The Eleventh year is a BIG one

Magnus (TX) is an amazing boy. he has been of a very delicate constitution. He hated school hated scouts and hated leaving his room. we opted to homeschool him by the end of 2nd grade.

It has been a bumpy road with Erik and Jordan and Lily and Rose and Krys and Jazz.. but lately.. lately he is really shining. when we pulled him, he was nearly 2 years behind in reading, last year we tested him, and he is now 6 years ahead in reading. 4 years ago, he was a reluctant learner, since January, he has taken ownership of his education, and is using youtube and nova now and pbs to teach himself about astrophysics and dark matter and nature.

I am usually pretty frazzled with Jordan / Lily / Rose and he decided that I needed a Nanny Bot to help me out. sweet right? he started building it. first try he made a traditional lego mindstorm robot and it worked. took him a couple of hours to figure it out and make it work. the next day he tore it all apart and started making a humanoid one. he downloaded detailed plans in pdf files and found the youtube videos to teach him robotics. I wish I would have had a guarantee 4 years ago that we would be here now. I would have a lot less grey hair. but I am happy to say that we are now leaving the k12 safety net and going completely rogue. ;) fortunately dad is now okay with it and says it is a great idea.

last year he started scouts again after a year break. he rarely misses a meeting, is on target to finish first class by his 12th birthday and is going at a sedate pace with his merit badges, but overall is doing fine with the camping.  last weekend he volunteered for three grueling hours to help with the PTSD Foundation.  This summer he is going to go out of state to Arkansas / Missouri for a week long summer camp without his mom.

this week he started swimming lessons again. we tried at 8 and 9 and 10 with a lot of issues. this week day one was a disaster, he thought he was going to die. he lasted 10 minutes in the pool. day two was text book perfect. day three we added his brother in the same lane, disaster and he was removed from the pool after 18 minutes. afterwards his brother owned his part in the problem (huge growth there) and Magnus was able to come up with an alternative plan of 5 minute time out on the deck to regroup if he makes a mistake again. day 4 was a fresh start, no brother and perfect behavior (outside temp was 55'F) and he had perfect behavior on day 5 with brother. so I am just beaming at how much he has accomplished.