A Couple of Big Deals & Week 3 wrap-up

Chris ~ Got his first math test back this week and got 9/10 correct.  Woohoo!  He's enjoying the math class and actually went so far as to ask the teacher to put up assignments ahead of time so if he has time, he can work slightly ahead if he understands the material.  He's also got what looks to be a really good fit for his English class.  He had that paper due the first couple of days of class and then the teacher met with all the students this week to go over the papers.  Lots of constructive criticism where he marked out the points he really liked and thought were good and asked questions where things were unclear.  No nitpicking things.  I'm sure that will come but they are also addressing a lot of that in the class as well.  He does things like have you bring in rough drafts to go over with your peers a week before the final draft is due and you can get appointments with him in the writing lab to make sure you are on the right track with what he wants.  What a blessing after his last attempt at this class.  I think it was his English teacher that showed up at his Competitive Gamers Club meeting this week as well.  Really think this is going to be a great semester for him!


Nico ~ Started the second half of the orange Hooked on Phonics workbook.  Couldn't believe it when I showed him the sound cards for it and he sailed right through figuring them out.  They were all beginning blends and he had no problem and started in on the words.  He's been sailing through all the concepts I've introduced so far in his math as well and when we do his animal worksheets, he has no problem answering questions afterward.  He just continues to blow me away with how quickly he picks things up.

Matthew ~ Is continuing to plug along and is keeping up with all his courses so far.  We have a bit of discussion to do but so far I'm keeping up on grading his papers as well.

Jonathan ~ is working hard most of the time.  Our biggest hurdle right now are his own mental blocks where he is asked to do something that he has decided is too hard.  Mostly this pertains to writing and I think stems from the time when handwriting was so difficult for him that he hated the physical process of writing and while we've dealt with that, he now just has a block about writing anything.  His resource specialist and I are doing what we can to help him get over this but it's hard.  Otherwise, he's been doing well and I'm happy to see that his spelling is improving at least in his lessons.  Unfortunately, since he is still working his way through the first book, there haven't been enough words to really make a difference in his writing.  *sigh*  We continue to work on it tho.

This coming week is going to be fun as Nick's soccer starts up and clay class for Matt, Jon, and Nick starts as well.  All of it on Tuesday.  Ugh!

Week 2 recap

Had our first meeting of the year with our ES.  Matthew now has his Civics and Physical Science books and the 8th grade grammar for once he's done with 7th grade.  Jonathan also now has his 5th grade science so this will be the first week for both of them having all their courses.  Yay!

Nick is loving the Horizons Math and continues to generally be very easy to work with.  He'll generally sit down and just knock everything out quickly and if we are home or somewhere he can in the morning, he'll be done by lunch.  What's more amazing is that I had Matthew help me a bit with him this week so instead of doing Hooked on Phonics, Matthew had him read Hop on Pop aloud.  He did it!  Even words like Constantinople and Timbuktu!  So proud of my little guy.

We are still trying to figure out a good writing program for Jon.  He's working with a resource specialist to try and bring his writing skills up to grade level but it's a struggle.  They are going back to basics again with subject and predicate.  *sigh*  I wish this stuff wasn't so hard for him.  Looking into different things right now and there may be some back and forth between therapy and home which is fine...so long as I can find a few more hours to work on it with him since he absolutely loathes writing so it's always a struggle to get him to do it.

Matthew is plugging away.  He's complaining about LotR and how can it possibly take 3 chapters for them to get from one end of the shire to the other.  "All they do is walk!!!" I frequently hear wailed from the other room.  I get to laugh.  It's good for him tho.  He can't always have his way with the main character being attacked and stabbed in the first chapter.  Poor guy.

Chris has been doing well in his math course.  Got his first quiz back today with a 9/10 which is great.  He does his homework online and gets immediate feedback on if it's correct or not so he can retry it if it's wrong so that's wonderful for him.  Still haven't heard how he did on his first paper in the English class.  He's currently doing the research for the next paper which is a movie review on Deep Blue Sea.  Need to talk to him about getting a plan together on when to have each step completed by.

In all tho, the school year is going well so far.  I can only hope it continues this well as we go forward.  We still have a few activities left to add in so we'll see how that shapes things as we go.

2nd week in progress

 Yesterday was super busy with running around but we did manage to get almost all schoolwork accomplished.  Today was only a touch less busy so I asked Matt to help out a bit with Nick.

Yeah, he's a big help.  LOL

 A few days ago I had promised little chef that we would make cookies.  We were given the Trader Joe's sugar cookie mix for Christmas so he pulled that out and prepared it on Sunday so today I kept my promise and we working on culinary skills like flouring a board and rolling pin and how to get the right thickness of dough.

