Andrew and keeping it together at school (now with update)

Andrew is quite disorganized.  If you asked my neighbor, she'd say she knew where he got it from.  Not that I'm still fretting about her.  Except that I am.  The elephant that never forgets.

I digress.

In 2nd grade, Andrew would forget EVERYTHING.  He'd forget to bring things to school and to bring things back.  I ended up tracing my hand and coming up with HIGH FIVE.  I hung one by our front door with 5 things he had to remember before leaving our house, and we laminated one and pasted it to his desk with 5 different things for him to remember before leaving school.  It sort of worked.

In 3rd grade, he would regularly not write down assignments, forget to bring home the only thing he needed for homework, etc. etc.

I was kind of super worried about 4th grade.  Not only were we going to get MORE homework, he was going to be pulled out of class for Humanities every day, Math Enrichment 2 times a week, and band 1 time a week.  He also was going to be changing classes for Science.  I honestly was expecting him to fail 4th grade just because of his inability to coordinate all this.

He's surprising me.  He is independently remembering to work on assignments, he has not forgotten any book or workbook that he's needed (well...he forgot once...but it was the second week of school...).  His work is neat and very good quality.  I am kind of shocked at how well he's managing.  I also acknowledge that I don't really know if he's holding it together.  I could very well go into the conference in November and the teacher informs me that he's never once turned in a writing journal (I don't think he has one of those...but see?  He could just not be bringing it home).

His assignment notebook is...abysmal.  I just...can't...  He writes the wrong subject's homework next to another subject, he completely omits certain subjects on certain days.  Ergh.

But I have to let him navigate this, right?  As long as he's completing his homework and staying organized in all other ways, I have to let him do this.

But letting him do this means there will be more entries like yesterday.

Me:  "Andrew?  What's this written down at the bottom?  It's not in a subject box and it just says 'FTT'."
Andrew thinks a minute.  "Oh!  It means 'something Test Thursday.'"  He looks triumphantly at me for remembering.
Me:  "Something?  What does the 'F' stand for?  Isn't that kind of an important piece?"
Andrew shrugs.

-sigh-

***Update:  Turns out FTT stood for "field trip Thursday"   -sigh-