with a real test. There was a lot of ASDKid will do y skill successfully x out of of z tries. This was not counted , but instead estimated, and was totally subjective. Anytime a therapist changed or he changed grades, comparisons were not even plausible.

The main thing to remember is you are supposed to be an equal member on the team. So figure out what -your- priorities are and make sure they include them even if they whine about their software giving them trouble with custom goals or whatever. They had a lot of boilerplate language that they would decide included my concern in some roundabout way. If I wanted something measured I tried to make them rewrite it in a way that measured it directly. It was a PITA.

I found calling pre-IEP meetings, as advised here to do, was very helpful. I asked for their proposals in writing first so I could evaluate them beforehand. This created more work for them, but it saved time during the meeting, which was important to those not directly involved in the sausage-making as well as to myself. They still would try to sandbag me with changes, but at the very end I basically told them I wanted everything beforehand or I would not sign anything. (I knew at that point we were probably homeschooling, so I wasn't too afraid of repercussions) Regardless, I did not want to be surprised.

Here are the IEP goals for my 4yr when he went into the school's HFA preschool class. I was fine with all the goals, though the school is way too into eye contact. However my little guy doesn't seem upset by eye contact and can give great eye contact when he wants. They were all broken into 3 progressive steps and were measurable. We already have gotten our first trimester report which wasn't super detailed but gave enough info and we had a brief phone meeting to review which was great. He has had progress in each goal and even met and exceed the goal in a couple. I know it is a lottery when it comes to classes, even in the same school district, but mine is great, at least for my guy at this point. Maybe it will be the same for you. Not all school experiences are bad.

IEP Goals
*Follow 2 step directions w/ minimal prompts during structured and unstructured time
*Id 10 objects in each functional categories, totaled about 80 objects
*Use 1-3 word phrases for pragmatic functions during the class(help, more, greeting, requesting and protesting)
*Increase pragmatic skill(respond with eye contact, initiate eye contact, say someone’s name to get their attention)
*Initiate turn taking with minimal prompts

My daughter no longer had an IEP in kindergarten, but she did do 2 years of formal preschool and had a 1:1 and IEP both years, so the second year might be helpful. I don't remember her IEP goals in specific and we are mid-move so I have no idea where they are, but I know they had to do with initiating peer interactions (she had to initiate a certain number each day, whether to join in existing play, initiate play, ask a question...whatever, she just had to start it), sustaining conversations (I don't remember how many, but there was a number of exchanged ideas that was the target, that didn't have to be with a peer, it could be with an adult), remaining at the table when presented with non-preferred foods (her baseline was bolting from the room if anyone at her table had anything on their plate that she did not like and she is a picky eater, so that was pretty much everything), appropriately asking for a break when overstimulated, and I am sure there was something related to losing graciously/sportsmanship and this is still an issue for her and I don't know if we will ever get past it. The rest of the things she is probably on the "low" end of "normal," but when it comes to sportsmanship and navigating real-time interactions that are not positive, she has real difficulty (although that is not pertinent to your question.)

So my oldest who is homeschooled has always gotten services from the district. It started with speech and OT, then social group, then just speech and OT, this year just OT and next year NO SERVICES! But if you homeschool they still HAVE to give you services if your kid qualifies. You just might have to bring him to the school, which is what I do.

My DD is in pre school so in the AM I get all the kiddos ready, fed and dressed...while DS id starting schoolwork. We then have out morning activity depending on the day, then M/W/F my DD has school so we drive her there, then come home so DS can finish schoolwork while I feed and change the babies, and try to clean, make him lunch. Then off to get DD from school, and then we come back home, wait for my friend to come get her baby, or take the baby with us to karate. Depending on the day we go from karate for both big kids to social group for DS, or just do their karate then come home, PJs, dinner and ready for bed! WHEW!

I doubt you'll be able to get many academic goals into the IEP if he has limited receptive and expressive communication. After all, how can they measure how he is progressing in learning to read if he doesn't have a way to output his understanding? I think you may have more luck pushing goals for communication, at least for the IEP. If you're homeschooling, at least you'll be able to make sure he is presented with the academics, even if you can't yet tell whether it is sinking in or not.

I think it is hard to get in academic goals anyway b/c the argument would be it is part of the grade's curriculum, and therefore not necessary. I had a heck of a time getting -social goals- that were considered part of the K curriculum for that reason. The only reason I got those in was because I successfully argued that they needed to be carefully monitored due to ASD. At the K level, I don't know if they would include academic goals regardless of language level, but i could be wrong.