Whew! Its been a bit of a bumpy road as far as school goes for the past few month. First we were hit with summer. We decided we would take off June but continue work once July hit :) yeah that did NOT go as well as planned! We started off ok in July but as the month went on we did less and less....I think it was getting hotter and hotter and wearing us OUT! Not to mention in our "classroom" at home it gets like 90* BLAH so we were doing school work downstairs in mom and dads bedroom most days. It also didn't help that I found out we are expecting #4 (wahoo :)) and was super super tired all the time.......Then the middle of August came and everyone else started getting ready to head back to school! We got Emily all set to start Kinder @ the school where my mom helps out and the Fausett kids go. I would not have been able to send her if it weren't for the help of my mom transporting her! Emily REALLY loves it!!! She gets excited everyday and I know she is just having a blast playing with all of her friends! So with Emily in school for half the day and ME being a super slacker in the "preparing" homeschool department, I kind of re-evaluated what we were doing. Bob and I discussed it and decided to give K12 school a try. It is in online, virtual public school. My hope with K12 was that because all of the planning was done for me it would be so much easier because we could just focus on the "learning & teaching" and it would save me lots of prep time......this however was not the case. I think I spent MORE time logging and submitting things then Steph did working, at least some days it felt like that. Plus she was required to submit extra tests and assignments to "show that she was where she should be". I have NO problem with all of this and I completely understand why they have these things in place, it just doesn't work for us and our style of homeschooling. So as Bob loves to quote James Bach, he told me "Jump in and Quit......its OK" so we did......we quit. I am ok with it! We took one day off and spent it watching all kind of fun educational shows and now we are back into our workbooks and child directed learning. Steph really learns so much better when it is "her idea" and also a subject she really loves.....So now Bob and I have to get back to my weekly planning meetings to make this work! I have my doubts EVERY day.....but thankfully we have a great group of friends who support us and it REALLY helps that Bob is on board 100% and willing to help with anything I ask!
So that's where we are! Steph is loving homeschool, Emilys @ school part of the day and we work with her the other part to keep her moving along. She is a super smart girl and we like to do some "extra" at home to keep her brain going, and Sarah........well Sarah is sad she doesn't go to school like Emily, but she has been doing some great things around here :) Just today I watched as Emily was "teaching" Sarah how to do math! It was great!
Hopefully more blogs to come now that we are back in the swing of it!!
