Weekly update for 9/5/2011

This was a very good school week.  We finished week 3 or RTR and N. has really found his groove.  He is finishing in the 4 1/2 to 5 hour time frame now and is becoming more independent daily.  In history reading he is finishing up "Peril and Peace" and that is being scattered between days of reading "The Story of the Middle Ages" and "Famous Men of the Middle Ages".  He has wanted to read everything by himself on some days, but I still end up helping him figure out what the main points of the story were.  He is growing in leaps and bounds with his written narrations and his postcards for research.  He really is wanting to write more complex sentences and that is something new.

His history project was one I was not sure how much he would be able to do.  He was to make a parchment that had a bible verse in Greek and then the translation below it.  I figured he could do the cursive verse on the bottom, but I didn't see how with his dysgraphia he could do the Greek and not get frustrated.  I told him we would be flexible and I could help as much as he needed.  I wrote the first line to give him a model and I put lines on the paper as a guide and then to my amazement he wrote all of the rest!  He really enjoyed it and I think he did a great job.

He and I are really enjoying "Boyhood and Beyond" and I already see him trying to put the things he is learning in there in practice.  This week was his first week in the Wed. night Youth Group at church.  He was so excited to go.  There is a group of about 5 boys that have all just moved up.  They met in a small group for prayer with the Youth Pastor and the Youth Pastor said that he was so encouraged because the first prayer that this group of boys prayed that night was "Lord help us to be godly men."  The boy who prayed that was N.  I got tears in my eyes when I read that on our Youth Pastor's facebook.  I know those ideas are partly coming from our reading and discussion with "Boyhood and Beyond". 

He continues to read "Gentle Ben" for DITHOR and we are talking about perspective and how books are written from a certain perspective.  He has enjoyed taking different scenes and writing them from a different characters perspective than the original.

We started our co-op this Friday and because HOD is a 4 day program this allows us to be in the co-op without getting behind.  He is taking an art class, a science experiments class and a drama class that is Intro to Shakespeare.  Should be a fun year.