School and All That

This week I've been thinking about all the stuff the twins are suppose to be learning and how they will be tested in February and their IEP's redone and how that is going to reflect on this mother who insisted, foster kids or not, they had to be homeschooled, and what a pickle I am in because I can hardly teach them for all the time it takes to train them..... In other words I've been worrying.  Not good.

The PT gal randomly decided to test their knowledge of the alphabet and it's sounds. Buster missed three.  I wasn't surprised. He is doing well with reading small, short vowel sound words. Everytime I have worked with Missy though, she lead me to believe she only knew the names of a couple letters. She wouldn't try. She turns this kind of thing into a complete power struggle type situation. You can imagine my surprise when she knew most of the letter names and even a handful of sounds. She's brighter than she would like me to think. I went ahead and did the same test  with her and she did even better for me than she did for the teacher - well, half way through she pulled an interesting stunt designed to sidetrack me, etc... but after her consequence of hiking down the road with me singing Christmas carols at the top of my lungs in the pouring rain and pitch darkness, she decided to comply and finish the test.

Vanessa's classes are done for this quarter so she has made an OT kind of exercise course to run the twins through every day. They are having a blast. Vanessa is a good teacher. She's reading them nature books as well.

Brianna decided to teach Buster geography. Today out of the blue he brought me the globe and pointed out different countries and the South Pole, etc...

Thank you, LORD! They are learning, after all.

The gal that had said she would teach Buster to read decided she can't for many reasons. She suggested I send him to school. In all my life I have never been wishing so hard that I could. I was homeschooled. I never once questioned our choice to homeschool our girls, but this is different. However, I can't send him. The first and foremost reason right now is that we are still in the attaching process and it wouldn't be good for him, and then there are all the other reasons that kept me from sending my three girls to school until college.

I just have to hang on to the fact that they are learning in their own way even when they would like me to think otherwise. When I actually sit down to look at the IEP goals that were listed last February for this year I realize we have nearly met every goal.

Potty trained - check
colors - check
shapes - check
speech improvements - check
alphabet - check
listening skill improvement - check
observation skill improvement - check
numbers - check
writing - almost a check

etc...