Category Archives: School

Books and Breakfast 2013

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This year’s Books and Breakfast was a little trickier than last year’s…considering I now had five children in five different classes. The problem was solved by sending an older child to each younger child’s class. I managed to sneak in to all five classes and enjoy the morning while snapping a few photos.

In less than two hours I’ll be leaving to take Apollo to Seattle Children’s Hospital to see his pulmonologist. This is his first visit with Dr. R since his surgery in Texas. I am cautiously optimistic about today’s visit…

The Blessing of Public School

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I had quite a few people ask while I was gone, how the kids back at  home were doing. I must brag and say, Adalia and Judah did an incredible job of holding things together (with the help of Enoch and Kalina). We had friends and church members out to the house to cover the hours between the kids getting home from school and bedtime. Adalia and Judah were responsible to get the little kids ready for school and on the bus, however.

A few of the kids had some rough days. Hezekiah and Tucker each had to be picked up from school once for being sick. Enoch spent a total of two weeks with friends, doing his school work as they did theirs (and he finished his 7th grade  math and started Pre-Algebra. Go, Enoch!)

I arrived home at 11 pm Thursday night and had parent/teacher conferences for all five school kids the next day. I am happy to say that my two kids with IEP’s are making measurable progress and the other three are all at the top of their classes. Tucker has already exceeded the reading goals for first grade. I will confess, the only areas my children have to “catch up” in are “homeschool deficits” such as handwriting (something I’ve never pushed). Despite that, they are all thriving.

And now, onto the blessing, yes, blessing of public school. I’m a die-hard homeschooler. The Plan was to homeschool from birth to high school. Plain and simple. Never did we waver or imagine sending our seven-year-olds off for a day of school. But with Apollo’s ongoing health issues Chuck and I felt led to enroll the five younger ones in our local public school. The decision was made only two weeks before the beginning of the school year. What I find so amazing is, we had no idea Apollo would be having a repeat heart surgery and we certainly had no idea it would take place out-of-state. Yet we followed what we believed to be the Lord’s prompting.

By the time we were making plans to head to Houston for heart surgery, the kids were well established and comfortable in school. A day at school, teachers and new friends all offered exactly the structure they needed to take them through each day without worrying about their brother or Mama being gone.

Public school has been a blessing for Mordecai and Avi who have far more intensive learning needs than I can address. It has been a blessing to my children who had a safe, secure place to be while I traveled to Houston with Apollo. Public school has offered a variety of new friends for my school kids and Kalina as well. Kalina has met girls her age at school events, including a girl who lives just half a mile down the road from us. In our rural area it’s not easy to find friends who live close by.

It’s been a blessing to our whole family. Chuck and I have no idea how long the younger kids will continue to go to public school. They will certainly finish out this school year, and beyond that, we will re-evaluate for each child.

 

Mordecai’s First IEP

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Mordecai 9 years old

Tilly saved my bacon yesterday. I was happily sitting here at the computer blogging when she said, "Oh, you have a meeting at Mordecai's school today, right?". Umm…yeah. I completely blanked out on it. Despite the fact that it is clearly written on my calendar and I had discussed it with Chuck. At any rate, I had nearly an hour before his appointment, so it was no biggie. I was just glad I had Tilly here…

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Being a goofball…

For those of you who aren't up your school lingo and IEP is an Individualized Education Plan. In Mordecai's case this first IEP was to determine eligibility for Special Ed. He qualifies, of course, as we knew he would since he has an official diagnosis that falls on the  Fetal Alcohol Spectrum. 

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Without boring you will all the details let me just say he lags behind is reading, writing and math. He does well socially, has friends and for the most part works for his teacher. He still loves school. He has the occasional day when he is reluctant to go (usually if he knows we are going somewhere and he is missing out). The six other students in his class are severely disabled (either mentally or physically). This makes Mordecai the "star" student in his class. A good position for him. I know it's been hard to have his younger siblings effortlessly pass him academically. He helps in his class and is one of the only students who signs to the non-verbal child. 

He has 38 sight words and reads at a late kindergarten level…this is of course news to me since despite years of effort he refused to display this skill to me. I knew he had a handful of words, but most of those 38 he went into school knowing (according to his teacher). His teacher has him phonetically writing one words sentences…something he would never have done for me. One interesting note is the speech therapist said he can accurately repeat long, complicated sentences, but can't use the same words in his own sentences. His poor vocabulary is something I've noted. What this means is he can often sound like he knows what he talking about…and often seems more capable than he really is- very common for people with FASD. In a social setting it's nice because he comes off as being very "normal". Other kids don't realize he has any issues. 

And on a final note, everyone I have worked with at the school has been helpful, friendly, and makes me feel completely part of the team. I am thankful that I followed my gut and enrolled him. So far it's all been good.

