Settling In

Well, here we are near the end of "Week 3" in the official school year! Overall, things have been going smoothly. Cadence has not been feeling well, but she went to visit the doctor Tuesday, and they couldn't find a thing wrong with her...I guess it is all allergies - I know my have been acting up this week.

Jacob was struggling with his behavior in the mornings (by about 10:00 he would be settled in and doing fine). It was every morning, usually before we had started school work, and it was making me crazy. He didn't act like this all summer, but then I remembered that last year getting him to school every day was a nightmare for this same reason. So what is the trigger? I don't know - I don't think that school work is stressing him out, on the contrary he seems to enjoy it. Today he has actually been good all day - and now that I have said that, some horrible thing will happen.

Academically, things couldn't be better. I was a little worried about math because when I gave him the placement test (which I didn't do until after I bought the curriculum) he didn't even come close to placing in Saxon math 3. This threw me for a loop, because math is one of his strongest subjects. Last year the teacher went on about how good he was at math - that he would have a concept figured out as soon as she introduced it and the rest of the class would need to be walked through the stuff to figure it out. He is incredibly good with patterns and memorizing facts and stuff like that. All of that to say, he is kicking butt in math. I didn't realize he was supposed to have a test today until (during our lesson) I got to the part of the teacher's manual that says "give students Assessment #2". And don't you know, Jacob went and got a 100 on it. He had scored in the high 90's on the first test.

Of course, I have already managed to get a little behind on our Read A Louds, but that's nothing a little weekend reading can't fix. Spelling always worries me, but I started him in a 2nd grade book this year, and he is moving quickly through it. My hope is that by doing well for the first 10-12 weeks it will build his confidence and then I will either move on to the 3rd grade level "Spelling Workout" or switch to "Spelling Power" which is expensive, but will serve as spelling curriculum all the way through 12th grade. And frankly, I still can't spell - that is what spell check is for!

I'm beginning to get ticked at the director of Special Education, since she will not return my call. Homeschoolers are entitled to special ed services (it is NYS law!) and last year they labeled him visually impaired and he got services from the special ed teacher and the teacher for the visually impaired. I really want at least the vision teacher to work with him again this year, but I have no idea what procedure I need to follow to make that happen. I've called her twice, and if the lady doesn't call me back soon, heads are going to roll.

I have abandoned a formal reading curriculum with Gabriel, and he is much happier now. We work with some cute little letter books (mostly pre-reading skills) and then do sight words and phonics stuff on the dry erase board. The other night he willingly read a "Bob Book" to Todd and did the whole book without help. So maybe he will start to really enjoy reading again!