Headed into Uncharted Waters...
Today marks day 1 of homeschooling D...
At age 1 1/2 D really had no words.. he had his own little language and would gesture so you would understand what he was saying... Being my first born I really never thought about it. When we went for his check up the pediatrician was concerned because he didn't have any words. So they recommended Early Intervention.. They would come to our house and evaluate him.... Well the end result was that he had a "Speech Delay." He had speech therapy working with him a few times a week and even had a little OT for fine motor skills. When he was 3 he started in the school system. They had pre-school for early intervention kids at our local elementary school. It was amazing! They did great things for him. The older he got the more testing they did to try and pin point more of what was going on with D. He has always been "different." I always call them D's little quirks... it's what we have always loved about him. They believe him to be on the Autistic Spectrum somewhere but he never really "qualified" through the testing. So he continued to have an IEP and receive services until half way through his 3rd grade year when he "graduated." This was an exciting but scary step! Our goal was always that he would be able to graduate but now he would not have any extra help at school. He finished 3rd grade and had no problems at all! Yippeee! Then we moved from ME to NH and he started at a whole new school. I met with his teacher before the school year started making sure she knew his history and what to look for in case he started to "backslide." She was an amazing teacher, she would call me if he was having an off week so that we could stay on top of things. We even had a meeting with the special ed department 1/2 through the year to see if he needed to be reevaluated. At the time his teacher and the special ed team put together a plan of success and he finished the year fabulous (again thank you to an amazing teacher who would do anything to make sure he was getting the help he needed!!)
This year he is a 5th grader.. I remember 5th grade.. it was a hard year. Learning to work more independently, projects and the start of writing real papers.... D has a new teacher (only been teacher a year) and a whole new classroom.. I made sure to check in with his teacher and see how things were going.. at his conference she was really concerned about his writing (this has always been a problem.. great ideas but he cant get them down on paper).. I asked if his plan for success was being used, and the answer was no... I stated to see tests coming home with bad grades.. papers coming home with bad grades.. so DH and I sat down and talked.. we needed to do something. We have lots of friends who home school their children so we started to talk..
Is it something we can do?
Will this really help him?
Are we crazy?
So I started doing research, asking a few of my local friends for some advice and then I went to meet with the school. I told that our plan, and immediately they were setting up meetings and trying to figure out how they could keep him in school and help him. I know how the system works, it takes a process of refers and testing etc.. by the time he would be done testing it would be half way through the quarter, he would be further behind, and that really wasn't going to be the best thing for D. So we made the decision to pull him from school and start home schooling him the second week of February. (D was in on this process too- he agreed that he needed more help than he was getting too.)
What did we just do??? (yup that was my reaction!) So here we are taking off....
At age 1 1/2 D really had no words.. he had his own little language and would gesture so you would understand what he was saying... Being my first born I really never thought about it. When we went for his check up the pediatrician was concerned because he didn't have any words. So they recommended Early Intervention.. They would come to our house and evaluate him.... Well the end result was that he had a "Speech Delay." He had speech therapy working with him a few times a week and even had a little OT for fine motor skills. When he was 3 he started in the school system. They had pre-school for early intervention kids at our local elementary school. It was amazing! They did great things for him. The older he got the more testing they did to try and pin point more of what was going on with D. He has always been "different." I always call them D's little quirks... it's what we have always loved about him. They believe him to be on the Autistic Spectrum somewhere but he never really "qualified" through the testing. So he continued to have an IEP and receive services until half way through his 3rd grade year when he "graduated." This was an exciting but scary step! Our goal was always that he would be able to graduate but now he would not have any extra help at school. He finished 3rd grade and had no problems at all! Yippeee! Then we moved from ME to NH and he started at a whole new school. I met with his teacher before the school year started making sure she knew his history and what to look for in case he started to "backslide." She was an amazing teacher, she would call me if he was having an off week so that we could stay on top of things. We even had a meeting with the special ed department 1/2 through the year to see if he needed to be reevaluated. At the time his teacher and the special ed team put together a plan of success and he finished the year fabulous (again thank you to an amazing teacher who would do anything to make sure he was getting the help he needed!!)
This year he is a 5th grader.. I remember 5th grade.. it was a hard year. Learning to work more independently, projects and the start of writing real papers.... D has a new teacher (only been teacher a year) and a whole new classroom.. I made sure to check in with his teacher and see how things were going.. at his conference she was really concerned about his writing (this has always been a problem.. great ideas but he cant get them down on paper).. I asked if his plan for success was being used, and the answer was no... I stated to see tests coming home with bad grades.. papers coming home with bad grades.. so DH and I sat down and talked.. we needed to do something. We have lots of friends who home school their children so we started to talk..
Is it something we can do?
Will this really help him?
Are we crazy?
So I started doing research, asking a few of my local friends for some advice and then I went to meet with the school. I told that our plan, and immediately they were setting up meetings and trying to figure out how they could keep him in school and help him. I know how the system works, it takes a process of refers and testing etc.. by the time he would be done testing it would be half way through the quarter, he would be further behind, and that really wasn't going to be the best thing for D. So we made the decision to pull him from school and start home schooling him the second week of February. (D was in on this process too- he agreed that he needed more help than he was getting too.)
What did we just do??? (yup that was my reaction!) So here we are taking off....
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