The First Month

So it's officially been a month since the start of this school year.  Activities are continuing to trickle in, we have all our curriculum, and are starting to get into a groove.

So where are we:

Chris has settled into his schedule at school.  He LOVES his Math and English teachers.  He has been getting the math teacher to post homework assignments in advance so he can work on them early because he is finding them easy at this point.  He has gotten nothing less than a 90% on his quizzes and the teacher was even giving out extra credit questions on one that were designed specifically for him.  Talk about awesomeness!  He has just turned in his first major paper, a movie review, in his English class.  I really like that the teacher took time to see his beginning work and give feedback and then has the kids bring in several copies of a rough draft a week before the final draft is due to get feedback from him and other students.  Great way of helping them!  I'm excited to see how he did on this one and how he does in this class a teacher that, at this point, seems so supportive. I mean hey, this guy was bringing up old Schoolhouse Rock songs in class which when he couldn't remember them totally, Chris helped him out with and then he went and found it on You Tube and played it for the class.  You can't get much cooler than that!

Matthew is still struggling to balance everything.  His Civics class first couple of assignments consisted of three 2-3 page essays.  Instead of talking to me about it, he kind of let it slide out of view.  It didn't take long for me to catch on to it so we discussed it and came up with the workable solution of a good paragraph for each part of each question the was supposed to write an essay on so it comes out to about 1page per question rather than 2-3 which made it more manageable with everything else he has going on.  Of course, as we are working through that, he gets sick again and is in bed for several days unable to even read so now we are behind schedule on things yet again.  Some things can sort of get caught up but some things can't.  Going to have to have a discussion with him on how to handle it going forward.

Jonathan is continuing to excel at what he loves and balk like a stubborn mule at anything he has gotten into his brain as being "too hard".  This definitely includes writing.  I think because the mechanical process of writing was so hard for him for so long that he just remembers it being hard and has now decided that the entire process is super difficult and he can't do it.  His resource specialist and I keep plugging away at this but it's hard as it ultimately has to be something that he realizes.  Until that time, we just keep trying.  Now if only we could figure out someway to keep him from forgetting everything everywhere as he left his swimsuit at swim class 2wks ago and his backpack with his science materials at clay class last week.  Ugh!

Nicholas is just excelling at everything right now and is actually the easiest of all the kids to deal with (such a change from all other areas of his life).  He has the attitude of "This is easy so let's get it done quickly so I can go play" which is what I've always told the kids.  He reminds me of what hasn't gotten done and is quick to pull it out.  He is reading well and almost through box 2 of Hooked on Phonice (1st grade level).  He loves his math and blazes through that each day and is starting to read most of the ordinal numbers phonetically which is amazing to me. He's already figured out that when he's sounding something out if it sounds off but familiar that it's likely this other word he knows.  His memory is also incredible.  We've been doing these animal worksheets as part of his science and after one reading he can generally answer the questions and I just underline the part so he can copy it down on the sheet.  He remembers a lot of the details from his Five in a Row books as well and we can go to the library and he'll see a previous Five in a Row book and tell me about it (and usually insist that we check it out again).  I remember what a struggle all these things were for Jon so it's a relief and a joy that Nick has such an easy time of it.