A+!

Whipped cream or no, George rocked his math exam! 97% on the exam, and A+ for his final grade in the course. (This vindicates my bribery, right?!) George doesn't know yet--I got the results by e-mail after he'd gone to bed--but I know he's going to be thrilled. I'm extra proud of him because of how hard he worked to earn that A+. With all of our school meanderings, he had fallen a bit behind in math, relatively speaking at least. With this triumph over 4th-grade math, I think we can officially say he's more than caught up.

When he finished his exam last week, he told me that he wanted to take a little break from math (it's individually paced, so we can stop the clock anytime we like). I won't repeat the mistake I made last spring by not listening to him when he says he needs a break! Despite the fact that math is what has been giving the most structure to each of our days, I'm giving him no resistance on this. I now know that he knows perfectly well when he needs a break. And he's certainly earned this one.

What we're going to do for the structured part of our daily learning in the mean time is to focus on writing. He's starting a blog (The Book Night Crawler), where he will post reviews of his favorite books. That will replace math for a bit in our morning routine, to be worked on right after breakfast, along with his household chores and recorder practice.

In any case, he's getting more and more structure in his schedule all the time: he started Tae Kwon Do yesterday, which he loves and will be doing twice a week, and tomorrow he starts back up with recorder lessons. I also have several caregivers in place now who are working with him on various things (science projects, creative writing, cooking, social studies, etc.--none in any kind of formal way, mind you).

We're definitely off and running.