 

A Funny thing happened at the Library…

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Hezekiah, 7, reading Eragon

If you've are a regular reader here, you are well aware of my children's love of the library. 

Yesterday at the library I ran into my midwife/naturopath. We got to chatting and I caught her up on Apollo's visit to Children's and his weight gain. At some point during the conversation he coughed.

"Does he have a cold or is that how he normally sounds?" she asked.

"No, he's fine". 

"Have they checked out his heart yet? He needs an ecocardiogram."

Now keep in mind, Apollo is a patient of hers and she's up to date on his health struggles (he was just in to see her last month). 

His doctor thinks he needs a bronchoscopy, his naturopath thinks he needs a bronchoscopy and ecocardiogram…I can only hope that the pulmonologist looks at his weight gain and says, "great, let's do that brochoscopy now!" instead of "great, let's see how he is in another 3 months!" 

*sigh*

And since we're on the topic of the library, Tilly came home last week and told me that while they were there picking up holds with Chuck, she observed this exchange:

A couple girls and there mome were at the library and the mom was ready to leave, but one of the girl's said something about wanting to get a book…to which the mom replied, "Why do you need a book? We've got a whole stack of videos!" Apparently the girl was rather tenacious though, as she argued until her mom finally said, "fine, just go get the blankety-blank book".

Why am I sharing that with you? Um, cause I was amused by the irony. 

And here's some irony about books I wasn't so amused by…when I was in Mordecai's classroom the other day I told his teacher that he had been reading to me from Fox in Socks. I let her know how very impressed I was…after all, he's only been in school for, what,  three weeks? And I think teachers are often undervalued and I wanted her to how much I appreciated her work with him.

She smiled politely until I was finished and then said, "Yes…and did you know he actually came to us with those skills?"

*sigh*

{Okay, friends, after three days in the lead, I'm now down over 100 votes. Only four days left, the contest ends October 3. Please vote like crazy until then. Vote from your computer, iphone, ipad, your brother's computer, your sister's phone, your great-aunt's cousin's son-in-laws ipad….you get the idea}

 

 

Books and Breakfast

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I don't quite know if I'm cut out to be a "school" mom. I feel like I'm always three steps behind and never quite know what's happening. Yesterday Mordecai's school hosted a Books and Breakfast event. The idea was to show up and enjoy breakfast and read books with your child. No problem. Where the confusion came in was that the flier said the event was from 9-10 am…okay…but Mordecai doesn't get on the bus until 8:50. So was I supposed to send him on the bus, then rush off to the school the second it left? I sent a note to his teacher asking about it and the response was: "You can bring him or have him ride the bus. He gets here at 9:15, so if you want you can just meet him here". Maybe I'm a bit dim witted, but it didn't make a whole lot of sense to send my son on a bus at 8:50, immediately drive to the school so I could be there by 9, then wait for him to show up at 9:15…so I drove him to school, along with a small sampling of brothers (siblings were invited).

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At any rate, I like his school. It is small enough that you could know everyone by sight and has a small town community feel to it. I was able to chat with the mom of a boy in Mordecai's class who, it turns out, I met back in my La Leche League days. That would have been more than ten years ago! Small world. This mom asked if Mordecai was autistic. I immediately realized it was because she was trying to figure out why he is in the Intensive Learning class…out of seven kids he is the only one who's disabilities aren't outwardly visible. 

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Poor Mordecai apparenlty did realize yesterday was a school day, because once we were done with breakfast and reading, he had his coat and backpack on and was ready to leave. Poor guy. He was in for a shock when I told him it was a school day and he was staying.

And speaking of school…have I ever told you my children are hilarious? And I love them immensely and pretty much think being a stay-at-home homeschool mom is the best thing ever? As part of our parent partnership program, my children have to answer an email survey every week to keep up with their supervisor. The older kids do this entirely themselves and I either type for the younger ones or have an older sibling help…because of this my children's answers are sometimes a suprise to me when I recieve the response from their superisor. Check out this sampling from this week's questions:

This was from seven year old Hezekiah's survey:

Think of a problem you have learned about in social studies lately and an action that was taken to solve that problem. Do you think the problem was solved in a good way or could there have been a better solution? Please explain.

Rasputin was a big problem, at first they tried to put poison in his wine and food, and then they tried to shoot him, and then they threw him into the river. Someone could have distracted him, and they could have just chopped his head off. 

And here's one from Kalina, age 10:

Pretend that you are a scientist who has recently made a discovery. What did you discover? How will you let the world know about your discovery?

I discovered a cure to the black plague, I will test it and release it.

Give an example of something you learned about in science that has surprised you.

That you have to squeeze so hard to get the milk from the goat's teats.

What I wouldn't give to be able to see the look on their supervisor face as they start reading my children's answers… 

{Don't forget to vote! I've just barely been in the lead for the last two days! Voting ends October 3}