Summer Is Almost Over

Since we are homeschooling now, we didn't take a traditional summer vacation.  We are taking an extended vacation in November, so we did enough schooling over the summer to be able to take as much time off as we want in November without running behind.  We do still plan on doing some school work, but only a day or two a week while we are on vacation.

We took it pretty easy this summer with school work, though.  We did full days, but typically only 2 or 3 each week.  There were 2 or 3 weeks where we did 4 days.  We just did whatever we had time for, while still giving Elliott ample opportunity to spend time with his friends.  It worked out well for us, too.  We ended up with at least 20 sleep overs at our house, and half a dozen at his friends' houses.  He also got to go camping with his friend's family.  In addition to all the sleepovers, there were countless hours spent playing with friends at home, at our new land (referred to as the big lawn by Elliott and all his friends for some reason), at the park, or at friends' houses.

His friends go back to school next week, though.  Elliott is sad, but excited at the same time.  Soccer season just started and two of his besties are playing on his team, so he will still see them at least twice a week.  He's also already made arrangements for a sleepover next weekend.  This weekend one of his friends is having a sleepover in a tent in his backyard and inviting Elliott and 2 or 3 other boys.  They are all looking forward to it as their last big sleepover of the summer.

Talking to his friends, most of them are kind of excited about going back to school, but also sad.  Two of them have repeatedly said they want Elliott to go back to public school because they don't know what they will do without him.  Haha.  Elliott keeps saying he will miss his friends, too, but he is loving homeschool.  Even on days that we struggle with a part of homeschool, we are both still happy with the choice overall.  Even though we have only done homeschool 20 something days, he's already learned an incredible amount of stuff! 

A Start To Homeschooling

Yesterday morning we were supposed to start doing some homeschool work just to figure out some rough ideas for the amount of time we would need on various subjects. We also wanted to get an idea of how much work he would be doing on his own, and how much he would need (or want) help with.  It turns out he had so much fun doing the first few things, that he decided to make yesterday his first official day of school.  I think part of it might also be that he is currently grounded so it was a great way to spend time he had to spend at home anyway.  Haha.

We did have a little bit of fussing, and a minor meltdown, but overall, we both enjoyed it.  It turns out that he is most likely going to want to do a lot of the stuff more together than I anticipated, but that's perfectly fine with me.  We've switched curriculum on a few things, and they seem to be a little more advanced than what he is used to, so we had to discuss things a little more in depth.  It appears that he didn't learn some of the things in second grade that this curriculum assumes he already learned.

We've been working on homeschool again today, and he absolutely hates one of the things that I bought.  It's not a huge deal, though, because it's one that I bought as a supplement.  We just started with it because we are waiting on a new copy of what I need, after our first one got damaged.  He's still not overly fond of Go Math (which he insisted we get, even though it wasn't my first choice for math) but I think we are going to stick with it a while longer before we give it up.  I spent enough money on it that I certainly want to give it a fair shake, but if it needs to be replaced, we can make that work, too.

Spanish is still his favorite subject, and he's done it both days this week, even though I told him that we only needed do it once or twice a week each week.  I have a feeling it will end up being an everyday thing, or at least as often as time allows.

Officially Homeschoolers!

I turned in all the paperwork to the superintendent of Elliott's school last week.  Some days Elliott is really excited about homeschooling and other days he says he wants to continue to go to public school.  My husband and I have been praying and talking about it for months now, though, and we really feel like it's what is best for our family.  We want Elliott to be happy with his schooling where ever he goes, but ultimately as his parents, the decision is ours.

I'm pretty nervous about doing it myself.  I guess it's because it's something new and exciting.  I know Elliott is going to miss out on some fun stuff, but there are so many more fun things that we can do that we couldn't do while he was in public school.  We have some really fun lessons and field trips planned.  I know that we could always still do fun stuff during the summer, like we already do, but there's something to be said for traveling during the school year when crowds are smaller and prices are cheaper. :)



I just finished ordering the last of our homeschool stuff, I think.  We will probably end up adding some more supplements if we need them to fill the time, but all the basics are covered now.  We've run a couple of trial days to figure out about how long we will be working on each subject.  It looks like in order to hit the mandatory hours each day, we will end up supplementing a fair amount.  We are planning on doing a lot of that as unit studies, though, and hitting a lot of different subjects in the course of the study.  We are starting with an outer space unit study, and it will obviously cover a lot of science and reading, but it will include math, art and social studies as well, to a smaller degree.

