Quality (study) time

The past two weeks have found myself and Thirdborn hitting the books. I have whatever over sized tome open, surrounded with binders full of notes, trying to type furiously on my laptop. Thirdborn has the latest stapled pages of homework. What should take him 10-15 minutes takes him two hours. But I have to hand it to that kid - he buckles down even when he doesn't want to.

Tonight while I am trying to get a project done, he works on spelling words that are in cursive. We have to write them in print so he can read them (remember, I was able to eliminate cursive as part of his I.E.P.). Some of the sentence structures are hard for him to figure out in order to determine the missing word from his lengthy spelling list. He asks for help when he gets stuck (which is nearly every word).

Math goes better this week. Now that he understands it, he breezes through his math pages. Thank heavens. He needs that confidence booster of being able to do it himself.

Huge breakthrough on the reading front tonight. He has a timed reading page he works on every week. At the beginning of this week he was reading 70 wpm. Tonight he read 112 wpm. He has never gone past 80 before. He was so proud of himself. I was proud. Mr. Wonderful was proud. Thirdborn can't wait to tell his teacher and resource teacher because he knows they will be proud, too. It's a huge moment for my kid who has dyslexia.

I feel bad that he has to stay up so late to finish his homework. We've tried working earlier, but The Love Magnet is a huge distraction. It is just easier and better for Thirdborn to wait until she is in bed.

I think that he likes the one-on-one time with me. We cuddle together for reading. We work side by side on our individual assignments. He might stop once in a while to check on what I am doing, particularly if it involves pictures or video.

Last night he became fascinated with the chapter and notes I was studying about craniofacial anomalies (i.d. cleft lip/palate). He asked intelligent questions. I showed him pictures of embryonic development and he was utterly fascinated. He asked if having a cleft lip/palate hurt. We talked about the social and psychological ramifications of having your face look so different from everyone else. He ended up telling his teacher at school and his tutor at the learning center today about cleft lips/palates. Nothing wrong with his brain. Get him curious and he loves to learn.

I think he has now added plastic surgeon to the list of what he wants to be when he grows up; along with forest ranger, conservationist, zoologist (specializing in raptors, of course), and National Geographic explorer and photographer, and inventor.