 And of course, the mechanics of the cookie cutters that can produce such cool Star Wars characters. LOL

 Such concentration...I can only wish he was like this with his regular schoolwork.

But thankfully, these two can actually sometimes settle down and get it done.  Gives me hope for all of them.

End of Week 1, Only 34 more to go

Here we are at the end of the 1st week of the 2011-12 school year.  Here's a recap:

Chris ~ Was looking pretty dicey for him getting into all the classes he wanted at CSM but as of today he is enrolled in all 3 for a total of 10units.  He has already completed his first math assignment and has his first 4page essay due on Monday.  He also still has to complete the accounting work for me from last school year.  Ugh!

Matt ~ Still trying to finish up a few classes from last year and behind for the week as he got nothing done while housesitting and then exhausted from housesitting thus killing two days of the school week.  He's working hard to try and get things done but he'll be working this weekend to catch it up.

Jon ~ Got most things done.  Completed 5th Grade math in Aleks and has been bumped up to 6th.  Missed spelling 2 days this week so he'll be doing it this weekend.  Also didn't get any Prairie Primer in so we'll have to figure out why that's not happening and remedy that.

Nick ~ Progressing nicely with everything.  Even did a page in his animal workbook today on caribou.  We found Italy on a map and learned a couple of words in Italian and some great new vocabulary words.  He's been eager to get to work and get everything done as quickly as possible most days which helps a lot.  Here's hoping that it continues!

Things are coming together

Had Jon's OT do a quick evaluation of Nicholas to see if we need to really push for a full evaluation at this point.  Thankfully she said that he's age appropriate and while there are a few things, it's nothing we would get services for.  She gave me a few things to do with him, some thicker pencils to help improve his grip, and will check again in a few months to see how he's progressing.

Started Horizons Math with Nicholas this afternoon.  He was using the new pencils and apparently they are doing the job as after half a lesson he was complaining of his hand hurting.  That was the bad news.  The good news was that he needed only a little help, mostly on ordinals that he couldn't sound out and the whole concept of the crossword puzzle since he'd never done one before.

In other good news, Chris did manage to get into the English class.  The bad news on that, he has a 3-4 page essay due on Monday.  Yes, the one that is coming up.  Thankfully it's on what he perceives as his strengths and weaknesses so it sounds like the teacher is trying to get an idea of where the students are at.  It still means that I get to try and find time to help with some revision this weekend.

Could have been better news

Chris started back at CSM today for the fall semester.  He was waitlisted for three classes.  He got into his Body Conditioning class with no problems.  He looks good for getting into the Intermediate Algebra class and will find out for sure on Friday.  English is a problem tho.  The instructor said that the class is full and no waitlisted students are getting in.  He advised them to go be pitiful to the Lang Arts department in hopes of getting a new class going and try back again tomorrow to see if he scared any students away today.  Chris will be trying the second option first but I may tell him to try the first if the second doesn't work.  I do have some English stuff I can do with him here but it's a major pain as it puts us in a bad position for next semester. Not awful, but not where we were hoping to be.  Not sure if there is any way for him to get into any other classes at this point either.  If things don't work out tomorrow, I may have to look into that option.

Not much of a 2nd day

Tuesdays are going to be one of those days were very little book learning happens.  By the time we get up to speed on all the activities, J&N will be in activities from 8:45a-3p straight.  Makes it kind of hard.  We aren't there yet but had other stuff fill in for it today.

So school looked something like this:

• Get J&N ready for swim, wake other kids up
• Leave Matt to do history reading before he went to housesit and Chris to work on accounting while I take J&N to swim
• Finish up with swim, go to grocery store and realize I don't have the coupons I need. Run other misc errands instead
• Drop J off at speech and take N to library to renew library cards and put a hold on some books for N's Five in a Row
• Come home to get lunch and help C find accounting error. J did some typing practice and reading.
• Drop C at dentist and take J&N to do grocery shopping. Taught them about economics (ie. You get this cereal because it's on sale and with coupons it's only $.99 whereas that cereal you are asking for is not on sale and I don't have coupons so it's $4.59 which I'm not paying).
• Teach kids about time management when I have C walk to the grocery store from dentist as that saves me having to drive to library to pick him up there when we have other places to go from grocery store.

After that, it was gaming over at a friend's house which consisted mostly of me learning I read the last campaign wrong and gave them way too many big creatures to go up against which is why 2 of them died.  *shrug*  They came back to life and now they are dealing with the consequences of my actions.  That's what we call a valuable life lesson.