Semester Check-Up (Day in the Life, Day One)

First, welcome! If you are joining me thanks to Mindy's Link-Up from Grateful for Grace, thank you! Today I'll be sharing our Semester Check-Up, and then for the remaining 9 days of the 10, I'll share a "Day in the Life" of our home school. You can read a little about us in the About page, see pics of my students on the right side bar, and feel free to read the "Our Homeschool" tab that will explain all about how long I've been doing this, and what brought me from where we started to where we are now.

If you've popped over from my primary blog, you know all of that already ;) I am moving the home school posts over here, though, to provide a little bit more of necessary anonymity due to the restrictions surrounding home schooling in our current country; I hope you all understand (and thus the reason for no real names, too). 

Now, on to the post!  Semester Check-Up --- we're finishing up our 1st Semester of the 2012/2013 School year.  It's the first time in a very long time that we've done a US schedule, September to May. Well, ours will be more September to June or something, because we started near the end of September, but you get the idea. The plan is that we'll finish our 2nd semester in time to start next school year in early September and then stay on track from then on.

The Writer -- my oldest son, aged 15, is currently a freshman (9th grade) in high school, enrolled in an on-line program via TTUISD. He's taking a full course load, and doing really well. He is making solid As and Bs in all of his classes, he's learning study skills, time management skills, coping skills for when he's frustrated, how to juggle fun course work with not so fun course work, what time of day is best for doing the hard stuff, etc. The only thing I would change for him about this year is that if I could, I would switch out Art for Drama. His perfectionist tendencies are proving to be a serious hindrance to him as he works on art projects and his progress in that class is S.L.O.W. Very. My hope is that by the end of the year he'll learn how to adjust time spent on a project to match the weight the project carries in his grade; that a project worth 10% of his grade is not worth the time spent on one worth 50% of his grade. He struggles with the same issue every time he encounters a writing assignment for English; it's the one aspect of his schooling this year that tries my patience. Other than this one thing, though, I am very pleased with our choice this year to use an on-line school; it's really freed me up to work with my youngest, who really needs my time and attention. More on that in a bit....



The Artist -- my second son, aged 12, is currently in 6th grade. He is enrolled in two classes from TTUISD -- English and Science; he does math at home with Teaching Textbooks, reads everything he can get his hands on, and started (but we've let slide) a geography program that's research based.  He's doing amazingly well. Luckily my husband is a Chemist by trade, so he helps with the science experiments (including bringing home random equipment from work so we can do the experiments to begin with); funny story -- I was "fired" by my husband on the very first week of trying to teach Kindergarten Science to my oldest son. As I tried to make my then 5 yr old understand the water cycle, and poor boy was bored to tears and not understanding anything, my husband came to the rescue, took the boy to the kitchen and a pot of boiling water later, the water cycle was explained, understood, and I didn't teach science again from then on. When the chance came to outsource Science I jumped for joy; my husband had long ago taken over, but lately work required too much time so Science became that poor neglected subject, as it does for so many. My boy is happy to have it in the schedule again, as he loves science. I am happy he can have it and I don't have to teach it. Win-win.

The Adventurer -- my youngest, he will turn 8 in February, and he is working towards literacy.  Yes, I mean to say he can't read. Not one little bit. At all. In fact, he cannot remember that the last letter in his name is called "aych" and not "jay" (H, not J). He knows what it looks like; he can write his name, but when he spells it out loud for you he says "jay" instead. Even when reminded. Even when reminded 5 times in a row, as he goes to every member of the family proudly displaying the drawing he made of various stick figures, each one holding a letter of his name, and at each person, though just corrected moments before, still proudly calls that last letter a "jay" and not an "aych."

The Adventurer is the reason, mostly, that we switched to on-line school for the older boys; that, plus the current restrictions on home schooling where we live. Mostly though it was so I could dedicate as much time as possible to helping The Adventurer become literate. I have hope that maybe we'll get there.

I'll go into the background on this in an upcoming post but for today, Semester Check-Up. This past semester has been very different. In August we had him evaluated by an Educational Psychologist, who diagnosed moderate dysphoneidetic dyslexia, among other things. Moderate means not quite severe. Dysphoneidetic means that his dyslexia is both auditory and visual in nature, so that things he sees and things he hear get processed....wrong. Which means that it's not my fault he can't read, and that it won't be easy to teach him.

Since getting his report in September, I've been implementing all sorts of at-home language therapy, occupational therapy, and intensely remedial phonemic awareness activities. School has meant doing "random access naming" drills --- for 2 minutes, I show him flashcards and see how many he can name. Last week, he got 53 things named in 120 seconds. This is monstrous improvement from the beginning, when he could barely do 17 in 60 seconds. He now has instead of a language arts drawer, a therapy drawer, and instead of a math drawer, a handwriting drawer. The math manipulatives are still in use, but moved to accommodate the other stuff. He has a slew of software we've just started using, one that asks him to identify if a pair of sounds are both the same (/a/ and /a/) or are different (/a/ and /o/); he doesn't always get it right.

So, how has this semester gone for him? Well, I don't feel like I know yet. I'm still coming to grips with his diagnosis, what it means, what his chances are for success, and wondering how long it will take and if he'll be reading at all before he's 10, or maybe not until he's 12, or ??? I have no idea. He turns 8 in February and still doesn't remember letter sounds we've been working on since he was six. And he still can't remember all the teens between 10 and 20, though he mostly can remember what order the tens go (10, 20, 30, etc...). Usually. The Adventurer and I are just now settling into a routine, as the last of his new curriculum has just finally arrived to us here in S. America, and I have hope that now we can really begin.

So. That's been our semester. Over all, I'm pleased. The on-line school was a brilliant idea and just what we needed; with all that The Adventurer needs, there is no way I could give him all of that and give my oldest a quality high school education, preparing him for college, at the same time. Nevermind also a middle school student in the mix. The on-line school has wildly exceeded my expectations, moving from this thing we were doing, grudgingly, out of necessity, to a thing that has been a Godsend and a blessing and actually really GOOD for all of us. Huh. Who knew?

Tomorrow, I'll focus on my role in our homeschool day; then I'll go through a day focused on each boy, and we'll see what next week brings. If you have any questions, about any of this, please ask! My email can be found in the Contact Me button at the top of the home page if you need to contact me for a private conversation, or I welcome comments and do moderate so can keep things private if you would like. Thanks for stopping by, and I look forward to getting to know each of you!