Class Dojo

Class Dojo

I've started using a new platform for incentives for Chase's homeschool.  It's basically a sticker based award system.  You can have multiple classes, the students can log in to edit their avatars and see their scores, and parents can see the daily reports.

Chase was having a bad first day that I had started it, so has been a little negative towards it.  But today he had a good day and earned a lot of stickers.  I am rewarding the sticker achievements with time he can spend on his computer.

I installed this app via Google+.  But I think it is multi-platform capable.

Now Chase thinks monsters are creepy, so he is keeping his school photo as his avatar.  I think the art is all pretty cute.

Today is Friday

The Daily Planner

 The Daily Planner

Every day, I've been writing up a giant worksheet for Chase.  I use the backside of a desk calendar.  But large format paper, like butcher paper would do.

I keep the same information, Day of the week, yesterday, tomorrow, with the dates written under.  Then we have the word and the number of the day.  Which he has separate worksheets for.

In addition to those, I add in some relevant assignment.  I look through his assignments for the day and add in drawings or activities, or problems for him to figure out.  Today was a Chapter review for following directions.  He misread the directions, so went back and corrected his mistakes.

Following directions

 He seems to like the daily planner and it helps him remember what day of the week it is and reiterates the month and year.  I write them in different ways "January|Jan.|1", so he recognizes all forms.  I've been working him mostly on rhyming, calendar/days and money and handwriting.  Chase does really well at reading and enjoys anything with drawings.  But he needs a lot of practice on the others.  We're only planning to home school for Kindergarten.  So need to make sure he is ready for the first grade.

Today is Friday

 Next week, he will be evaluated by NISEC to see if he qualifies for special needs enrollment in school.  Because of his misbehavior in the school setting, the school staff felt special needs placement might work better for him.  Since he does well on a one on one setting.  He needs to do more independent work.  The assessment is to determine whether or not he has any learning disorder or disability.  Which, I do not believe is the case.  I think he was not adapting well to the school environment , mostly because he learned early on that if he misbehaved, he got sent home.  Which was what he wanted.

 So, our goal is to get him better socialized.  Right now, we're sharing a vehicle with Kevin's father.  Hopefully, with tax returns, we will be able to purchase our own car and have the freedom to travel to social events for Chase.

It has been a lot of stress, but the home school has been less stressful than dealing with 2 months of suspensions.  Chase was facing possible expulsion for his disruptive behavior.  He is happy again and no longer fighting us on everything.

Ready or Not

Back into action after winter break fun and shenanigans.  Started off with a single player version of Rhyming Sight Words BINGO Game, which is now available in my TeachersPayTeachers Store.  Also, there's some new freebies.  Lucky Star Craftivity and Clip Art Talk Bubbles.

Rhyming Sight Words BINGO Printable

We learned about the Venezuela Pebble Toad, an inch long amphibian that falls like a pebble when approached by a predator.  There's a great video clip to show to your kid(s) from BBC's Life series.  I made a little short story to accompany this lesson, which I will be creating a download of for TpT soon.  The video is ultra cute to watch this little guy bounce.

Over the holiday, we decided to pick up a First Grade Workbook for Chase, since he scored so high on his sight words and often complained that Kindergarten was boring and "I know it all already!".  Loudly complained.  So, we've started him on a few sheets from there.  He did pretty well with it, hopefully, he'll find it more challenging.

I'm using GoogleDrive's spreadsheets to keep track of all his attendance records and assignments, as well as the hard copies, with the dates on them.  We're trying to be a bit more organized.  We've moved his work table to the main room beside his art easel.

We've started our own sort of 'bulletin board', aka, the hallway.  Where we're posting the words he can spell from memory on little open book bulletin pin ups.  Which I've added to my Homeschool Pinterest Board.

Bulletin Pin Up from JoAnn.comJo-Ann has a wonderful teacher's resource selection.

Winter Break

We started our winter break on Sunday.  Since we haven't had to have the Monday-Friday sort of schedule, we did assessments on the weekend.  Chase did excellently.  He was very cooperative.  It seems it is not so much the challenge and work he minded so much as being at school he wasn't adapting well to.  I had prepped for the assessments, mostly by downloading resources via TeachersPayTeachers.  One had 220 Dolch Sight Words.  He scored 210/220!  Which, according to the chart means he scored close to average with mid-year Second Graders.  This made me extremely proud of course.

Reading has always been important to me and my boyfriend.  So our son sees us reading all the time.  A lot of words he doesn't know, he reads by looking at the first and last letters, and length of the word to guess it.

Things to work on:
Rhyming
Spelling
Writing
Lowercase

He's doing alright on Math, though I'm not certain what the goals/expectations are for his level.  Writing his numbers definitely needs some work.  3's, 5's, 2's in particular are often written backwards or with the wrong number of curves.

I've been keeping track of all his assignments and grades in spreadsheets on GoogleDrive.  It has been wonderful to keep everything organized.  I've been doing his weekly assignments, his total daily reports and the assessment all via the spreadsheet options.  Also, I'm making a presentation with his progress reports to be given to the Principal so she is kept up to date on Chase's school readiness.  The goal is to have him return to the Public School System for First Grade.

Winter Break will be ending a little sooner than the Public School to be certain we have the adequate number of days (180) and not run into the Summer Break too much.  Though, we'll likely be continuing his lessons through out the Summer.

Beginning in the Middle

It's almost the middle of the school year and we've just started to homeschool.  Kindergarten isn't mandatory in the state of Indiana, however, we want our son, Chase to be equal to his peers when he starts the first grade this fall.  We pulled him from school due to his behavior, getting himself suspended every week.