I can hardly believe school is over for the summer [dare I admit, I'm more thrilled about this than the children & they are both certainly more than happy to have the break, my daughter especially]. I found the constant demands of school, both financially {I tallied up the optional (ahem!) extras and they come to a grand total of $1463 per child} and time-wise, challenging. I also found one of my children’s teachers a tad too obvious with her dislike of my child. It felt, very often, like she could barely breathe without a comment being made, or adoption being brought up, or her “problems” mentioned. I’m glad that level of scrutiny is over, it made us both on edge. My plan for my daughter’s schooling is a little on the wild side, I’ll blog about that soon. My plan for my son is the local school!

I don’t scrapbook (that stuff is expensive!) so thought today I’d love to share their accomplisments this year – thanks for humoring me.

Daughter
September:
- reading at mid-way through senior kindergarten level (should be in Grade 3)
- not able to print in lines
- not able to cursive write
- able to add 1-20
- comprehension about the SK level 
 - spells phonetically – accuracy about 10% of the words she writes are correct

June
- Is reading at the mid Grade 2 level (moved up 2 years in 9 months!)
- Can add into the hundreds
- Can subtract double digits
- Knows multiplication tables 1-5
- Comprehension is about the end of Grade 1
- Can cursive write and print – though legibility is problematic, hoping OT will be a big help.
-Can formulate sentences, though needs encoragement in order to be consistent and work to the best of her ability. Her sentences are now about 50% grammatically correct.
- Can identify about 50 french words
- Can spell about 90% of the words she writes correctly

Son
September
- Could not hold a pencil
- Only knew his first name
- Did not know how old he was (7!)
- Can only identify 2 letters
- Could not identify numbers  
- Could not read a single word
- Was working at the age of about 2.5  -3 (4 years behind chronological age)

June
- Knows his first and last name, as well as his age
- Can hold a pencil and write
- Can read phonetically
- Can read about 100 site words (I write every word on a Q card and we read them 3 times a day, as well as a new book every single day and re-read the book from the day before as well).
- Can identify numbers 1-50
- Can add up to 20
- Can take away from numbers 12 down
- Can draw
- Can print beautifully (still very slow, but he is so new to it)
- Can cursive write
- Is working about the age 5.5 years (gained 3 years in 8 months!)

What has it taken?  They have both been in a very good school, academically (particularly literacy) rich. I put my daughter back by two grades and my son by three grades (both started age appropriately and it was disastrous). Thankfully, they are both so small they didn’t stand out – though it was a one year only option, sadly (and means school next year needs to be handled a bit differently – more on that later).  They have both needed so much more support than the average child. For example, if a typical child reads a word 30 times it may stick for life, my son will need to read that same word probably 150+ times and even then will not be able to transfer that knowledge to how to spell the word. He will also need some very strong encouragement to stop sounding out a word he knows and just trust he can read it.  My daughter has a language processing delay, so she needs messages very clearly given. While the school was great for her in many many ways, they never really understood why it was she only picked up 2/10 words in an explanation and didn’t do enough differentiation to help her understand.

For both I’ve homeschooled Saturdays and Sundays for about 4 hrs, plus read hundreds of books and worked hard to have conversations which help their comprehension. Both will be homeschooled for about 4 hrs a day all summer – I have week one lesson plans done and will need to get the rest done soon.

I’m amazed and elated with their progress. We still have far to go, but they are so wonderful and have been working so very very hard! I’m so proud of them both