2021-22 End of Year Assessment--Ladybug

 

Ladybug had a big year--turning 11, getting braces, diving into fantasy novel series and becoming a die-hard reader, crocheting lots of toys and things as gifts for siblings, starting the youth program at church, and gaining lots of childcare skills.

She is not by any means free of the ghosts of her past that affect her daily behaviors, but she has made so much progress, and she's really learned a lot about accepting her mistakes with grace and moving on.

That was probably the biggest theme of her homeschool year--acknowledging mistakes gracefully.  It's a hard thing to be a perfectionist; it's an even harder thing to be intellectually disabled and a perfectionist!  Every single mistake would drive her into yelling, screaming, crying, and sulking.  It made school really, really hard.  (understatement)

Many of her acting-out sessions would turn into several-hour marathons during which I would have to put her in a safe place and just wait them out.  When she finished, I would repeat the same lesson, "Mistakes are part of learning.  It's not bad to make a mistake.  You're not stupid for making mistakes.  Everyone makes mistakes--including me!  When you make a mistake, I can see where you need help.  Trying things again and again is part of life, and it will make you stronger!"

I saw real improvement in her attitude toward mistakes by mid-spring.  As I pointed out math problems that needed to be re-worked or spelling errors, I would steel myself for a breakdown, but Ladybug oftentimes would smile, fix the problem, and move on.  I would praise her for her good attitude, and she would tell me, "I'm accepting my mistakes, and I'm learning new things."

She's by no means perfect at keeping a positive attitude (who is?!?!?), but I'm very proud of how she's worked to develop this skill, and I think it might be the most important thing she's learned this year.

Like the rest of the kids, we pared her academic plans down to the barest bones in order to survive the trauma of the first half of the school year--math and language arts.

She finished Math Lessons for a Living Education Grade 3, which was carried over from last year.  Learning her times tables was grueling, and she has still not mastered them, but she's made significant progress with old-fashioned flash cards.  I'd say she mastered 40-45% of her facts before we took a break.  

Because she needs significant repetition to master many skills, she started The Good and the Beautiful Grade 3 Math.  I figured she'd get a review of things that were easy, and she'd get another chance to work on multiplication and division without the pressure of new concepts.  She completed the first unit of this book before the end of our school year.

In language arts, Ladybug finished up a little review spelling workbook called Sight Words and Spelling by Modern Kid Press.  Then she moved on to complete Explode the Code 5, and she began 5 1/2.  

She worked her way through  The Good and the Beautiful Language Arts Grade 3.  She needed help every step of the way, and I do not consider any of the subjects/skills covered in that book mastered.  However, she did make significant progress in how to write an expository paragraph, and we both discovered that she loves creative writing. 

Ladybug read 6 or 7 assigned chapter books, and she completed a written narration for every paragraph she read.  At the beginning of the year, she drew a picture and wrote 3 sentences.  By the end of the year, she was writing 5-6 sentence narrations without pictures.  I read each narration, and I'd have her correct a few spelling/punctuation errors for each one.  She really did learn how to spell a few new sight words and how to capitalize and put a period at the end of a sentence.  Her early books were from the TGTB library (i.e. Birds Nature Reader and M'Pengo of the Congo); by the end of the year, she'd read The Trumpet of the Swan and A Little Princess.

Ladybug is very competitive, and as she became aware of just how many books her younger brother, Mister Man, read, she wanted to keep up.  She can't keep up, but her drive to try helped her as she dove into Fablehaven, Dragonwatch, Warriors, Keeper of the Lost Cities, and Harry Potter (this summer's project).  

Socially, she's still a little girl.  She sits and reads a lot, and she loves to crochet, but when she's tired of those activities, she gravitates to playing with younger kids at home, at church, and at parks.  The social nuances of communicating with other tweens escape her.

She has grown tremendously in her ability to care responsibly for the daycare babies.  She learned to sit patiently to feed babies, sing and rock them to sleep, offer them developmentally appropriate toys, and play developmentally appropriate games.  We do still need to watch her closely when she carries some of the toddlers because she'll sling them onto her back or shoulders even though I've expressly forbidden that; she's shown me several times that she doesn't understand the fall risk.

Ladybug struggles with emotional regulation, ADHD--inattentive type, and several other socially unacceptable behaviors.  She takes supplements that help her to regulate these behaviors.

I look forward to continued growth and development!