Academic Placement Testing

Today I found a very nicely done academic testing site on Learning By Grace. I decided to see if my mental assessments of his achievements were on point or not. So far, we have completed the the Language Arts testing and found that he is on a 2nd grade level, which is what I suspected. We are still working on the math testing, as he always gets jittery when it comes to math. He is good in it when he realizes it’s just numbers, but sometimes he lets the page overwhelm him.

More structure

I think our homeschool is evolving from strictly unschooling to something with just a little more structure. I have signed him up for Simple Schooling online which gives us unit studies to follow. We just received a Veggie Tales bible and a few nice picture bibles and devotionals so I plan to add in assignments from those. I want to work us up to having more discipline in what he is learning so he can become consistent in his success. It will also help me to keep better records of what we are doing. Once we get our official address in New York, I will need to keep some form of records to be able to report his progress to the state.

Still not classical homeschooling, as we are mostly free and we don’t use one full curriculum. We are still able to move from subject to subject as in depth as we would like.

Reading machine

Today he read 4 books in a row. Took him less than an hour, and one of them was quite long. I am very proud of his reading progress. With shows like Electric Company, Word World, and Super Why he is being constantly reminded of how words spell & sound. It’s awesome!

Gearing up for history

We are planning to sign up for Simple Schooling online before the end of the month. They cover every subject with a good amount of depth, but there is no real history program for K-3 yet (it’s coming this summer I think).

In the mean time, we have bought The History of the World in Photographs for a steal yesterday. It has timelines for nearly every event from 1850 till now with brilliant pictures, vivid in depth insights, and a CD ROM with 2000 more pictures and historical events on it. I got it for a whopping $11

Journaling for 6 year old

For the new year, I have decided to give my son his own composition notebook to start journaling. He has so many thoughts that I figured it would be a good idea. He is excited to start. I was reading other people’s thoughts on how to go about the journaling, as to whether or not it is to be kept private or shared. I think at this point, he should be able to keep a few thoughts for himself. He is pretty mature for his age, so I believe it would be appropriate.

He also likes to share much of what he does, so he more than likely won’t be doing much private journaling till he is older. That’s fine by me, too. I kept a journal around his age and have always in some form done so. It’s good to be able to freely express yourself without judgment.

He leads me

We are still doing the Bible study line by line of Psalm 23. We are up to "He leads me beside the still waters". My son is already asking what "still waters" means as he writes the sentence. We get in grammar, reading, spelling, punctuation, and writing practice at the same time we do Bible study, critical thinking, and analysis. I am glad that we can do so much with the Word of God.

Mental Math

We have begun our journey into mental math. He is a very visual learner, so it is easy for him to picture the math problems in his head. The only problem is his dyslexia getting in the way of him reading me the answers in the correct order. For instance, he did 32 + 32 in his head and told me the answer is 46. Right numbers, wrong order. This is just another hurdle in the walk.

His reading has improved drastically, so much so that he can read entire 2nd step books almost completely without any help. He may have stumbled twice the last time he read a full book. I am proud of his progress. His handwriting is also improving. From last month, his handwriting was extremely neat and legible in comparison to April of this year.

All in all, he is progressing nicely. We are working on Psalm 23 now as a line by line Bible study.

I am still struggling with my consistency in keeping notes on what he does. I have tried every way I can think of to make notes. The final straw will be for me to video tape everything we do, but then I wouldn’t get around to editing it LOL I really have to get better at this!

Disappearing Jelly

We acquired a clear wafer on Thursday of last week. It was a dead jelly fish, which I had never seen before. We usually see them with tentacles and still gooey. This one was just a wafer. My friend said that if we leave it out overnight on a paper towel it will be gone by morning, only leaving perfect circles of sand where it once was. Lo and behold, she was not joking. We did our little science experiment and voila! Gone by morning! Taz’s hypothesis is that it evaporated like water because it was pretty much made of water. I think that’s a pretty good observatory hypothesis, don’t you?

science week at the Y

He had a great time, coming away with more knowledge about dinosaurs and their bones than he had before. He also came home with something else totally new: pink eye. Joyful! I got him some homeopathic eye drops to alleviate the pain and swelling while he is inundated with this craziness. Other than that, he ran, he laughed, he played, he looked at T-Rex bones, colored pages, and had a great time!

Delayed Vaxes and Doctor Drama

Yesterday was mortifying, but thank God my son didn’t notice. We were asked more than once if I was pregnant, what race we consider our child, and then they had the NERVE to ask if we were LEGALLY wed when I said we were married. Uh, excuse me? I bet if I were not in a Medicaid situation, no one would have ever asked me that. How do I know? Because before Medicaid, no one ever had.

We would have walked out at that point if it had not been that my son needs care. He has this weird bone spur type thing on his chest under the skin. I want to make sure it is nothing serious. They cover xrays, so we stayed.

I also got him the last of his series of polio shots. The doctor kept trying to get me to do all 4 shots that he is missing. I told him we will NEVER do the chicken pox shot. We will NOT be doing any mixed serums, either. Then he asked me (respectfully, which was a shocker) why. I then gave him just a bit of my knowledge of vaccinations and their risks. He then says “Autism has not been proven” to which I retorted “Well I would rather not take that risk with MY child”. He respected my opinion! *more shock* After the treatment we received from intake, I would have expected the nurses and doctors to act in kind. Thankfully, that was not the case. The nicest person we saw all day was the one who gave him the vaccine. If she had not been, I would have demanded a different nurse!

Anyway, he came through it with flying colors and no real side effects other than the tell tale sore arm. All in all he had a great checkup. Nothing wrong with him other than that weird bump that is only bothering us, his parents, and not him LOL. Isn’t that always the way?

We are waiting for the paperwork confirmation to get his xray done. He also has to do a blood test because he has not had one since 2004. *We are mostly anti-doctor around here.*

All that said, I still left them a nice little comment on the bottom of the survey sheet they had in the doctor’s office about their service. I even put my name, which was optional. I am not ashamed of my opinion of them and therefore HOPE they call me on it. I expressed that they need to have people more mentally capable of dealing with multiracial children and people who are on unemployment. Here’s hoping they call so I can let them know EVERYTHING that went down while we were there.