I get asked this a lot, I mean, a ton. Normally with the person looking like they expect me to cry or something (imagine how you ask how somebody is doing after a death.) I normally answer that it is good. He likes it and is making friends. But I guess I should write the real answer, so here goes.
The first few weeks were rough. Ned was a complete mess after school. He throw a lot of tantrums and yelled and cried. The only reassurance I had on this was that his best bud, a 1st grader, was also a hot mess after school. They were quite a pair. This phase seems to have passed as I thought it would.
Then we ran into scheduling problems. Since he is going up to 5th grade again for math, we had to figure out how to make it work. I sat down with his gt teacher and the school pysch and the best we could do was for him to miss half of his specials (PE, music, library, and computers), but to make up for it he got to pick which ones he wanted and could go with different classes. So he is going to music and PE with a different 3rd grade class 2 days a week and then with his class to PE and computers 2 days a week. On the 5th day it varies from week to week. He didn’t end up with a weekly library time but the gt teacher is taking him to check out books and will work with him on any lessons they do. It seems to be working out other then the first day. He realized he should be at music but only told his teacher that he needed to go. She had forgotten about the change and told him math wasn’t for a 15 more minutes. He came home upset and she felt horrible but it has ran smoothly since.
The other scheduling issue then becomes what he does during 3rd grade math. 3 days a week he works with the gt teacher but the other 2 he stays in class. I haven’t heard much about how that is going, but it can’t hurt him to reinforce those skills and make sure that if he does have any gaps they get covered. He did tell me that he is the only one in the class that is a master in addition and subtraction but he isn’t complaining about it.
The next “problem” hit 2 weeks into school when Ned complained of being bored, reading is too easy and science is too slow. How the hell is he bored already!!!! I really thought I was going to throw up but I had a nice chat with his gt teacher (while at school to drop off his backpack that he forgot) and calmed down. We are planning a meeting to check in with everybody involved in a couple more weeks, I can’t wait to hear what everybody thinks.
The only other academic issue has been Ned’s competitiveness. There is another student in the class that is giving him a run for his money on AR points, and by that I mean she is blowing him out of the water. He has rushed through a few books and scored poorly on the tests in hopes of catching up with her and earning the next level reward. We have discussed with him that he gets more points if he actually knows the answers so he needs to slow down. We will see how it works.
The other question of the month… What about the social side of things? He seems to be jumping back and forth as well as we expected. He worried me the first few weeks when he came home saying he made a few new friends. I would ask about them and no he didn’t play with them at recces, no he didn’t sit with them at lunch, he just talked to them in the hall. But they were his friends and he was going to ask them to sit with him on stage at lunch when he earns that reading reward. Okay kiddo, I don’t think I’m following but whatever you want to do.
So far, Ned has mostly asked to play with his age friends after school. But he has started walking to school with a 3rd grader and the boy even came over one evening (at 7:45 – 15 minutes before Ned’s bedtime) to hang out for a bit. They kicked a ball around until the boys older sister showed up looking for him, really hope he didn’t get in trouble because Ned was beaming over the encounter. They have gone to and from school for the past 3 days with Sam or I tailing them. I’m not sure how long I will feel the need to follow but we are using the excuse that we need the exercise and Ned seems happy with the arrangement. We do need to have a reminder that even if his friend doesn’t stop at the street crossings he does need to.
So it has had it bumps but overall it really is good, he likes it and is making friends.
whatmom 