Tomorrow Jude officially starts kindergarten. This would normally be a big day for the parents and kindergartener, but it won’t be for us. We won’t be sending Jude to a brick and mortar school, although I know he’d love it. Instead, we’ll be schooling him at home, as we’ve always done.  Jude’s been doing kindergarten activities since he was 3 so we’ll see how this goes. Most recently we’ve had Jude do his schooling on an online subscription homeschooling website (we have him do about 12 hours a week, including weekends, year round). I learned recently about the availability of online public schools that start as early as kindergarten and have Jude enrolled in an online Minnesota public school starting tomorrow. Andy has always been opposed to any “government school” so hopefully it won’t disappoint. The curriculum arrived and I felt like it was Christmas morning (I know I probably should have been an elementary school teacher). The history materials look great and I loved seeing all the new books that I’ve never read with Jude. The math and phonics materials look more appropriate for Levi.  The school touts that advanced learners thrive and that kids can go at their own pace so I hope that is really the case. I have Jude enrolled in 3 clubs that I’m pretty excited about.  One is Lego Club where they meet online once a month to learn about Legos, build Legos, etc. Another is Alex’s Lemonade Stand Club that plans and executes lemonade stands to raise money for children with cancer. They also will learn about cancer and meet children who are battling cancer.  We may have to have Jude sit out the lesson learning about cancer since I still don’t want him to know that he has/had any life threatening condition.  The final club I signed him up for is kindergarten quiz bowl. That one is more for me than him. We’ll see if my kid is really as smart as I think he is.Â
I’ll have another opportunity to see how smart Jude is tomorrow.  He has a 3 hour neuropsychological evaluation with a Ph.D. tomorrow.  Jude will be administered several different IQ and other tests to see what impact the brain surgery and radiation have had on his cognitive skills (he was previously tested a year ago after his 1st brain surgery). Hopefully the little guy does well.  We were told that his 2 brain surgeries and radiation treatment could (in combintation and as a worst case scenario) cause his IQ to drop 32 points. Apparently the IQ drop is because of slower processing, which causes the child to fail to learn something in one year that causes the child to fail to learn something else the next year and so on.  I feel a bit of pressure to challenge Jude cognitively so that that doesn’t happen and may be a bit of a Tiger Mother. Hopefully he’ll thank me one day.