As I’ve noted, we had been in a rough spot.   We seem to be sliding through it.  I think the sunshine has helped.   As we pull out of it I’m noticing that things were still progressing, even as I felt we were dodging rocks and surviving.

Jordan finished Math-U-See’s Beta.  Yes, that means she’s “behind”, but she succeeded in it.  Mastered it.   And now we’re starting Gamma and she’s loving it.  Ready for it.  Going at her own pace and making progress at her pace.

Alex is the one member of our family who would say he doesn’t like to read.   I know he’s only 9, so there is time for development.  He reads ok–probably “on grade level” but no more.   At Borders about 3 weeks ago I sat down and started reading “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” to him.  Not sure if it was the addition of funny graphics, that the handwriting style text was less intimidating or just that for whatever reason the story really engaged him, but he begged me to buy the book for him.    I try to get him to read to me a few minutes every day.  He dutifully brought this book to me and read for his time.  And then went back to his room and read more.  And then read at bedtime that night (usually he listens to audio books).   And he finished the book in about 3 days.  Then he begged me for the sequel (I’m a sucker for book begging).   He’s almost done with that, totally reading it on his own.  This is the first book of any length that was not instructions to a video game that he has read completely independently.  I call THAT a successful year.

At the beginning of this year I started seriously fretting about Alex’s complete lack of ability to write anything other than the most basic of sentences with any of the words close enough in standard spelling to be decipherable.   I attempted “writing assignments” which he hated.  Finally, around Halloween he started writing a story about a group of boys that go into a haunted house.     Whenever I asked him to try to write something he would choose that.   It is rambling, somewhat incoherent and lacking in a cohesive plot.   At first the sentences were about 3-4 words long and required extensive editing with me to get them both grammatically correct and with the words spelled close enough that I could understand (he’s doing it on the computer and usually couldn’t get them close enough for the spell checker to recognize.)   He’s still working on that story and it is now 5 pages long.  Still rambling and lacking in cohesive plot, but this is an excerpt from his most recent addition.  Completely unedited by me.

All of the kids looked around and saw with great terror that the gigantic snake was gathering speed as it slithered towards Alex, William, Joker and Chunk.  They scattered just in time as the snake skidded even faster on the still slipperier oil.  “Alex RUN!!! said William, Chunk, Joker at the same time.

Hmmm.   Progress, maybe?   I can now sheepishly admit that over the last few months I tried to get him off this epic story and writing about something else.  It has caused friction.  What was I thinking?   Next time I’ll know better…..

And of course, I think I even wrote here that one of my goals was to focus on Aubrey’s development of a social life.  Sigh.  Mission accomplished.   Filed under be careful what you wish for.

I think any one of those would be a call for a victory dance?  So where was I thinking that we were failing at this homeschooling gig?