the lazy blogger and her closet genius

Whole.E.Cow. I see that I haven't posted since the 22nd of October and remember how truly BAD I am at this whole blogging thing. Perhaps if I had a job, or ever got to leave my house, or had some adult friends to hang out with at least once every 6 months, I might have interesting things to say. Ah well. I'll keep posting when things come to me...and hope it's enough to hang onto my whopping TWO readers. heh

So anyway. I do have a story to tell!

If you know me at all you know about my Rogit. He's a whopping 6 years old now. A Kindergartener. Your typical kid, only not so typical at all. He's smart folks. He's amazingly smart. When he meets someone new it takes literally 2 minutes of conversation with him for them to look at me and say, wow, you've got a pretty amazing kid there. I swear I'm not biased. Okay so I am a little...but I'm not the type to brag on my kid, I'm not a competimommy. This kid is special.

For his birthday last month he asked for a microscope. He had found a hair from an animal and said he "desperately needed a microscope to get a closer look and see if it was a hair from a known species or if I've discovered a new species entirely." Not paraphrasing here. That's really how he talks. It doesn't stop there. Ask him about dinosaurs and he'll correct your pronunciation of their scientific names, tell you what period they lived in, what area of the world their fossils have been found in, and why that dinosaur with 3 toes is "obviously an Allosaurus and not a T-Rex because a T-rex only had 2 toes." Ask him about sharks and you'll leave knowing most every species and the identifying characteristics of each. It's amazing to watch.

He has been on the verge of reading for well over a year now. He writes cards and letters to us at home and we're easily able to tell what he's trying to say. I've noticed vast improvements in his spelling in the last couple of months. But when he brings home books from school he either has them memorized first or he gets frustrated with them and wants me to think he can't read them. I've run out of ideas on how to get him to try in front of me. Since he was a year old he has been the kid that has to perfect something before his mom sees him do it or hears him say it. So he learned a lot from television and his Memaw. At school they are still busy learning the things he knew when he was 2 years old so he's bored out of his mind and had actually been regressing in some areas.

Or so I thought.

He brought home a library book last night. Library books are fun because they don't have to have "Step 1 Reader" at the top of them, they don't have to have a reading level marked on them at all! Because they are intended to be books that we read to him. So at bed time last night we pulled his book from his bag, snuggled into bed, and I started to read. I got to read the first word. Then it was like a light bulb went on in his head and he took the book and read the entire thing to ME. I was speechless. He was beaming. Smiling like I have not seen him smile in a very long time. He was SO proud of himself, almost as proud as I was of him. The little rat has been figuring it all out when I wasn't looking and suddenly I have a closet reader.

I understand now why he's so bored at school. And when I was in school here that wasn't a problem. The teachers I had were more than willing to challenge us, give me work from the grades ahead, push us so that we were constantly learning and never bored. But my goodness how this school system has changed. It's all about bringing everyone down to a level playing field now. So for now he sits and waits. Waits for them to let him read real books. Waits for the day when he can go to a science class...another 3 years away. Waits for school to be challenging and fun like everyone promised him it would be.

Time to look for other options? Perhaps. Let me know when you think of something, because I'm fresh out of ideas.