Wow! We've been officially back to school for 2 weeks. In the middle of that, my mom visited from Oregon, my brother and his family stayed here for the weekend, and I started my new job at B. Dalton. Oh, and soccer has started, so throw in several practices a week and a couple of games. No wonder time has flown by.
I have to say, I'm thrilled with our school year so far. My kids have settled in to their schedules with very little complaint. They are capable of a lot more and I am finally able to work with my 7 yo and really focus on her reading. My rather needy 11 yo has always monopolized my time, but we've worked everything out and he's working more independently now (huge sigh of relief).
The greatest development is that my son - the 11 yo who seems to be interested in little more than soccer and historical/strategic computer games - was miraculously inspired to write a story based on one of his medieval battle games. All of the writing skills that I've struggled to teach him (without much success) suddenly became important. Now, he suddenly understands quotation marks and punctuation like never before. Even if this is just a short-term thing, he's learned more about paragraph writing in these past few days than I think he did all last year!
I pray that things will continue like this - my mom was here and witnessed my son's unexpected zeal for writing. She's never been critical (although much of our family is "concerned"). Then, my 3 yo practiced sounding out 2-letter sounds for her. Hopefully, word will spread that the kids are just fine and others will stop worrying so much...
Comments
Sep. 16, 2006 - Punctuation and grammar...oh my!
Posted by LizzieBee
Hi! Oh gosh, I read my kids' blogs and I just despair. The punctuation and spelling ist awful. I know that I'll have to do some remedial stuff soon, but I content myself with the fact that they can really write. They have a wonderful writer's voice and enjoy blogging. Good to hear from you. Our stuff came yesterday, but they are missing a whole crate of our stuff. I'm unpacking madly in order to figure out just what is missing. Some significant stuff, but you know what? I slept in a bed last night! A real bed and it was heavenly. Thanks for your thoughts and prayers. Talk to you soon.
Sep. 18, 2006 - You are doing good
Posted by ktneis
I have the same issues with my 11 yr old son but he is still needing me alot, he has no motivation. I am trying out humorous stuff with him as he enjoys using that. I am hoping he will write the humor stories not me some day. I am teaching my 7 yr old to read although he is not getting it at all. So my friend did some research, she is a special needs teacher and she linked me to a dyslexia sight. There is more to dyslexia than I thought. So I downloaded some sample curr from AVKO and we will start this week, I can totally see their approach to reading and spelling and I think this will work for all my kids. None of them spell well. I am glad things are going well for you and your kids, so nice to see the fruits of our work. God Bless