I hope to make this work this time. I realize I should utilize this blog as a way of tracking what we are doing with homeschooling so I have a record. I will have a record of our hours but not of what we accomplish when.
Emma is in K this year. We are technically enrolled with the school district here. The law for Colorado states that I must notify the school district that we are homeschooling when she reaches 7, which she clearly has not. The school district here offers a neat program for homeschoolers. I am still not 100% sure about it. I mean it is a great, and I mean great program but as a homeschooler it is that much more invasion and a foot in the door for tighter laws.
With the program we are assigned a resource consultant (RC) who helps us come up with a learning plan for each semester. This is part of what the school district requires. We have to list a course description, learning resources, learner's actions and assesment of results. I actually struggled with this because the goal is to keep things vague, just provide enough information and from my schooling, I am used to going into detail. The RC had to tell me to stop thinking too much! We then have to create a schedule of when we will do what subject which was a killer for me to actually plot out language arts at 9:30, math at 10:30. Again this is just for the auditors. One thing I love about homeschooling is the freedom that if she is having a great day with Math, we can skip LA that day. Another weird quirk with the system is that they would not put Sunday down as a day to log hours, Saturday was even tough for them, and I realized the Monday, I could not click on the hours to log her school time. It is still set as a typical school mentality.
There are positive reasons I chose this program. I have access to professionals if I have questions, her learning supplies are reimbursable up to a certain amount and it expanded our resources with homeschooling families.
Her RC's background is speech which has been wonderful with Emma. She acknowledged the slight delay I have been hearing and gave me tips on how to work with her. Honestly, the thing that has worked the best is her learning to read. It has given us PLENTLY of time to really focus on certain sounds and the delay is almost gone with the sounds we have covered. She still has to focus hard but I am hearing the improvement in her daily speech when she does not think about it. Today we were working really hard on the word "three" since it came up in math quite a bit.
For her subjects, my main focus this year is a strong foundation in reading, writing and math. She also has music because of violin and PE because of hockey. Both of those will be expanded as well. Science and social studies as she shows interest in different subjects. She also has mixed media for art and community service.
Learning to read is going well. Not her favorite subject but she is getting more excited about it as she is realizing how many words she can really read. She made it through one library book, only two words she did not know but figured out on her own based on the pictures (down and up - just today learned short u so up is now covered). Her eyes lit up today right after she realized she could read the word "fish"!
We are finding a few books that she can read about 1/2 off in the easy readers. As for being read to, we are making our way through Little House on the Prairie since we finally finished Little House in the Big Woods.
Math, she cracks me up with. I have to save this until last because it is the one she wants to do. She wakes up asking to do math. She was really bummed out when she finished the first semester's book and I had not ordered the next book. So we introduced the hundred's chart and she has been having a blast with that. Her new books came today so I cut reading short and let her go at it.
Overall the math is very simple for her but I wanted to make sure we did not skip anything important. She slowed down for a bit in the first book when we hit writing 6-10. She knew the numbers but we never really worked with what they looked like. Even now, she has to stop and think but she has them.
Violin is one we do first thing in the morning because if we don't it does not get done. She is not thrilled about starting but once we get going she loves it. It is going to be an interesting journey the next few months. Her current teacher is moving and I have learned a lot in the past year about what to look for. We have met with one teacher that I really like but cost wise is more than double, but her expertise allows for it.
Things are going good. We officially started July 1st but between July and August, it was more of part time. Once the curriculum started coming, I got tired of the "Can we start yet? Can we start yet? Can we start yet?" that I just opened it up and started. Hour wise we are just ahead of schedule putting our start date as August first, but including hours from July, so it looks good. She is required to do 2 hours a day for a yearly total of 360 I believe. Math, LA and violin take care of that in a normal week!
My goal is to at least do a weekly update to keep track of what we have accomplished so I have a running history of this all. Might help even things out in the long run and see what really works and where I manage to drop the ball.
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