I relish getting to know homeschoolers and the amazing things they do at home! Don't you? ;)
Here's one amazing young man! See what he can do with scissors and tape! (and lots of recycled boxes and cartons and paper....) I am truly truly impressed with his battleship armada! You'll be even more surprised as you read on...
Yes, he looks slightly crazed in this photo with his scissors and tape. Haha... But he's is somewhat like a "mad scientist". I mean it in the best way! ;)
God made J really special. In an over simplified summary of things, J is autistic. I believe, the decision to homeschool J must have been fraught with fear of the unknown and doused with heaps and heaps of prayer. But I believe that his parents have found a good working solution for the education of their son. He has turned out very well, being in his early teens now. A delightful young man!
From very early, J spent a few hours daily at Heritage Learning Centre for socializing skills. He is handled patiently, lovingly and firmly by the Christian teachers there. Then he spends time with his mom and dad at home.
If you know about autistic people, they tend to latch on to a particular subject matter and dig deep into it, reading, memorizing and searching out more information. For J, it is his deep love for (generally speaking) machines that move. He can quote tons and tons and tons of info on cars, space shuttles, battleships, etc, etc. I had the interesting time with him while travelling home one time. Everytime we passed a sports car, he would tell me the name, the year of the make of the car, any race wins, which year, etc. etc. etc. Astounding.
At the last Heritage year-end presentations, standing on the stage and before an audience of more than 30 parents and children, he presented his powerpoint slide show of his project on space shuttles. He spoke off the cuff, rattling off all the information. He sounded like a professor.
I believe this attests to the amount of exposure to reading he does at home. He gets to grow in the area where he best excels instead of being pegged by the school system that will reward "all-rounder" students (instead of "specialists", who asperger's children tend to be.)
So if you look closely at each of his ships, you will find that they are actually replicas of actual US battleships and air craft carriers, with the number of (toothpick) guns and all the other details!!! In his words, Most of the battleships are based on real ships so are the cruisers but the destroyers are of fiction design and Most of the weaponry are based on star trek weapons
and i read about the battleships in JANES' Battleships of the 20th century
How long did it take for him to make these replicas? He says cruisers and destroyers would take 2 to 3 hours to build while aircraft carriers would take 2 hours since they are easily to be build.
The above is a picture of Dauntless.
The sub is Seadog SSBN-744.
Impressive, right?
Amazing young man and great that homeschooling has benefitted him so much. Praise God! :)
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