Meet the Peanut and Cracker Jacks

 Meet Peanut and Cracker Jacks!!!!

 It's Student Photo Week at the Blog Hop! So, you guessed it!!!! You get to meet the Peanut and Cracker Jacks! Since I already talk about them a lot and show their pictures to anyone who'll look at them I figured I'd use this opportunity to give everyone a  small biography on each of them as well.

 Here's Peanut! At four years old, 41 pounds, and 41 inches tall she's a little bundle of TNT when she wants to be. And she's got her father wrapped around her little finger, that's him you see peaking out from behind her. Her favorite color is pink, she is absolutely in love with Strawberry Shortcake, her collection of baby dolls can rival any store shelf, and she has a tendency to ask for cheese sandwiches for breakfast. Trying to get her to hold still for anything longer than half an hour is like pulling teeth without anestetic, unless of course it's a Strawberry Shortcake movie or her Sesame Street learning computer game ... then you might get 45 minutes. She was just diagnosed this month with ADD and what could best be described at this point as Oppositional Defiance Disorder, or ODD (although her doctor does not want to put a label on it at the moment, he has just stated that ODD would be the closest diagnosis he's willing to give at this time before further observation and testing). These are on top of her Early Childhood Developmental Delay (ECDD) and being legally blind without her glasses. However, just like every other child she is who she is - she is not her disabilities. She did ABeka's nursery school level last year and is progressing this year to a mix of their preschool level, school zone work books, and my own letter of the day curriculum. Although she will be five next month she is not quite ready for Kindergarten yet. However, if she does progress more quickly than we are currently anticipating we are prepared to move her on up to the Kindergarten level. This is one of the things that we love about homeschooling. Also on her agenda this year are swimming lessons and some story times down at our local library.

This is the Younger Cracker Jack. She's eight this year and only about fifteen pounds heavier than her little sister. She's our belated hippy child, nature lover, protester, bleeding heart, activist... you name it she wants to save it. She has several favorite colors because as she says "it's unfair to pick just one". However, she does have just one favorite animal ... the penguin. She has a collection of them which began back when she was about two and a half on a trip to the Detroit Zoo. She does like all animals however, and if she had it her way our house would be a zoo, rescue, and wildlife refuge all wrapped into one. She's gotten to the stage where although she still does like her toys she's more into the "grown-up" things like nail polish and music disks. This year she's working on ABeka's third grade level lessons. On her agenda this year is swimming lessons, catechism, and doing every crochet project in her crochet pattern book and then selling some items she makes to make money to help out the endangered species of the penguins.

And last, but not least, is the Elder Cracker Jack. At eleven years old, only ten pounds heavier than the other cracker jack, and only a couple inches taller he's a big bang in a compact package. He's often mistaken for someone much younger than he is simply due to his size. He's done all kinds of schooling - homeschool, public school, private school, back to public school, online school, back to homeschooling. He prefers homeschooling for many reasons the top two being that he's not bullied and that at home he doesn't have to take his ADHD medication. He spent many years in many different learning environments being bullied due to his size, his "goofiness", and his intelligence (or in other words for being a "nerd"). He says, "At home I can be myself. I like getting all A's and no one cares if I have to hum and bounce and move all around to get my work done. No one says I have to take pills to make me a zombie at home just so I don't bother anyone else." A few years ago when we were discussing his ADHD with him and we asked him if he knew what it was he'd said "something something high definition" and so now every time he's a little too wild we just look at him and tell him to turn down his high definition and he knows that he needs to calm down (he now knows the true definition of ADHD but still likes his own version better). He has many interests which include, but aren't limited to: pandas, Harry Potter, reading, robots, science, math, track, martial arts, hiking, nature, biology, etc. This year he'll be working on ABeka's sixth grade level lessons, however we are prepared to move him onto seventh grade level around Christmas if this does not prove challenging enough (especially in English and Arithmetic). 

Well, there they are. Peanut and Cracker Jacks. We don't officially start the "new" year until the first week of September, but we never stop schooling either just relax a little more during the summer months. Look for us next week on the hop for the "A Day In The Life Of..."

Let's Hop To It!!!!