Elliott's last day of public school (for a while anyway, he might end up going back down the road) is next Thursday.  I can't wait to begin the next chapter!  I think we will do a little in June, but start actually keeping track and officially schooling in July.

Issues At School

So we have already decided that we are over 95% sure that we will be homeschooling Elliott next year, but we are going to try to finish out second grade in public school.  That decision is getting harder and harder to stick with, though.

Elliott has always had an issue with bruising pretty easily, but never without a reason.  Well, it appears my child ends up with a whole lot more bruises than other kids anyway.  And because he tries to be tough, he doesn't get the help he needs at school.  It's driving me crazy.  Last Monday, he came home with scratches and bruising by his eye.  His face was STILL red when he got home from school at about 4, even though he told me it happened at his recess at noon.  I asked him what happened, and he informed me that one of his "friends" had pushed him down, and then shoved his face back into the snow when he tried to get up.  That same kid then jumped on his stomach.  I asked Elliott if he told his teacher, and he said he hadn't, because he didn't want to get in trouble.  I told him he needed to say something about it the next day to his teacher, but he insisted that it was fine, and he didn't want to get in trouble.  Tuesday and Wednesday he didn't play with that kid.  Then on Thursday, that same kid pushed him down at recess AGAIN.  And once again, Elliott didn't tell the teacher what was going on, even though he had a bump on his head again.  Neither of these issues had notes in his planner either.  And Elliott told me his teacher didn't even notice his face, until someone else said something about it.

So Friday morning my husband called the principal and we set up a meeting with him and Elliott's teacher.  We told them that we weren't happy with the fact that our child keeps getting hurt and he's afraid to tell the teacher because he will get in trouble. Back in October or November, this same kid pushed Elliott down, and Elliott apparently interrupted the teacher to tell her.  They both got sent to the principal to discuss what was going on.  According to the principal Elliott didn't get in any trouble for that incident, at least not from him.  But they both ended up missing recess for the next three days.  That seems a little harsh if you ask me, that the kid who gets hurt gets punished that much just for interrupting to tell the teacher what happened in the hall.

We talked about more stuff while we were there, but this is already long enough, so I won't go into it right now.  I'm fairly happy with the solution we came to regarding Elliott getting hurt (the principal sat both boys down and explained that they aren't allowed to play together at recess again until he tells them they can).  The principal and teacher both sat down with Elliott and explained to him that he WON'T get in trouble for coming to them when he's hurt, unless he did something wrong, too.  His teacher also reminded him how important it is to be honest about what happens, and that if he hurts, he needs to tell someone so they can help him feel better.  The teacher also said she would try to do better about letting me know if he gets hurt at school.

Our First Snow Day

It's hard to believe, but today was my son's first ever snow day.  We live in North Dakota, so we get lots of snow, but our school just doesn't cancel very often.  Several area schools cancelled today, and several have also already called for a late reporting for tomorrow.  Our school hasn't announced a late reporting for tomorrow, but I wouldn't be surprised if they do later.  Our school district covers A LOT of miles, and that includes a lot of rural county roads that aren't plowed or anything.

My son was certainly excited about having a snow day.  When we talked about the possibility yesterday, we decided we would spend time playing out in the snow, as well as inside watching movies and playing games.  I woke up with my eyelid swollen so much that I didn't feel like doing any of that stuff, though.  My husband ended up having a snow day from work as well, so he played video games with Elliott for a while and I took some medicine and went to bed.  Elliott did end up playing outside for just a few minutes, but spent most of the time inside watching TV or playing games.

Our school calendar includes 2 built in snow days, so Elliott was excited to know that he got today off and won't have to make it up in May. lol  This is also the week for their spring break (which is just Thursday and Friday off), so at the most they will have a 2 day school week this week.

Parent Teacher Conferences

Sorry if this post sounds like I'm bragging.  I probably am. ;)  Some members of my family and close friends look at my blog to keep caught up on what is going on at my house, though, so I thought a blog post would be the easiest way to tell them about Elliott's parent/ teacher conferences.

This week is parent/teacher conference week at my son's school.  Our conference was yesterday.  I'm not sure how conferences are done at other schools, but at our school, we go in and talk to the teachers about any issues our children may be having.  Our teachers also give us recent tests and projects our kids have done, and explain how our child's progress compares to others in the school, and others on a state wide level.  For first graders, the only standardized state wide tests are in math and reading.  But Elliott's teacher gave us handwriting samples, a phonics test, and told us how he's doing in Science and Social Studies as well.

