Her preschool teacher was concerned she might have an ld and advised us against sending her to the private schools many of the kids who attended this preschool go to and to give her support services through the local school district. If she did not have an ld then she suggested having her do pre-k at their preschool or doing K at public school because the pace of the private school we were considering was going to be too much for her. She just wasn't keeping up with the class. She did not say what ld she suspected ( I think to cover herself).
Anyway, I prayed on it and felt God leading me to homeschool her for K. I came to the conclusion that it was the way her school and I were teaching her was the problem! It was boring: both for her, and me. And spending an extra hour on worksheets after preschool 3 days a week on school days and two on the "off days" was not only a ridiculous way to spend a 4 year old's day, but yielding absolutely no results.
So, I began to research. And we started to do some kinetic learning activities, and things began to click. We took a break from letters and numbers and started MFW K 4 weeks ago. It was amazing because this time she was getting it!
I have two trains of thought on having her tested for ld's: one, she is fine and just needs time to mature and settle down and when she does she'll be fine and what they were teaching her probably just seemed boring to her and testing her could lead to misdiagnosis and label her for life; two, she really might have a ld and early intervention would be the best thing to help her by being able to learn how to work with her now.
Hearing my dd was struggling in preschool was a shock. She had hit all her physical and mental mile stones early! She crawled at 5 1/2 months, walked at 10 months, and spoke complete sentences at two! At 18 months she could sing the ABC's and Wheels on the Bus with the hand motions. She went to UC Berkeley's child care center and Professor's were shocked at how "advanced" my child was and some quite jealous. After all they'd waited until they were professors to have kids and I was a junior undergrad. Learning disabilities was not a road we'd be going down...
But back to your questions.... Crystal your comments don't make me uncomfortable. And yeah, the taking too long to complete day 6 and learning disabilities are seperate issues. [schedule questions moved here:
http://board.mfwbooks.com/viewtopic.php ... 099#p87099 }
So, learning disability-related q & a:
She can count objects but not necessarily connect the symbol for number to the number of objects but is able to recognize much more than she used to (the 7 of creation numbers really helped her get the concept) but still has trouble writing the numbers out without me supervising step by step (she writes them backwards, upside down, etc.)
She knew how to grab the white squares on the S, she just thought that it was boring, and said, "Mom, it too many squares. It's boring! Why can't I do fun school like Bubba. He gets to just play with toys." So we stopped.
It took a long time because she colored in all the squares rotating pink and green for each square (her fav. colors). She used to just scribble, but because my stepson showed her how to color in the lines now she is very meticulous about coloring and will typically take forever to color anything! (My stepson and her are really close, so I think its away to connect to him when he's not her. And he is super meticulous, even as a toddler. He kept all his toys organized and himself clean!)
When she was in preschool, she couldn't recognize or form her own name, more than maybe 3 letters, and the number 4 (because she was 4). She is improving. A lot. I think she can recognize about 2/3 of the alphabet now and all her numbers 1-9 but not write them all (and this all pretty much in the 3 months) and can write her name without tracing or having a copy as well as spell it out loud and recognize all the letters in her name. Her name has 8 letter in it.
She's a busy body. She could grow out of it. She could genuinely have ADHD. She felt like a ball full of energy when I was pregnant with her. And well, she was a handfull from the time she came out of my womb. She used to cry as an infant enless I bounced her around and took her outside and talked to her about everything out there with her in the bjourn until she started creeping at 4 months old using her elbow to drag herself around and was then content to do her own thing. Which was nice because she got to heavy for bjourn. She was born 9 lbs. 14 oz., and once upon a time, when I got pregnant, I was a size 4 (you could put a 1 in front of that number now
). And she was really determined (or stubborn). Like at daycare, she was the second youngest in the class so when all the babies between 10-12 months started to cruise and stand, she wasn't going to be left out, even if she was 7 months old.
I never thought I had ADD until recently. I read about it in women and I was a notorious daydreamer and totally disorganized pretty much until I got to high school. Then I was interested and passionate in some subjects so would pay attention and do well. I have an amazing ability to hyper-focus. Probably why I am making MFW K nightmarishly long for my dd. I love to research, plan, research, plan, on and on for hours if I am interested in something.
Anyhow, if she did have ADHD that's really not my concern anyway. I would wait until she was older to have any sort of formal diagnosis for that and then if that was the case I would treat with no meds. We already follow a pretty strict diet, routine, eating schedule for her. When she was a newborn we thought she might have been colic. She was unusually alert and observant as a newborn. We had to turn the tv off, have the lights down low and just have a very mellow evening beginning at 7 to get her to sleep by 8. All through her toddler years and now, through her scehdule off and she gets sort of manic hyper. My stepson (almost
and my son (almost 3) never did any of these things. They are really go with the flow.
My real concern is something like an auditory processing disorder, or dyslexia. Although I'm only 15 units shy of a masters in educational counseling, my area of expertise is college students. I know how to screen a student and refer them to have a learning disability assessment if I suspect they are failing class because of an undiagnosed learning disability, of some services to refer students and parents to but that's about it.
My father thinks she's actually just really smart and bored like I was. I repeated K because I'd just daydream, or wander off and play. Appearently the teacher recommended I get tested for a learning disability too, but my parents never ended up doing it. They ended up having me repeat K at a Catholic school instead and I went to Catholic school until I was in 5th grade. I wasn't really a strong student until I got to be a in junior high / high school, but I remember spending the summer I turned 9 in the library and reading pretty much every book they had (medical books, Moby Dick, etc.) and comprehending everything. At that point I zoned out in school, spending most of my daydreaming or writing stories I'd make up in my notebook. I'd do my work as quick as I possibly could with lots of sloppy mistakes. The teachers would be puzzled because I would always score in 99% for reading, history, anything reading based, like comprehension, but never really paid attention in class. Then in junior high I was either interested in the class and got an A and was the star student, or I was disinterested in the class and disrupted the class by talking in class a lot.
Don't worry about the pace of 1st grade yet, just enjoy the journey through Kind. He will grow in his weak areas as you work with him, so it's hard to say where he'll be a year from now. 
It is getting easier for her, she is developing those skills and learning how to ask a question when she's not getting it. It seems silly that we had to actually teach her the words to say to voice a question... When I stop and reflect she really has come a long way. Your little boy will improve also, it just takes more time and coaching than some, but it will come 
We can read longer stories, with less frequent stopping. 