Austin's progress - YIPEE!

Yesterday we went to the Halloween Carnival at the elementary school Austin used to go to. It was SO much fun. Austin was so excited to see his old teacher. I thought that was cute because some people ask if we started homeschool because he had a bad teacher. I loved his teacher and aparently Austin did too. We just found it was a better fit for him and that he needed some one on one time and teaching. I also saw him, two times there, quickly make friends with other kids. From the time Austin was first born to age 5, he was Mr. Social. He would go play with anyone, was friends with everyone, etc. When he started going to Kindergarten till the time he started homeschool, middle of second grade, he slowly went down in confidence and social skills. He was commenting to me that he was dumb, that we didn't know how to make friends, etc. He's been doing homeschool for 8 months, and I saw a huge difference in him. It made me feel SO happy to see him back to the social boy he first was. I don't know why that decline happened and I probably never will, but I do know I am happy we found a remedy. His attitude to learning has completely changed. He rarely complains about doing his school work and chores. And now, thanks to my friend, he is loving math as well. I recently had a friend donate a math system called Mortensen Math to us. It is a very plain looking math, but it is presented in such a great way. Every time we do math I see his confidence go up as well. He completed the whole first book of Calculus today and had fun doing it. The only trick with him is if he has to write the answers, I loose him. He becomes ditracted and irritated and tired. Even when he doesnt complain (because he knows there will be consequences), I still can see how difficult it is for him. My friend suggested to let him do the problems verbally. He whips though the math and has fun. What a huge difference! He loves to draw, knows how to hold a pencil, knows how to write and writes fairly well, but he seems to get so tired if he writes too much. It is very strange to me, and hard for me to have the faith that the writing will come later, but I am going off my friends faith and now he enjoys the math. It is such a journey to figure out what each kids needs, but when we figure something out, it is SO rewarding. He is a good boy.