Family Calendar

This summer as I contemplated the school year with five children ranging in ages from kindergarten to ninth grade, I realized I needed to have a central place to organize and record everyone's activities. Between the 5 kids we have soccer, cross country, Good News Club, lawn mowing jobs, speech therapy; not to mention orthodontist appts, doctor appts, etc. So, after doing some research, we ended up with this color coded white board. Each person's activities is written in a different color ink.

Kindergarten!

I've been dreading this day for many months. I have been overwhelmed with fear, anxiety and deep feelings of inadequacy....Emily and Ashley's first day of kindergarten. It seems silly when I think about it. I've homeschooled 3 kids from the very beginning-taught them to read, diagram sentences, write essays, do algebra. But they aren't deaf. They were not deprived of language for the first three years of life... The statistics are daunting...The average deaf child graduates high school with a third grade reading level. There is no 'proven' standardized way to teach a deaf child to read. The girls have cochlear implants which allow them to hear well; yet they have only had them for two years and do not understand much of what they hear. So will they be able to be successful with phonics? I told Roland that if they become proficient readers I will consider it one of the greatest accomplishments of my life. People have encouraged me to record what we're doing so that I can write a book about it someday. : ) I dunno about that. But I have decided to blog about OUR progress here...