Why I Love Our Little Charter School

Little Man literally won the lottery...the lottery to get into his charter school. I had wanted him at this school since he was like 2 or 3 years old and they had an opening for a third grade teacher! Yes, I applied to teach with them, I wanted him in so badly. (Employees and siblings get dibs on open spots!)

So when lottery application time came around last year, I was turning them in the moment I could! I still remember the night we got the call. I was at Bible Study and the kids were with their dad. When we got home, there was a missed call on the phone, but no message. It was from the Charter School! I checked my cell phone and there was a voice mail. He had got in!

This school is small, one class per grade. His kindergarten class is maxed at 24 kids. (Which is 4 more than what they had initially drawn for! They opened up 4 more spots in the summer due to high enrollment in the public schools.) This is so great! Why? Here's a few reasons:

1. They know us!
Okay, I know this sounds crazy, but I like the fact that I can drop my son's lunch off in the office when he forgets, or donate disinfecting wipes, and the secretary already knows who I am. I've only been in the office a handful of times. And the teacher is always telling me things in the pick up or emailing. This is one of the great things about having him at a "small" school. Sure I could've put him the public school where they have more classes per grade and maybe this would've happened, but not likely. Little Man isn't going to be lost in the shuffle of the many classes of kindergartners.

2. My son is academically advanced!
One of the school's "goals" as a charter is to make sure each child is meeting individual academic goals. Going in, I knew my son had just about met all the kindergarten standards. I go to his first trimester conference, yeah, he's met them all. Kid passed kindergarten in the first trimester! But we're keeping him with his peers as he is still a bit behind his peers in the emotional and social aspect of things. But that means that the teacher has to do some quick thinking to keep him involved! Thank goodness for technology! But my kindergartner is telling me about "bossy R" and "bully E" and contractions. Things they don't teach until first grade! And because the school is small, his teacher is able to talk with the first grade teacher and find out what she would like to make sure he knows going into first grade, so she can make sure he hits those milestones.

It's important to me that Little Man continue to grow academically, but remain with his peers. And had I put him in the public school, this may not have happened. He may not have been challenged enough. He may have become a problem child. But that hasn't happened. We are working on his social skills while enhancing his academics. And EVERY break that is longer than a 3-day weekend, he gets homework! And his homework is first grade stuff. AND his teacher sends home the extra stuff! How great is that?!

3. Community Involvement!
Another one of the school's "goals" as a charter school is to get the kids involved in the community. So my son's class picked up trash at one of the parks in town. And now that we are looking at my son's 6th birthday party, we are asking his friends to bring donations for the local animal shelter instead of presents. And surprisingly, Little Man was okay with it! It just goes to show you that kids CAN be involved in their community. They are learning to be productive members of society NOW and learning that even as a five or six year old they can make an impact.

I'm SO glad I picked a charter school for Little Man. It was the best decision I made. And I'm SO glad we won the lottery! Hopefully when Princess gets there, they will be willing to work with her special needs as well as her intelligence. And hopefully by the time Little Man is done there, we'll be able to move him to a charter high school. (It's something that they're looking at now.)

Therapy Meeting and Assessment

Princess had to miss a day of preschool because we had to go to "clinic." Okay, so what "clinic" is is essentially a therapy meeting with a doc. Because she is with the Medical Therapy Unit (MTU) through our insurance, this is the time when all the therapists get together and discuss the progress being made.

So, we wind up being the FIRST one for the day! Yay! We attempted to get Princess on the scale. It was a no go. I'm not sure why she is terrified of scales right now, but whatever. Thankfully I don't think we've grown a whole lot lately. We're somewhere around 25lbs or so. We go over our info (they somehow had my home and cell number backwards) and then get ushered into a room with a circle of chairs and a temporary medical bed set up.

In comes our therapists: L (PT) and M (OT), as well as a nurse case manager (not ours) and Dr. D. Yes, Dr. D, our doc at Shriners! It's so good that he does this. So, we talk. He says that we're going to continue to wait to see about bracing. I'm fine with this because it seems to be correcting on it's own. I tell him about the pain issues that Princess has been having. He's not sure what to make of it. He says she's not that spastic, so she really shouldn't be having pain. He seems to think it may be a potassium issue. (I don't think so, as her labs have all be great, though I will mention it to Dr. H when we see her in April.) He managed to check her range of motion on her legs without her even realizing it! I love this man! He knows just enough about kiddie shows to be dangerous to little kids! Talking about the different Paw Patrol characters and stuff. It was GREAT! I then give him the radiologist's report of Princess's MRI. He hadn't seen it yet, but it was as was expected. We're not going to look further for anything, but know that she does have some minor CP. He agrees to the recommendations of twice a month OT (so hopefully Princess will learn to dress/undress herself) and every other month PT (to make sure we're not missing anything as she continues to grow). And after 30 minutes, we are done! We don't have to go back to that "clinic" for 6 months. We'll still see Dr. D in March at Shriners.

