evil eye bruce

We knew sometime in the spring that Maddox would have to do summer school but even that far ahead when we broke the news to Maddox he wasn't happy. Actually, that's an understatement, he collapsed to the floor and cried! (Don't tell him I told you that...) Once school was over we had one week before summer school started and throughout that week we talked up summer school BIG TIME!! I had spoken with a friend of mine, who teaches at the boys' school, and she told me a bunch of the things they get to do at summer school...which actually are tons more fun than regular school! I passed on all of this info to Maddox and reminded him every single day how awesome this was going to be! 

I took this picture of Maddox on his very first day of summer school and yesterday was his last day. HE MADE IT!!!! And he probably won't admit it to most people but he actually had a good time! The teachers who organized summer school planned it with a pirate theme! Each class was its own pirate ship and the students in each class even got to give their "ship" a name! They colored class flags and chose their own pirate names too! On the very first day, when I picked Maddox up, he didn't look too happy. I was worried that he didn't have a good time (and that the next month would be a struggle...) but when I asked him what was wrong he answered in sharp, bursts of words saying "I'M. THE. ONLY. BOY. IN. MY. CLASS." Uh oh! I knew that probably couldn't be right so I pressed him for information and he told me that there will be more boys in his class but that the other boys were absent today. It turned out that there were six girls and three boys in Maddox's class. Maddox was also pretty upset on day one that "the girls had hogged all the markers" while they colored their class flag and that because he was outnumbered 6 to 1 the name of their pirate ship ended up being the "Black Pearl" instead of a more boyish name. I think Maddox's choice was something like "Floating Death" or another name along those lines. Maddox went on and on about how the "girls tried to draw a skull and crossbones on their flag but it didn't look like a skull AT ALL!" He cracked us up all day with his first day stories and the many, MANY girl complaints that came along with them. 

Maddox's summer school session lasted four weeks and Maddox finally confided in me during the last week that he was having fun! They did lots of fun activities, ate yummy snacks and Maddox read more minutes than I've ever seen him read willingly thanks to the ice cream coupon bribes the teacher offered! Amidst all the fun, though, Maddox also learned a lot. He came home one day saying the phrase "Reading is Reading!" which means it doesn't matter how many minutes you read it just matters that you do it! I love that he now repeats it to himself. This morning he decided to read (all on his own!) and could only sit for 13 minutes. When he came to me to mark down his minutes he said "I could only read 13 minutes...but READING IS READING!" He smiled proudly and bounced off to do something else. I realize that Maddox will probably never be a reader who gets lost in a book series, makes friends with book characters and enjoys creating book reports for homework assignments BUT his teachers have truly gone above and beyond to make sure that he CAN read and that even if he would rather read a football magazine than a classic novel that READING IS READING!!!!