November 12th, 2010

Okay... yeah... not updating again. :(

Anyhow, things are going well for TJ. He's started tutoring in Japanese with an MTU student, twice a week. The tutor is great and TJ's friend is taking it with him. So far it is a lot of fun and TJ's actually seems to be learning! :) TJ's also been going swimming, participating in open gym and doing gymnastics once a week. He's also been attending various activities that get announced in the Updates! such as the Class Acts at the Rozsa (Tuesday he's going to go see a show there). So almost every day he is now participating in some sort of group activity or enriching activity.

As far as work at home - it's going well. TJ's still progressing in his math book. As usual the first few chapters are review of the previous year but TJ's doing a good job of relearning the skills and improving his speed and neatness - which will really help now that we're moving into newer concepts. We're going back and reviewing some writing skills. Doing lots of sentence modeling and diagramming. In social studies we're moving on to the Native American tribes and the first settlers. In geography, TJ's working on a booklet of information on Alaska. In science he is continuing to learn about plants while expanding his scientific vocabulary. Starting Monday TJ begins a new type of learning program too. It's called Time4Learning and uses the computer to teach the core subjects with videos, games, printables and quizzes. This will be used in addition to his current texts and working plans... we'll see how it works!

Joe had parent-teacher conferences and his first 1/4 grades came in. NOT GOOD! I won't publish them but we were not happy. Dad went to the conferences (a deal we made at the beginning of the school year) - so I'm not sure what all went on but I know that Joe's in deep doo-doo with his Dad right now.

Because of this and some other issues that have been going on (TJ's inattention, etc) - we've decided that there will be NO video games or computer for either boy Mon-Friday (EXCEPT when used as part of the educational process - ie research or Time4Learning for TJ). Joe's also grounded from friends and TV until his grades improve. This will let Jessica have an opportunity to play some games (she rarely gets to because even if we tell her she can, she ends up letting the boys take over).

As opposed to Joe's poor performance in school - Jessica's doing great (for her). Her teacher said she's really impressed with how much better her impulsiveness has become and the amount of stuff she's actually absorbing and able to later use to participate in class and answer questions. :)

Just in case I don't get more updates put up before the Thanksgiving break... Jessica has her surgery on November 23rd. Please keep her in your thoughts.

Thanks.