rhymes with

my 5 year old who appears to be pretty smart has been struggling a bit with kindergarten. it was a debate this summer whether or not he was ready to go after turning 5 at the end of june. the current trend is to hold back summer birthday kids (boys!) until the following year to give them time to mature. steve and i decided he would be bored with another year of preschool and sent him on to kindergarten.

he has been doing ok. just ok. not brilliant, not below average. then he started to slip. and admittedly, i didn't take enough notice. complaining about going to school and saying it was too hard. we got wrapped up in the holiday season. we never worked with him consistently enough.

after christmas the papers started coming home blank or with scribbles on them. the teacher and i talk. he has fallen behind and scored below grade level on his mid year tests. at school he couldn't write or count past 20. he couldn't identify all of the lower case letters consistently. he could do these things for me at home, just couldn't, wouldn't for her at school.

a lot of guilt and worry. i feel partly to blame because i let too many other things take time over working with him. i calm down and talk with my husband and mother. we agree to work with him every day. i sit down and talk with him. explain how important all of this is. he doesn't like everything i tell him, but agrees to try because he doesn't want to dissapoint me.

fast foward 10 days later. he can read 10 scholastic books SO FAR. that's all i've given him to date. he can spell out loud words like pat, rat, sat. knows all of his site words. is writing words in his journal instead of scribbling. he spelled "sno sut" for snow suit and "pla" for play today. can write his numbers to 100. can count by 10's to 530. (that's how far he got this morning before the bus came.) he can count by 2's and is working on 5's. when i came home from work he was using sticks to answer addition problems from my mom.

he could DO all of this before. he just didn't really feel like doing it at the time. he is SO different than Max who rarely ever needed me to motivate him. it is like learning to be a good mom over and over again.

when we get dressed in the morning, we play the rhyming game.

me: what rhymes with fun cooper?

cooper: how about gun?

me: yes it does.

cooper: mom, I figured out what rhymes with weanus.

me: (looking at him with raised eyebrows...)

cooper: penis.

i am so gonna have to watch this kid.