Open Houses

For the first time ever I didn't have to split my time at a school open house between two classrooms and I will never have to do it again. From here on out Horse Girl and History Girl will always be in different schools.

On Wednesday we had our first Open House at the middle school History Girl is attending. We spent 10 minutes in each classroom met all her teachers 6 of them in total. The French teacher seems like she will be fun, which is surprising to me since both French teachers I had I didn't get a long with. One I made angry because when I was taking French and Russian the same year even though I had been taking French for three years and it was my first year taking Russian, I just grasped Russian better so there were many times I didn't know the answer in French, but did in Russian or I would answer "I don't know." in Russian. This all made my French teacher angry since he told my parents that I shouldn't take Russian because I didn't do well at French. Well it turns out I just didn't like French and didn't like the teachers I had for it. So I have always had a negative view of French teachers so I was surprised when I liked History Girl's French teacher. Also History Girl's Band instructor is very excited about having History Girl in Band not only because she plays French Horn, but because she went to band camp this Summer. The Band instructor said she lets the kids who play French Horn more leeway because of how rare they are. Well History Girl is every excited about middle school and wants it to be Tuesday since that is the first day of school.

On Thursday we had the Open House at the elementary school for Horse Girl. Horse Girl is going to be in 2nd grade this year. They hired a new 2nd grade teacher because they like to keep the classes small and Horse Girl's grade is large compared to the other grades so the school keeps hiring a new teacher when her grade goes forward in order to keep the classes small....then when the year is over the teacher is moved somewhere else in the district. So we have never met this teacher before. She is very friendly. What impressed me so much is that she checked the files of all her students and then talked to the speech therapists and resource room teachers to find out what she could do to make the year go well for the students with IEPs. I am so pleased and impressed that she did for me what I am used to having to go up to a teacher to tell them Horse Girl has an IEP and we will be having a PET meeting before October to bring the teacher up to speed. She did this all herself. You should hear Horse Girl's speech therapist talk about Horse Girl's teacher.....it is like the teacher walks on water because she has done this one little thing. Hey I totally agree with her with this...it makes our lives easier and makes us feel that she does really care about Horse Girl and the other kids with Learning Differences.

Horse Girl talked to her new teacher for awhile. Talked to her about the reading she has done over the Summer. Horse Girl has read at least 15 mins a day and worked on workbooks and listened to Harry Potter books on her iPod. Horse Girl told her teacher all about that and the fact that she had taken part in a Horse Show this Summer and won two ribbons.

Then we went up to visit Horse Girl's speech therapist and her reading tutor. It makes sense that she would want to spend more time visiting them then any other teachers because she spends more time with them then any other teacher. Horse Girl helped her Speech Therapist set up decorations in the speech room. Her Speech Therapist was so pleased to hear that Horse Girl didn't regress at all over the Summer when it comes to her speech. The Speech Therapist was also noting that Horse Girl is putting together long sentences when she is speaking and when she is doing that she is having word recall issues. She has always had word recall issues, but now with the really long sentences with the complicated concepts she is trying to express the word recall issues are more noticeable. The Speech Therapist plans to work on this more this coming year. Both the Speech Therapist and the Reading Tutor were impressed that Horse Girl could now match up the letters with the sounds they make. Which was something she had a lot of problems with last year. I think she was able to do it now with no problem because of all the workbook work she did over the Summer.

Just so you know I don't make Horse Girl do all this work. I do make her read at least 15 mins a day and I make sure she takes part in the Extended Year Services the school offers for her in the Sumer. Everything else is work she makes herself do because she wants to and she wants to get better with her studies. I am a big believer of her having a Summer like a regular kid, which she does then on her own she adds stuff to it that helps her. Her work ethic is just amazing and I believe she will go far because of it.

So it looks like Horse Girl will be starting this year better then we had hoped for.

Horse Girl has been on the waiting list for the Scottish Rite Learning Center for 18 months and she finally made it to the top of the list. So this year on Mondays and Wesnesdays after school she will be getting extra tutoring to help deal with her learning differences. Scottish Rite Learning Center is one of the best places to get help for Dyslexia and they are always doing the cutting edge tutoring for the kids. I feel so glad that Horse Girl is taking part in this tutoring. I am looking forward to see how this year goes for her.