Focus on Evan

I feel like Evan doesn't get as much face time on here as the other two do. Middle child syndrome I suppose. He has come a long way since his bad decisions of a couple months ago. He has been much more pleasant to be around and had great behavior. I really think he just needed more attention.

He had his first assigned homework project last week. He was to do a report on a career he was interested in. He chose the Air Force. When I asked him why he wanted to go in the Air Force he said "because i like to fight people. But not my friends and family. Except Andy, but I only hit him lightly and throw him gently." So we talked some more and explained that wasn't a good reason, but named several other reasons somebody might want to join the Air Force. He decided he wanted to join because "I want to protect the USA and fly jets."

I remember working on this assignment with Gabi and she could only read on a kindergarten level so we wrote basic facts with pictures on her index cards. Evan is reading much higher so it was a lot easier. He called Uncle Scott for an interview. I wrote down some questions for him and when he called he was all business. "Hi Uncle Scott. What was your favorite part of the Air Force?" *grin* "Did you fight anyone" *grin* "Where was the coolest place you got to go?" *grin* "Did you get to fly a plane" *grin* "Bye, I love you" Hang up. I called Scott back later to apologize and he laughed and said "That's OK. He was on his first official business call! :0)"

Then Evan visited the Air Force web site and picked out some things he was interested in. The website is actually really cool and interactive. So he was interested in the F-22 Raptor and the Reaper drone. He also had a book out of the library recently on Air Craft Carriers. So we made up a card about those too. Chad then told me those are part of the Navy, but I didn't bother to tell Evan that. He does not love the stage like his sister and was not thrilled with the idea of this project. But in the end he did great. I can't make videos appear any where but at the end, so look there for his presentation. I have a bad camera and no skills so the video is terrible. Andy came running in and I tried to cut him out by turning the camera upright. Video didn't adjust. Duh.




In other Evan news he made it through all the testing and had been assigned to the gifted program at school. This means he will meet with a special teacher once a week to work on more advanced projects. I think this will be awesome for Evan. I am pretty sure a lot of his behavior problems at home were from boredom and frustration. The tests showed him to be reading at almost a fourth grade level and computing math at almost a second grade level. He scored the highest in perceptual reasoning, in the 99th percentile. This is the place where we see his talents. It is the ability to think in shapes and matrices. We see this with the ease at which he builds Lego sets meant for much older children and his amazing computer abilities. He built the above ship from scratch. This is what it looked like after it fell and he quickly put it back together, but everything about it was symmetrical. He says "look Mom, I upgraded my ship".

His best friend also got into the program. There is one 3rd grader, 3 2nd graders and then Evan and April. So I am glad they will have each other.