Frederick's Latest Pedagogical Experiment

Every September we begin Frederick's school year with high levels of anxiety:  Will anyone bother to work with him?  Will anyone bother to feed him or get him to the bathroom regularly?  Will anyone ensure that he is participating in gym class or during recess?  So far, the past seven years have been...disappointing.  This year, we went rogue and decided to no longer entrust Frederick's education with any experts and are coordinating his education ourselves.  Starting next week I will be taking him to art classes at the FIA every Monday and Tuesday morning from 9:30 until noon.  The classes are designed for home schooled kids and are a mix of museum tours which include art theory instruction followed by time in the classroom for "art lab."  On Friday evenings we continue to head to Ann Arbor for music with Mr. Mike (we just entered our 8th year of doing that) and Saturday I take Frederick to the FIM for his private dance classes which we started early this past summer.  The rest of his weekdays are spent with Emily, who is leading his humanities and science education with "self help" lessons thrown in (including complete meal preparation and self-cleaning which includes, among other things, fairly extensive tooth cleaning after lunch) as well as "life skills" (which includes making shopping lists, finding things in stores and paying for them as well as a LOT of physical ed, which so far has included yoga, swimming, stretching and massage).  Last week, the first week of school, concentrated on the life cycle and featured reading about and tracking the life cycle of sunflowers, including harvesting (and saving for next year) the seeds.  Last Friday he brought home a painting of sunflowers, a book he had written explaining plant growth as well as a HUGE flower pot he had made filled with transplanted sunflowers from Linda's farm.  This week features frogs (which, for reasons I am not entirely clear on, are hopping about by the thousands on Linda's farm--little ones, according to Frederick, about the size of one of his fingernails).  He brought home this picture earlier this week:

Frederick was initially a little suspicious about this new arrangement. During the first two days of school, he was very shy and didn't seem to understand that he wasn't heading off to a very early play date but in fact a school day, though (oddly) one at Emily's house. But the other night when I went into turn off his lights and retuck his blankets I found him half asleep, fully clothed. I asked, "What happened to your pajamas?" which I could see had been flung wildly about the room. "All ready for tomorrow!" he announced happily.