Hi Unomas! Been a while, update on Noah and famil

[faithhope]

Hi my friends ;D Miss you all, just been overwhelmed with, well life.
I had baby #3 on March 18th and Noah is a big brother to a little brother who looks a LOT like him ;D ;D He is another redhead! However not as red as Noah's. He was 8lbs. 9 oz. 22 inches, gulp! Born at home ( on purpose LOL!) My biggest worry was that the kids would be jealous and it has been the opposite, Noah and Bella LOVE LOVE LOVE their little bro, it is wonderful!
Noah is a 3 year old, can't believe it. He is still not in school. Long story, Shawn and I both wanted to homeschool. However now that I am a mom of 3 under 4! There is no way I can find the time and energy to give Noah and my others the attention they need. I really believe Noah would thrive in school. I know this has been talked about before but anyone who can give insight into the entering school system experience, PLEASE SHARE Anything you can ( did you want your kiddo to go to school? What age did they start? What kind of classroom are they in? What changes have you seen in your angel? Positive and Negatives, please share anything.
So update on Noah. He is AMAZING!!!! He is so smart and cute, I know I am the mom but this kid is something else! He can read, well not exactly but sort of. He has taught himself his ABC's he knows all the letters by sight and also recites the ABC's been doing this for a lonnnng time. He can count to 20, Can count to about 10 in spanish. Just since my mom has been here since february, has he learned the spanish from her. He repeats everything he hears, his articulation is very clear. He is just learning new stuff everyday. As for the reading, we have hundreds of flash cards, one side has pic and the word, other side is just the word, so months ago I decided to just show him the word side, sure enough he was reading the word ;D !!!!!!! WOW blew us away... Too much to say and I don't want to wear you out HEehee.
Hope that I can start catcing up on all the news here and become an involved member again.
Thanks for reading
Jessika

[wrblack]

Wow! Noah's doing great! So you must be doing something right. Keep it up.
No help with starting school. Charlie just transitioned from early intervention to special ed pre-school when he turned 3. Our local school system was quite cooperative and supportive.
Wish you luck,
Bob

[Jackie]

oh Jessika...so happy to hear all this...glad life is good for you right now. I had fun following your baby development on FB too.

[CC]

;D ;D ;D

GREAT Update !!!

and

CONGRATULATIONS on baby # 3

CC~

[Googsmom aka Jennifer]

{{{{{{HUGS}}}}}}} Love ya Jess!!

[Chris too]

Noah is doing great. I don't know what you mean that you are too busy to home school Noah since you've already gotten him farther academically than Stevie who has been in pre-school for 3 years. A good lot of that is in pre-disposition, but doing so well at 3 without formal education is a great indication that you are doing a fantastic job of teaching him yourself.

I home school my other 5, but Stevie goes to school so that she can get her therapies in from the people I trust to do a great job. It was easy getting her into pre-school from early intervention. Does Noah get therapies from an early intervention program? If not, then you will have to contact the special education director for your school district to set up evaluations and meetings to get a plan written (IEP) for Noah to enter pre-school (should be free for special education students). It will probably not be easy getting to all the appointments for evaluation and the IEP meeting(s), but once it's done, if it's done well, there will only be one IEP meeting a year after that ... until he transitions into Kindergarten (if you decide to continue at that point). Then it's a new round of evaluations (some or all being done while he's at school, thankfully), signing all the paperwork for registering at school - the regular stuff parents go through all the time if they have their kids in public school (not I ) - showing up for round-up (fun for the kids, but I should have brought my knitting), contacting the bus driver (not sure how we're gonna get that done), acquiring all the back-to-school "stuff", getting through the "summer package" (homework for the summer??), and putting the first day of school on the calendar. Wow. I had no idea... Parents go through this sort of thing every year?

I don't know how long Stevie will be going away for school, but I'm hoping she can come home starting in 1st grade. I will have two drivers at home by then (if Mary doesn't go away for college - not sure on that yet), so if she still has speech therapy, I could conceivably send her with one of them. For now, I watch and wait.

Just in case you didn't get it in all that mess above, it surely does sound like you are doing a fantastic job with your 3 Keep up the great work, and thanks for the update ;D

[faithhope]

Thanks Everyone~!!! Yes life is good : ) I shouldn't complain ( but I do LOL!)
Thanks Chris for the great compliment but I have to be honest. I cannot take the credit for teaching Noah. In fact we have been blessed that he learns so well from DVD's!!! He really loves signing Time and Baby can read and anything that is educational. I just pop him in frontd of the tv, throw in a video and he just gets deep into it ( only if it is an educational show, so funny). He taught himself his ABC's counting, and endless other things this way. Now before I forget let me say God Bless You, did you say you homeschool your other 5!!!!!!! Wow you are AMAZING!!!
How do you do it? Literally, how? What program do you use? Do you sit them in a room for a few hours? or do you have a more natural style of teaching ( more like thru everyday life experience? )
So my issue is I do not have the patience, time or personality to teach him right now. Plus I know that he and my daughter when she is old enough would LOVE school. My few worries are that he is not potty trained, and just recently he has actually started scratching his butt when he poops and you can just imagine the mess with that. ( I think he does this now though because I am so busy with the baby that I am not so quick to change his diaper and it starts to itch him.
Also the other thing is that he can easily just sit in one spot with a toy for a loooong time. He needs to be motivated usually especially if there are lot's of kids playing and he gets shy. So I would hate to picture him alone in a corner : ( being ignored or neglected.
OK well that is that, I am sure it will come up again. Hopefully he will get to start in september.
Oh also we went thru meetings and IEP's and all that and he qualified for a blended class 7 typical 7 special needs. A cute school we visited and heard great things about it.
Thanks!