Back To School, Sink Or Swim!

It's official! I have all 3 of my kids in school! Wow! Finally some "me time"! The girls started back to school the last week of August.

Sonya has a one on one RN as her aide and she is also receiving PT in school! She goes twice a week for 3 hours! She loves school so much! We are still settling some things with the school, her teachers, aide and PT so that Sonya has accessibility to everything and we are working on inclusion methods as well. My belief is that when there's a will, there's a way! Everything is possible, but modifications must be made. She is meeting some new friends, just some though... like 2...there seems to be a higher than expected amount of kids with needs in her class. It is supposed to be no more than 50/50 but it seems like only 10% of her class are average. She is the only one with a physical disability. This makes for a hard time making friends. Some are a bit to physically rough to be around while others don't connect with her cognitively. This isn't what I was expecting when I placed her in this class. Next year I may be looking for a different school. I want her in mainstream, not segregated and at this time the class appears to be where all the differently abled kids are dumped. I feel like the school has mislead me on their representation of their school diversity.

First day pictures! In front of the house!

In the parking lot at school!

So excited!!

Zoe is now in fourth grade! It's quite a change from third grade, there is much more work involved! She has 40 minutes of homework plus 20-30 minutes of reading per night plus a packet that comes home at the beginning of the week and needs to be completed by the end of the week! She's not too keen on her teacher this year and quite frankly, neither am I. It's a case of the fresh out of college and I'm going to line up my students like little soldiers because I have no idea what it's like to even have children, kind of deal. I refer to her discipline tactics as "setting them all up to fail and then dock them recess minutes" tactics. It's just BS. Yep, there might be a transfer of classrooms in the future if this crap keeps up (after of course I voiced my opinion of absolute disagreement). When your smart, good, love to learn daughter starts referring to her classroom as the torture chamber there's something wrong.

On a lighter note, Zoe is reading books of 150+ pages now and she is currently learning division and geometry. She is perfecting her cursive skills too, of which they barely touch on in 4th grade now! Seriously, all they require is that the spelling words and their names be written in script! That's it! And no, they are not going to cover it in 5th grade either! Cursive is now obsolete except to sign your name to legal documents! Wow! On the playground the cliques have started... Ugh... I'm not too worried though as Zoe has a strong sense of self. I'm not looking forward to this pre-pubescent crap though!

Akela is in first grade and is loving it! She has Zoe's first grade teacher whom I was very happy with the first time around, so I have no worries! Akela has taken off with reading and is amazing me with her ability to read words like "interesting", "believe", "actually", and "experience"! She is also working on learning time and money counting right now! Her artwork that has been coming home has been getting more and more detailed, she truly amazes me! I think she has some of her mommy's creative spark!

At the bus stop!

Ha! When I said "Sink or Swim" in my title, were you thinking school? Nope, gotcha! I enrolled the older girls in swim lessons at the Y! I've put this off for far too long and I feel it's way too important to just skip it all together. Eventually, they are going to want to swim in that ocean we take them to each year! In all fairness, I did have Zoe in lessons when she was a tot, but I don't think she remembers much of it.

Zoe is doing great! If she wants to move up to the next level, she has to stop touching her toes to the floor! She can barely help it though, the girl is 4ft 10" and is swimming in just 4ft of water. Her instructor wants her to lose her fear of the deep so that she can take her out there to swim, literally pulling the floor out from underneath her! She has made good effort by cannonballing into the 9ft section! Go Zoe!

Akela is my dry land babe. She is terrified to swim on her own. Bubbles and all she grips onto her instructor who is so sweet and takes her time with my little girl, getting her acquainted and comfortable with the water! She has greatly improved! In just 4 lessons she has taken her own first jump into 9ft of water and swam for a few strokes without holding the instructor (with her bubbles on of course). I'm excited to see what the future weeks of swim hold! I signed them up all the way through December and I plan on enrolling them again and again until they are 100% proficient! Enjoy the pics!