J's Blog

J blogging is a little worrisome. She's becoming addicted to stickers and comments just like her mom!

It's been a great incentive though. She can't see comments or stickers until all of her chores are completed. ;-) Boy is she fast now!!!! So thanks for making my life a little easier. It was really heartwarming to see all the comments and the stickers for me too.

I am closely monitoring her blogging to make sure that all the comments are nice and appropriate. I can see many positives happening through this little venture. J is getting great writing practice (although hunt & peck typing gets on her nerves a little). We're also using it as a learning tool for spelling. She is a really great speller already but this reinforces it. I'm such a mean mom...I make her use a dictionary. I will give her the spelling of a word but if I do she has to write it 10 times which means she doesn't ask me much. She's learning that the dictionary is her friend. ;-) This is really reinforcing all of her good choices too and your comments are helping to make her want to try harder. It's not scary because she doesn't have to "see" you IRL. Blogging isn't going to be mandatory like her journal so we'll see how long she keeps it up. We've talked about the fact that this is a random act of kindness to help other people affected by RAD. We're also using the map at the bottom of her page for geography lessons. She looks up all the countries and states so that's cool too!

We're still figuring out how to do it. This morning I wrote down all your questions and read them to her over breakfast. While she was eating she would answer them and I would write down her answers verbatim. She also made a list of all the things we have done to help her get better but I don't know if she's going to blog about it. Now she's in her room, directly across from me, happily hunting and pecking away. When she gets done I'll make sure everything is appropriate and give her the opportunity to edit anything she thinks needs to be changed.

I have given her permission to rant about me as she needs to so that she may have another place to vent if needed. I'm not going to let her read other people's blogs although she doesn't grasp that concept yet anyway.

I commented on Yondalla's blog regarding her express run through 2nd Grade LA so I thought I might want to give y'all an update too. My kid who refused to go to school for 6 months has now completed 450 lessons of Language Arts and Language Arts Extensions on Time4learning in 17 days! She is really enjoying going to school now and soaking it all up. She begs to go to school every day so I'm having to set some limits or she's going to graduate high school by the end of the year. ;-0 I've let her move ahead at a pace that she's comfortable and honestly she was ahead of most of their lessons as she placed in 3rd grade testings but I thought it would be good reinforcement. Plus the LA Extensions have lots of lessons within them like volcanoes, tornadoes, hurricanes, basic needs, goods and services, electricity, etc. so I knew she would enjoy them and learn something along the way.

Thanks so much to all of you for your support of J's blog. It's been a great way to start a new year. J's resolution was to really work hard at being a normal kid. She's off to a great start!