Then, once we get home, a little while later, A from the Parent Infant Program of the Regional Center shows up. She's there to assess Princess. I agreed to this to not only get more information to pass on to the school district, but also to see if she was going to qualify for services through the Regional Center. The assessment they used was the same one the NICU clinic used. It was actually quite interesting to see how far Princess has come in six months since the last time they administered the assessment. She totally rocked it! In fact, according to her our rep at the Regional Center, she scored well above where she should be as a nearly 3 year old! YAY! Not that I had any doubt. She's going to be just like her brother in that department.

Then because she missed school on Tuesday, we went ahead and sent her on Wednesday. AND this way, her developmental therapist, J could come see her at school. Because he was a man, and we usually don't have men working in the preschool, the kids totally clustered around him! This of course freaked Princess out and she totally needed a time out once we got to the playroom. But I needed J to see these things so that in his report to the school district, it's noted that she DOES have some issues that would be best addressed by school-based OT. (The OT through the MTU doesn't deal with sensory issues.)

Finally got a picture of them together!

Sadly, after these two crazy days, Princess caught her brother's cold. But snuggling on Friday and running the humidifier at night and I think she kicked it fairly quickly. Now we get about six weeks of just normal routine before we break out the rounds of seeing all the docs!

Linked up on #BloggyBrunch

January Goals Recap and February Goals

So back at the beginning of the month I mad a goals post. Well, now it's time to recap them, as January is over and make new ones for February.

Here were January's Goals:

So let's go through them:

1. Blog at least once a week. -- Well, I got in 5 posts this month for this blog and 7 posts in my other blog. So I would say I met that one!
2. Write Bible verse daily. -- Total fail on this one! I only managed to do it for the first day.
3. Read at least two books. -- Another failure. Oh well. I'll just have to read more in February!
4. Redo blog pages bar. -- I actually did this over on my other blog. Now to actually figure it out for this one!
5. Donate to the church. -- Yep, did this one!

So all in all, 3 out 5. Not too bad for my first time attempting this whole goal thing. One thing I did start doing that WASN'T on my goal sheet was creating "title graphics" for my blogs. And I've been using those graphics on the Facebook page as well! I really like them and I'm glad I saw Pam at Hodge Podge Moments do so it gave me the idea!

Now onto February!

Intention

Consistency

Define it

1. Daily Bible reading. -- This will be starting at Lent (10th)

2. Weekly blogging. -- Minimum of 4 posts on BOTH blogs!

3. Daily cleaning routines. -- Described below with photo.

4. Daily journaling.

Oddball

1. Read two books or more.

So here's my goals for the month:

Blogging:

1. Blog weekly on both blogs, or a minimum of 4 posts for the month.

2. Make sure I put posts on Instagram and Facebook pages.

3. Figure out a drop down menu thing for this blog.

Personal:

1. Read the Bible daily starting on Ash Wednesday. (Note: Must find Lenten Bible reading plan.)

2. Post #RethinkChurch #Lent2016 Photo a Day challenge on Instagram.

3. Journal daily.

4. Read two books, or more, as I'm behind already.

5. Get homeschool materials together for Princess.

6. Daily cleaning routines.

I promised a little more about that one. So here is what I'm doing:

.

I found this great calendar on Drops of Learning. It's the Motivated Moms Chore Planner. But it costs. (Yes, I know it's only $8.) I'm all about the freebie! I HATE spending money on things that aren't "necessity." So I created the above weekly planner page. That one is for this week. It's based off of the Fly Lady Method. So I left spots for the daily "zone missions" and put in the "weekly home blessing hour" items and even some "deep cleaning" items. Along with the daily tasks are basically the "baby step" routines.

Oh, and yes, I know Princess is IN preschool, but she does so well with directed tasks, that we're going to supplement at home too!

So those are my goals for the month and the recap as well.

Linked up at Monthly Intention!