Assessment 2024--Ladybug

 Ladybug is 13 years old; she has several mental health and behavioral diagnoses that affect her ability to learn.

But she acts like those diagnoses don't exist!

Ladybug is a voracious reader of fantasy novels.  Her very favorites are from the series Keeper of the Lost Cities.  She told me once that her perfect day would consist of Keeper of the Lost Cities activities all day long.  She dressed up as a character from those books, and she draws the characters almost as much as she reads about them.

Which leads me to describe Ladybug as an artist.  She loves to draw and crochet.  She has made many sweet crocheted stuffed animals as gifts for friends and family members.  She has learned how to read crochet patterns, too.

Math has long been a struggle for Ladybug, but she's rocked math this year.  She started in Math 3 as a review of what she was working on before we took a break from formal math.  She raced through that with absolute mastery.  Then she completed Math 4.  There were a few challenges there, but even when it looked like she might be defeated by long division, she rose to the challenge and rocked that battle as well.

Just a month or so ago, she completed Math 4 and started Math 5.  She is learning new material; sometimes it is hard, but Ladybug is determined to learn, and she is learning!

This surge in math skills reminds me of how she was determined to learn to read when she was very tiny.  I looked at her and thought, "Give her another year."  She looked at her siblings reading and thought, "I can do this!"

And she did!

Because of all of the reading she does on her own and we do as a family, she has been exposed to writing almost as much as she's been exposed to air to breathe.  We began doing narrations fairly regularly this year, and she became a writer.  As well as writing for school, she writes in her journal, and she writes letters.  This year, she grew from struggling to put down a paragraph to writing pages at a time.  Her pages have an organized, engaging style.

Grammar, spelling, and punctuation do continue to confuse her, but that is something far more easily addressed than writing style.  If she ever decides those are important skills, I know she'll master them.

In years past, I wrote about how Ladybug often forgot nouns.  She doesn't do this very much anymore.  In fact, she's been the one to remember names, places, and events with more accuracy than her other siblings on many occasions.  She's even been known to help me remember, too!

Ladybug's social skills have grown in positive ways, too.  She's made a friend her own age that seeks her company and is a good friend to her.  I attended camp with her just last month and discovered that she is capable of following group rules and staying safe so that she doesn't need a chaperone the way she did in the past.  She's been quite brave at church, volunteering to get up and share her thoughts in front of the congregation, and she's spoken well--honestly, simply, with feeling.

As with all of my younger 6 kids, the majority of our learning has come through family read-alouds.  We've covered history, literature, science, social-emotional skills, and so much more.  Ladybug has participated in all of the reading with us, and she has responded with thoughtful growth that lets me know she is successfully learning through it all.

Other family learning experiences this year have included American Rhythm, Morning Meeting, cooking lessons, and church activities.  Ladybug is an active, capable participant in all of them.

I am quite impressed with my little Ladybug!!