Now we're starting to get it!
Reese is catching on and loving the home program. His work ethic is improving faster than I had expected. The quality of work is improving, but there are still a few struggles. We'll keep pushing through and see where he is with fine motor skills in about a month - if there isn't an improvement, he'll be assessed by the O.T through the home school.
We're still working on liquids and solids. It's hard to pace everything! I've now cut science down to 2-3 days a week in order to ensure we have enough of a program to continue until June. We have had a few extra experiments - after mixing various liquids to test density, Reese was curious about how other liquids not listed would respond. It's wonderful to see him showing such an interest, especially when it's unprompted! This is something we've hoped for, but up until now hadn't had. It's great!!
We've gone back a bit with phonics/fine motor activities. Reese is doing very basic tracing pages - alphabet, shapes, numbers, etc.. He's also struggling with sounding out words. Again, part of that could just be laziness on his part, or maybe he wasn't taught in a way he can understand. We've been using our word wall often, he has a dictionary that he's able to write 'new to him' words in for reference. What blows my mind - the boy can spell big or complicated words, but struggles with "the".
We are doing weekly spelling words - last week we used science related words, this week we chose compound words. Spelling IS critical, and I take it very seriously.
On Monday Reese is given a new list of words. I print out the initial list with him so he is able to watch me form the letters neatly. Afterwards, he reads the list to me and prints out each word beside mine.
On Tuesday evening, Reese sits down and reads the word to JP and Lauren. Reese then prints out the words to show Lauren how to print them properly.
At the end of lessons on Wednesday we focus on the words again. Reese is asked to come up with a sentence of his own for each word. Often, he will be the one printing out the sentence. If he's had a struggle during lessons, I'll give him a break and do the printing - but he still has to form the sentence. By mid-February, he will have his own laptop for certain tasks, so he'll have the option to type out the sentences.
Thursday night is Dad's night - again, they review the words verbally. Dad gives Reese a 'prep-test' - chooses the words in random order and Reese spells outloud.
Friday is our spelling test. I read the words, Reese prints them out.
It sounds like SO much work, but it only takes about 10 minutes a day. When he was in school, we followed the same routines during the week for spelling tests, and I wanted to keep that going. :)
Now, we're up to something fun in Language Arts. I wanted to focus on creative writing. I want Reese to realize that HE could make up stories that are just as good as the ones he reads.
Over the weekend we had a family project. The kids traced each other on Bristol Board. We were going to use real people, but the shapes were a bit rough. ;) We turned them into ALIENS!!
Lauren loved the idea. She named her alien Nerual.
Reese wasn't as excited about it - "Homework on a Saturday?!" was his response. He finally came around and had fun doing it. His alien has an upside down face.
He named his alien Eseer.
So these are the characters we're working with. For the next two weeks, our creative writing will focus on these aliens. We've already formed the basics - who they are, where they're from, age. Now we need to dig a bit deeper and turn that into a story.
I'm going to make 3 generic pages for Reese to get him started- he'll fill in random blanks like he did with this alien's sign. But the last 7 pages of the 'book' will be his ideas. I'm hoping the end result will be a short story telling a bit more about Eseer - the who, what, where, when and why.
We'll recycle this idea with different themes every so often until he gets the hang of it.
Now, I have to go print out our work for tomorrow!
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