Elliott is doing really well academically.  His math scores have improved tremendously over the last few months.  At the end of kindergarten he was right on level with the other kids at our school (who score several points higher as a whole than the "norm group").  At the beginning of first grade, his math skills were a little higher than the others in his school and about 75th-80th percentile compared to others that use the RIT scale for testing..  His middle of the year testing they did in January, he scored 95th to 98th percentile!  His score was approximately that of a 50th percentile student in the middle of 3rd grade.

He didn't have as much growth on reading, but his teacher said that's to be expected considering how well he was already doing.  He still scored in the 99th percentile on everything, but his line just didn't go up quite as much this time, which is of course totally fine.  His RIT score on reading is about that of an average 5th grader.  His DIBELS score showed that he could possibly be having trouble with reading comprehension, when compared to reading level, but his main reading teacher gave him a couple of unofficial tests and thinks that his comprehension is great.  She thinks that he probably just didn't realize that the test monitor wanted MORE details on the retell part of the DIBELS test.  His RIT test scores showed high reading comprehension as well.

His teachers said he's doing really well in everything, and neither of them see any problems at all academically.  He still does best if he reads the directions himself, but is getting better about getting everything right when he has to listen to directions for the entire project.

The only behavior issue either of Elliott's teachers had with him this time was his recent hang up on the word "hate."  He's been doing that at home, too, and we have no idea why.  Sometimes when things don't go his way he tells us that he hates it, or he hates his life.  His teachers aren't too concerned about it, because they say he calms down really fast, and doesn't pout or anything.  But we are working on expressing frustration with different words.  His teacher said he always apologizes after an outburst.  She said she's also been giving him a little more time to transition, and it seems to be helping.  He always finishes his work before the other kids, so he moves onto something else (lately he's been writing songs and stories, in addition to drawing pictures), and he just has a hard time stopping his fun projects to get back onto the same subject as the other kids.  Any other parents deal with this?  What worked for you?

Socially he is doing well.  There are minor fights with his friends of course, but he gets along with everyone and has lots of friends.  He occasionally has what one teacher describes as "baby of the family syndrome" and gets mad when things don't go his way, but those episodes are very infrequent.  One of his teachers said that he does so well with things normally, that if she didn't know any better she would think he was one of several children, instead of an only child.

I am very proud of my son.  He is doing so well in school.  When he was born, he had his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck and in knots.  We were warned that he would probably have some delays, but they wouldn't do testing unless stuff showed up.  He's been on the slow end of a few things physically, but never truly delayed.   Academically, I think it takes him a little longer to get stuff sometimes, but after he thinks about it a little while, he's usually able to master things quickly.

I'm actually really proud of all of his friends, too.  His class is an outstanding group of kids!  They are all sweet, well behaved, AND smart! His district's first grade average RIT scores for middle of year are a little bit better than the norm group averages for middle of second grade for both reading and math!  The kids in his class work hard and it shows.  Of course it also helps that both of his teachers work with the kids individually to help each child improve.

Clearance School Supplies

School has been back in session here for about 2.5 weeks.  That means that a lot of back to school stuff is on clearance.  We bought most of Elliott's supplies before school started, but waited until the clearance sales to buy the stuff we just wanted, but didn't have to have.

Some of the best deals we've found were lunchboxes at 50% off (he takes his lunch everyday, so we got 2 new ones to add to the rotation of the ones he used in kindergarten, since he leaves them at school sometimes), and crayons at $.25 each.  The cheapest we found Crayola crayons before school started was $.40, so when we were able to get them for $.25 each, we grabbed a few boxes.  We choose names from the Christmas tree at Walmart or KMart every year, and always include a box of crayons and a coloring book or two if we choose children the right age. :)  Elliott often gets crayons for Christmas, too.

We also picked up a few more notebooks for $.16-25 each to use at home.  Elliott needed 2 for school this year, and that will probably last all year, or at least most of it, since he's only in first grade.

We also found some Lego school supplies on clearance.  Elliott is REALLY into Legos right now, so he actually used his own money to buy the pencil sharpener and pencils.  They were on clearance for a decent price, so I feel like he used his money wisely.