James is home!

We've decided to homeschool James. There, we said and did it. Too late for anyone to change our minds.

There were many things leading to this decision but the main thing is that we think we can help him learn at home. It will be nice to eliminate the 3 hours on the bus each day, the stress of homework crammed into one and a half hours each night, the waking up at 5:30 to study. It will be nice that he won't resort to getting help from his neighbor on his spelling test because he wants a hundred so badly. I admit to pushing him. But we need to. We always have had to expose him to more and require more from him. We made it through the first half of first grade but he struggled and was falling behind. The intention of the school was to adjust his curriculum back to the beginning of the year now and also hold him back in first grade next year. The logical conclusion for us is to restart first grade now and see where we are in August.

James is on cloud nine! He says and sings how wonderful things are. He's very vocal in his love for me. I must admit this makes studying with him very nice! He's cooperative in the morning when we work on school. He's imaginative and happy. He did a puzzle twice yesterday. Puzzles were things he was always too tired for after school. We're going to incorporate Cub Scout projects into his school. He also wants to cook with me! We will work on reading, writing, fine motor skills, following directions, healthy eating, measuring, cleaning up after yourself, telling time,....

We did have a bump in the road yesterday. The instructions were to find the group of words that is a sentence and write it. He knew a sentence ended with a period so he was copying the sentences but was not willing to read the words.... Not even trying to read them. He said he didn't have to talk when he did this page at school. So we're working on unlearning some stuff. We're also working on him understanding that I'm the teacher and the mommy now.

I'm learning that he needs time to think in his head. I can watch the wheels turning. I'm learning that speaking makes things harder for him sometimes. I know that's a vague statement but it seems like when he has to talk his brain operates more slowly. Maybe this is why we struggle with reading out loud.

We can't wait for our new Math U See materials to arrive. I expect we'll blow through these. James is strong in Math.

The tentative plan is to have speech once a week at the school to check on our progress and discuss techniques I'm using with the new reading intervention program.