Reboot!

I am so happy to announce that we are going to start homeschooling again this year!  After two years of dealing with the public schools - I am VERY happy to be bringing the girls back home.  Hopefully, we will never return to the public school system.  Unfortunately, we are going to have to use K12 again.  We don't have the money to buy any curriculum.  But I really want the girls home.  We are using Alpine Online this year.  They will let us use Saxon Math and Rosetta Stone Online, instead of K12 for math and Chinese.  Unfortunately, we'll still have to do the K12 language arts.  My plan is to test the girls every unit.  If they can pass it, skip the unit.  Hopefully, that will give us a lot more flexibility.

Pause

We've had to put homeschooling on hold for this year and enroll the older girls back into public school. The reasons for this are many and varied. First - we hated the language arts curriculum we were dealing with and it was making my oldest daughter hate homeschooling. Second - we are currently living with another family while my husband finds work and we get a home of our own. Trying to set my family's schedule to fit another family's that is totally different from ours is frustrating, to say the least, and was causing me intense stress. Third - I am unexpectedly pregnant. Add that to the stress of an unemployed husband, living with another family, my asthma meds being too expensive to buy, etc. and I was about to have a nervous breakdown. So after much consideration and prayer, my husband and I decided to place the girls back into public school until he has work and we have a home of our own.

So far, the girls being in public school has reinforced my desire to homeschool. Dealing with the bureaucratic nightmare of Utah public schools is no picnic. Both girls are almost two grades ahead in math, but the school has no advanced math programs. And the schedule sucks, they don't get out of school until almost 4pm. By the time we get home and homework done, it's time for dinner, baths and bed.

On the bright side, Dad has finally found a job! On the downside, it is not enough for us to move out yet. But hopefully it is a sign of better things to come and we will be homeschooling again by next fall at the latest.

Field Trip to the Zoo

Today was a fun fieldtrip day to the local zoo. We weren’t doing a unit on animals for any of our science classes, but WOSU got free tickets for the students, their siblings and one parent. Then it was a cheap $9 for the other parent. And it was a sunny, hot day – probably one of the last we’ll have before winter sets in. The visit was extra fun because we got to go with Dad’s brother and his daughter. They are also doing the  K12 program.

The first thing the girls wanted to visit were the elephants. In front of the elephant enclosure was a large wooden elephant with hieroglyphs all over it. As the girls stopped to admire it, it began to make strange noises and had a startling surprise for them.

After that bit of fun, we went one to see the new baby elephant at the zoo.

Then we were off to see cats and giraffes.

We were wondering if this guy ever gets his tongue stuck to the pole in the winter.

After seeing all the animals, we ended our visit at the kids’ land they have in the zoo where they have playground equipment and a few exhibits about local wildlife. We let the kids wear themselves out before going to the car for a simple lunch of sandwiches, bananas and water. Then we drove home. Everyone was tired, so we took a nap at home before taking the time to write in our journals about the experience.

Brer Rabbit Goes Back to Mr. Man's Garden

Rebekah has been reading Trickster Tales in her current unit of literature.  This has meant a lot of short stories about the infamous character Brer Rabbit.  One of her recent assignments was to act out the short story she read that day for the family.  So, with the help of Rose, she put together costumes, a script and charged right in.  Here is the result:

K12 Disappointments and Pleasures

Well, it’s been a long time since I wrote anything here. Life has been hectic.

But, onto school news.

K12 is definitely not the answer for my oldest daughter’s language arts. Rebekah understands the majority of her assignments and works through them steadily. Yet each day, it takes her close to three hours to complete the work! I do not recall spending three hours steadily working on any one subject while in school (the only times we spent three hours on anything was if the teacher was dealing with the lowest denominator or unruly students). And she is expected to cover all the language arts subjects (composition, grammar, usage, mechanics, spelling, vocabulary and literature) every day. I think this is ridiculous for a homeschool course! By the time she finishes math and science, she is spending 5+ hours in straight school work; this is not counting breaks, meals, etc. She has no time for being a child or extracurricular activities like sports, art, music, etc.

Part of the reason the K12 language arts lessons take so long is that the individual parts do not relate to one another at all. A streamlined program would base the spelling, vocab and composition assignments/tests on what was being studied in literature. In the K12 program, each one is completely separate and has no relation to each other. The spelling lists and vocabulary lists do not even relate.

Then there is the fact that I was misled by the local Utah K12 school on Rebekah’s language arts program. She is slightly behind in her comprehension skills (according to testing results), so it was recommended that we start her in one grade lower’s program. It was explained to us that when she finished the fourth grade program, she could immediately begin the fifth grade program and work on it through the summer. Not true. She has to finish the fourth grade program before mid-February to be allowed to start the 5th grade program before the fall of the next school year. To do this, she’d have to do double language arts lessons each day. Obviously, by the fact that each lesson is taking such an exorbitant amount of time, that’s not a feasible option.

So, Rebekah will be finishing the language arts program with K12 this year but will starting a new program next year.

Thankfully, the K12 language arts program for Rose (second grade) is not nearly as intense. But I also plan to start her in a different program next year. I don’t know when the K12 program gets so intense and don’t especially want to find out.

On the other hand, I greatly enjoy the science programs that have been provided by K12 for both children. The lessons are straight-forward and full of interesting information. There is an experiment or hands on activity for each lesson to reinforce the lesson. My kids love hands on science, so really get a kick out of this. And K12 has provided all the materials I need to complete the experiments (minus some basic household items).

We have not really had time to delve into the history program provided by K12, simply because the language arts lessons are taking up so much time. I have decided not to push it for this year, but plan to implement a history program next summer and continue it in following school years.

Math is a breeze for both of my school age children. It seemed at the beginning of the year, their math lessons were way too easy. So we decided to start simply taking the tests with the plan that if they got 100%, they could skip that chapter. If they got 80-99%, we would review the lessons that the problems they missed correlated to and retake the test. If they got below 80%, they did all lessons for the chapter. So far, Rose has skipped 45 days worth of lesson and Rebekah has skipped 25. It has been quite the eye opener for our family on just how much time is wasted in review every year in the public school system.

To help the girls develop strong math skills in the basics, we also do math fact quizzes every day. These quizzes are designed to help them memorize addition, subtraction, multiplication and division tables, among other math skills. For every 20 problems they do, they get one minute to complete them. If they can finish them all correctly in the given time, they move onto the next quiz.