Home School Excitement!
I finally got to order my curriculum for our first year of home school. Actually, because it is so expensive, I only ordered half of it and I’ll order the other half next month. Anyway, we were so anxious that we almost tackled the FedEx man before he could get to the door!
Smarty was dying to rip into the box. He was kind enough to wait until I could take a quick pic of him first, though.
Once I gave him the go-ahead, he was off!
He ripped right in.
I like that the box can be turned into a castle when it’s empty. Smarty liked that too. He couldn’t wait for me to get the books on the shelf so he could have the box. If you look, you can see the print of the castle walls on the inside of the flaps.
The first thing he came to was a gift for me. How sweet is that? It’s a pendant made from a Widow’s Mite (read Luke 21:1-4). I can’t wait to wear it proudly. I should’ve taken a picture of it but I forgot. I’ll try to post a picture of it soon.
He was excited to see a CD from the Bible course. I’ve listened to it and it sounds pretty good. It puts their Bible memory verses to song to help them learn them.
He pulled out all of the books and called out the titles so I could mark them off of the invoice to make sure we had them all.
We made quite a mess! We had fun, though, and that’s what’s important!
I piled them all back in the box for a day or two until I could get the new bookshelf from my parents’ house. Once the shelf was in, I cut little yellow strips from the self-adhesive paper they sent with the curriculum and color-coded all of the books. The idea is that by having the yellow stripe on the binding, we should always be able to remember to put the books back on the correct shelf. I hope it works!
*Obviously, the cigar box isn’t part of our curriculum but I needed something to serve as a bookend.
I’ve been reading my Instuctor’s Guides and I really believe I’m going to love this curriculum. I can’t wait to get the rest ordered!
Thanks for sharing in this journey with me,
Just Like Mom
This morning, Bean brought me one of my hair clips. She handed it to me and turned around, obviously wanting me to clip her hair up the way I do mine sometimes. I tried, but her hair is too baby fine to hold one of my clips and it slipped right out. She kept trying to get it to stay in but it kept slipping out. I assured her that one day, I would pull her hair up just like mine. She seemed to be satisfied with that answer and went on her merry way. As she walked away, I recalled wanting to be like my mommy when I was a little girl.
When I was small, my mom had long hair. Often times, she would pull it up and clip it up off of her neck, much like I do now. I remember asking my mom one morning before school if I could wear my hair clipped up like hers. My hair wasn’t really long enough to clip up like that so Mom told me no but promised that she would clip it for me as soon as I got home from school. I remember getting off the bus that day and running to the house, so excited because Mom was going to clip my hair up like hers.
I think all little girls want to be like their mommy in one way or another. I can’t wait until Bean’s hair is long enough and thick enough that I can fulfill her requests to clip it up like mine. I hope that I always set such an example before my daughter that she will want to be like her mommy.
Decisions, Decisions
Every day I am faced with decisions. We all are. Some big, others small. Some of them are small things like what to cook for dinner, which pair of shorts match that top the best, or if my toenails really need to be repainted. Some are bigger things like whether or not we should put our house on the market, the best way to invest our savings, or concerning our children’s education.
Any decision concerning our children’s education is a big decision for me. As a mother, I want to do what’s best for Big Al and Smarty. I want to make sure they are happy little children. I want them to be well-behaved, well-mannered, healthy, God-fearing, well-educated men when they grow up. In order to do that, I must make some major decisions for their futures. I don’t know about you, but when I have a major decision to make, I pray first. I pray for God to guide me and to help me do His will. I have my own wants and desires in life but, more than that, I desire to follow the will of God. I constantly pray for His guidance in my day-to-day decisions and, more importantly, in all major decisions. I trust that God will always lead me down the right path and I trust that He has placed me on the right path for my children’s education.
We have lived in this school district for just over three years. We moved here when Big Al was in the middle of first grade and Smarty was in preschool. Big Al has always been an active child but he was thriving in school and making good grades before we moved. Within a week of our move, Big Al’s new teacher called me in to tell me that my child is ADHD and I should really have him tested because he didn’t sit still and was fidgety in class and talked too much. She had already separated him from the rest of the class and had decided that she didn’t like him because he was a pain in her tail. Within a few more weeks, Big Al stopped doing his work. He just refused! He had decided that if his teacher didn’t like him, he wasn’t going to do her any favors and he started getting in trouble on a daily basis. He wasn’t making friends because his teacher had separated him from the kids during class time and he had to spend all of his free time in time-out because of his behavior. He wasn’t given a chance to make friends. He was miserable. We figured he was just having trouble adjusting to the move. Near the end of the school year, something clicked and Big Al got right back on track and finished first grade on a positive note (and shocked his teacher)!
Second grade, Big Al had an “old-school” teacher. When he tried pushing her buttons at the beginning of the year, she knew just what he was up to and she was always one step ahead of him. She was a wonderful teacher for him and he did pretty well in second grade. Big Al struggled a bit but Mrs. C always saw the potential in him and helped him to do his best every day. Big Al loved Mrs. C and Mrs. C loved Big Al. Mrs. C and I even became friends that year.
That same year, Smarty started kindergarten. He had a wonderful teacher who was perfectly fit for kindergarten. Smarty enjoyed going to school but complained that he wasn’t learning anything. He could already read (very well), add, and subtract. He was bored with his school work so his teacher would go to the first grade teachers and get math sheets for him to work on after he finished his classwork. All in all, it was a good year for both boys.
