Mostly his writing. He's making progress, but he still hasn't got much of a concept of writing as trying to communicate something to the reader, causing his writing to be very incoherent and hard-to-impossible to follow. He also leaves out words at times. On the bright side, the intelligibility of his handwriting has increased, and his spelling and some aspects of grammar and punctuation are improving... but he's in 5th grade, and some of his single sentences are incomprehensible, and his paragraphs are basically single run-on-sentences that often fail to communicate w/e needs to be communicated (and he's certainly not writing multi-paragraph anythings). Aside from that, just the general immaturity, clumsiness, trouble paying attention and staying on task, struggling with understanding the motivations of fictional characters (like, really basic stuff, like why some girl is crying in some story), etc. Again, I don't particularly want him to repeat a grade now... I'm still hoping that he'll suddenly "get it" in middle school, but, realistically, there's a chance that he won't.

If I had to list all the things Broccoli and I could do at age x that Celery couldn't do at age x, I'd be busy for quite a while. Not all kids are the same, even in the same family. Which often doesn't mean anything. I couldn't read until I was 6. My reading is just fine now (and has been since I was about 6.5yo, at which point I started being ahead).

For one, I have no idea how often school districts say no to homeschool kids repeating a grade. I suspect that it's probably rarely an issue, mostly if the kid is already old for grade and the district thinks that the parents are trying to get out meeting the testing requirements... but I don't know.

I put my previous question on the High School Board: http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/663181-repeating-a-grade-in-ny-question/

Okay, so, I know that my oldest is only in 5th grade... I just kind of want to know my options before it's too late. It's my understanding that in NY, the school district has to approve your IHIP, which means that they can deny a grade change. At the moment, my inclination is to wait until 8th grade and do a second 8th grade if necessary, but, if I wait until 8th grade and then they tell me that no, I can't do 8th grade again, I'd be stuck having to put him in 9th grade after that. At which point, even if I were to do 8th grade at home, and then do grades 9-12, I'm not sure whether it'd be possible to list 4 years of high school for college applications, or if I'd have to list 5 years of high school because the school district would've counted grade 8b as 9th grade, if that makes sense. Whereas if I were to try to have him repeat a grade now, and the school district says no, I'd still have time to move to a different district and try again there, or time to build a stronger case for him repeating a grade, or w/e. He's got a late August birthday, so, if he doesn't repeat a grade, he'd graduate at 17 and turn 18 the summer after graduating. He's got an ASD, and a moderate to severe speech impairment, he struggles with writing, and with certain parts of reading comprehension (above grade-level for non-fiction, below grade-level for fiction). He's ahead in other ways (probably 2E). He's short (he'll probably be 5'5" as an adult), and, of course, he's socially immature because of the ASD. He took the end-of-4th grade test last Spring and scored at the 94th percentile though (but, those tests don't measure writing, or maturity, or life skills, etc), so standardized test-wise he does just fine (he also qualified for CTY on both verbal and quantitative). So, like I said, my inclination is to *maybe* do grade 8a and grade 8b if it seems necessary... I'm just worried that I'll have painted myself in a corner if I wait until then and the school district says "no, he has to enter 9th grade". So, anyone got any BTDT? I know that all this is still far into the future and might not be an issue at all... I'd just like to know the facts so I can stop worrying.

I'm in the bedroom hiding from two little helicopters that are pretty uncontrollable. They are much better at surviving the inevitable crashes than I expected though.

I don't do Greek - one of the recent Faces magazines was about Greece, and he liked the alphabet, so I put on a Greek alphabet song on YouTube, and he memorized it like instantaneously. :) He also did art (or well, used a bunch of bathtub fingerpaints... he said he accidentally used too much. I only saw the very gross water at the end).

Edpo: Ugh... I'm having one of those weeks (I'm including the ending of last week) where I'm like "maybe Celery should repeat a grade", but I know that in reality it'd probably make more sense to wait until 8th grade and then decide if I want to do grade 8a and grade 8b or something. Of course, I also don't know what the school district would say... they can decline letting me let him repeat a grade... not sure what would happen if they did that, since it's up to me whether I graduate him or not... so, if they were to refuse to let him do 8th grade twice, would I just submit IHIPs for 9th grade while doing 8th grade again at home, and then just graduate him a year after the school district thinks he should be done (still reporting only 4 years of high school to colleges, since in *my* school he'd have done only 4 years of high school, since the school district isn't the graduating authority?). Probably something that belongs on, I dunno, Gen Ed or the high school board or something? He's just so 2E, and his struggles with writing, paying attention, and other ASD stuff are sometimes just driving me batty, and with a late August birthday it wouldn't be crazy at all for him to repeat a grade at some point (if he doesn't repeat a grade, he'd graduate at 17 because of that late summer birthday).

Broccoli is bleating the Greek alphabet while he's sitting in the bathtub.

Both Celery and Broccoli have been potty trained for over half their lives. Woohoo! (Celery was 4y4m, and I don't even want to think about it).

Overachiever!

Have you tried the European aisle? I recall seeing jarred cherries there, but I'm not 100% sure if they were tart... I think they were though.

I don't know about the legalities in AU (nor here, tbh - just that people do it), but here the Red Cross offers a babysitting course for kids 11+, so she'd be old enough for that. In reality, practically nobody is going to hire an 11yo to babysit, but some people might hire one as a mother's helper (i.e. mom is home doing other stuff while the kid gets paid to look after the kids). Also, lawn-mowing for neighbors is something that can be done as soon as the kid is big enough to handle a lawn-mower. ETA: if she's into writing, she could try to make a neighborhood newspaper and sell it to the neighbors for like something like 25c per edition or w/e. Or maybe she could tutor some smaller kids for money.

Moles are round enough. Though I think that's called Whack-a-mole. I have no idea what Whackadoodle is. Oh, wait... isn't that another word for crazy? Agreed with others that a phone call to a supervisor might be warranted, so the staff can get better training on when to call.

That one's Thai.

Glad we've got an expert in the house. #lost บูย่า!

Thingamastick counts as sportsball, because pucks are round. I think.

:lol: I think they play sportsball.

Inspection should probably be every year though (except on brand new vehicles maybe). So, it'd be every year for both if they're going to change it. And I don't particularly want to volunteer to pay every year for registration... I'd rather deal with 2 stickers.

Right... but registration is good for 2 years, and inspection for only one (unless your car is still really new, in which case iirc inspection can be good for 2 also).

We're like Hotel California. You can check out, but you can never leave (or something along those lines).

The kids are really into the earthquake table Broccoli got for his birthday yesterday. I'm glad it wasn't a dud (there were zero reviews when I bought it, because it was so new).

Hi Sparkly! Welcome to the ITT!

Sparkly got a boeja! (am I on the correct thread?!?)

Happy Birthday Jean! :party: Yes, like this: http://ww4.hdnux.com/photos/17/45/03/4083963/3/920x920.jpg The registration sticker is about the size of a credit card (slightly bigger, I think). The previous time I didn't realize it was going to be impossible to get off and pulled it off when I didn't have time to fiddle with it, but the center part (the whiter part) came off, so I just carefully positioned it over the previous one...but, that meant that this time I had even more stuff to deal with. You can also see that with the way they're positioned, when you're trying to scrub the registration sticker off, it's also really easy to damage the inspection sticker.