Thursday, July 22, 2010

Books

Jays school books have arrived for the next school year.
I looked back through my blog to see what I had posted about Jay and school. And I found nothing. So here is the Reader's Digest version.

After a month a kindergarten I was told that Jay was bored because he already knew "this stuff" and needed to be moved to first grade. After he missed the first month of first grade he started to fall behind. By second grade he was going to resource. By the end of third grade he was in the resource room more than he was in a regular class room and they wanted to move him to extended resource.

So . . .

I decided to home school Jay last year. Kind of. Jay "went" to a virtual online public school called Connections Academy. Since it is a regular public school there is no cost. They send a computer, all the school books and supplies, and even pay for your internet connection.

I had Jay take 3rd grade over again. I was by Jay's side about 90% of the time helping and guiding him. It was quite time consuming but we made it through.

The results: At the beginning of the year, Jay was reading 48 words per minute. By the end, he was reading 84 words per minute. Before last year, his ISAT (Idaho Standardized Testing) scores were all below basic. At the end of the year, he scored proficient in all three categories, reading, math, and language. Actually, he was about 2 points in each category from scoring advanced.

It was a lot of work and I am so glad we did it.

4 comments:

Deitering said...

awww that's good! Are you going to keep home schooling him or send him back to public school?!?! or... in school public school... which btw.. that's a pretty neat thing to find! (connections academy)

LDS Mom said...

I am hoping to send him back in a few years. I just really want to feel like he is caught up first and that he has this whole school/learning thing down.

Karin said...

You are inspiring! Jay is so lucky to have such a patient, pro-active mom. Hope this year goes well for him AND Erica.
It was fun catching up on your blog- I wanna take my kids to that cave! (ok, maybe minus the baby...) and HOW ARE THOSE EGGS?! After talking with Todd the other week (at the Hollowells) I thought eggs were still a ways off- what an exciting surprise!

LDS Mom said...

We actually decided to keep all 4 of the younger kids at home next year. I may be totally insane by next summer.

We are loving the eggs! I didn't think we would get any until late August but all of a sudden, there they were. Yesterday we got 4 eggs!

It was nice to catch up on your blog too. I was starting to wonder what you have been up to this summer.