The next year, Big Al’s teacher was “Mrs. Fun Lovin’”. She was young and wanted to be the “cool” teacher. Big Al figured out really quickly that she thought he was the cutest little thing ever and wasn’t going to discipline him much. When we went to our first parent-teacher conference with her, she confessed that she had made up Big Al’s grades for his report card because he hadn’t been turning in his work. She just pulled them out of thin air! We were fuming, but she didn’t see the big deal. She had given him good grades because, as she put it, “he is a really smart kid and knew the stuff”. Needless to say, the entire year was spent with many, many visits to school to talk with Mrs. FL and the principal. Mrs. FL always joked that Big Al was so ADHD it’s not funny and he was so sweet she just couldn’t get on him about stuff. Big Al didn’t learn a single thing that year, including his multiplication tables. We were both really frustrated and so relieved by the time the school year was finally through.
Smarty’s year was okay. He had Mrs. W and she was an okay teacher. Again, Smarty was bored with the classwork and wanted to do things a little more advanced. He was already adding, subtracting, and multiplying but Mrs. W wouldn’t give him other worksheets the way his kindergarten teacher had. Mrs. W used Smarty to help kids who were struggling and he enjoyed that. By the end of the year, though, Smarty had had enough with first grade and was bored to tears. He began acting up in class and Mrs. W became really frustrated with him. I think we were all pretty glad when the school year was over.
It was after that year that Hubby and I started talking about other schooling options for the boys. We were really unhappy with many things about the boys’ school. It wasn’t just the teachers and the principal. There were other things that had gone on during the year that I won’t go into now. It just wasn’t good. We just weren’t sure that we wanted to send our kids back there again. I began to entertain the idea of homeschooling the boys. Hubby shot that idea down pretty quickly, though, saying I wouldn’t have time for it since Bean was only a few months old. I didn’t push it because I found out that Mrs. C was moving up to 4th grade and she and I had both talked the principal into letting Big Al be in her class again. I just knew this was going to be the best year ever. Big Al even did a little dance in the hallway at school when he found out Mrs. C was going to be his teacher! I couldn’t wait for school to start again.
When school started this year, we found out that Smarty was going to have Mrs. W again. He was so disappointed and so were we! Not only was he going to have Mrs. W but he was going to be in the same exact class again. Apparently, the only way she agreed to move up to 2nd grade was if she could have the same exact students she had in 1st grade. She even stayed in the same classroom as before! We tried to look on the bright side thinking that at least both boys had teachers we knew and had liked.
Smarty started the year with all 100 averages on his report card. It didn’t take long before Smarty got bored again though. He hated the reading work because he was already reading on a 4th grade level. He knew how to add and subtract with regrouping and didn’t want to have to work on it every day. He knew how to count money. He knew how to multiply and could divide fairly well. He began to hate the second grade. He stopped doing his work in class because he said it was boring and it was the same old stuff over and over again. We tried to explain to him that he had to do it whether he liked it or not, but he still refused. Needless to say, Smarty spent a lot of time in trouble. His teacher separated him from all the other students because he talked in class. He sat at a desk in the back of the class, facing the wall. He wasn’t allowed to walk with the rest of the class to lunch or related arts because he talked. He had to walk on the other side of the hall by himself. He missed most of his playtime because his teacher made him finish the work he hadn’t done in class. And she should have. We wanted him to know that he had to do the work that was given to him whether he liked it or not. I guess Mrs. W got frustrated with him because, after a while, she started acting differently towards him. She began to punish him excessively and, often times, she would “make an example out of him” for the class. She became downright hateful to Smarty. She would throw his personal items in the garbage (chapstick, the toy he got out of the treasure box because he made a good grade, etc.). She became really sarcastic and condescending towards Smarty. He was miserable and so was I! Hubby and I went to school many, many times to talk to Mrs. W and the principal but nothing changed for the better, only worse. Smarty would come home and cry, saying she hated him. He begged us not to make him go back to school. By the end of the year, I’d had it! At our last conference, Hubby and I told her exactly how we felt. She was quite upset with us by the time we left her classroom. Thankfully, there were only two weeks left of school at that point and Smarty would be finished with her!
Honestly, if Big Al hadn’t had Mrs. C this year, I probably would’ve gone insane! Big Al really struggled with a lot of his school work but his behavior was much better. He and Mrs. C picked up right where they left off in 2nd grade. Mrs. C kept him on track with his work and his behavior but, with so much to cover before the standardized tests, she couldn’t help him keep up with everything he was having trouble on in class. He struggled because of many things he shouldn’t known from third grade. I knew that he was in good hands with Mrs. C, though, so I was able to deal with Mrs. W and Smarty.
As the end of the school year drew near and as our problems with Mrs. W and Smarty were at an all-time high, Hubby and I started talking about homeschooling again. Hubby was more open-minded about it this time. We just knew that something had to change. We considered private school but the tuition at the local Christian school for two kids would be about like paying another house payment each month. We just can’t afford it. We have been praying about it, and we feel like God is leading us to homeschool. As a matter of fact, I feel it so strongly, that I just can’t imagine doing anything else next year!
I started doing some research. I spent a few weeks looking at homeschool support groups in my area. I’ve read up on our state’s homeschool laws. I’ve already printed my Intent to Homeschool for the county we live in and have it all filled out and ready to send in. I’ve researched curriculum and have decided on the one I will use. I’m so excited!
I know everyone doesn’t think homeschooling is a great idea. I’ll admit, five years ago, when I had friends who pulled their kids out of public schools to homeschool them, I thought they were crazy! Their kids were dealing with a lot of the same mess mine have been dealing with but I didn’t understand why they didn’t just get over it and go on. I understand now. I know there are going to be people who think I’m crazy for homeschooling my boys with a toddler running around. You know what? I don’t care! I know in my heart that I’m doing what God is leading me to do right now. Who’s to say that I will homeschool for years and years to come? I may only do it for this one year and that may be enough. All I know is I’m making the decisions that I feel are best for my children and their education right now.
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