Our life is just a rollercoaster, hold on tight because falling off is not an option.
I don’t really have a connection that works yet (coming Thursday they tell me). But I’m home.
It wasn’t easy, but we’re in one piece and we didn’t loose any animals on the way.
The one thing that I had forgotten was how green it is. Amazing.
Catch you all later.
Hey all,
Just wanted to mention that this coming weekend we are returning home. (I’m sorry Jo, I can’t hide that I’m happy to be going back). Because of it, I’ll probably be taking down my computer either late Wednesday or Thursday morning. I don’t know how long it’ll take me to get the internet reconnected at home and start reposting to this blog. I’m hoping it won’t be more than a week, but…..
Anyway, please keep us in your thoughts next weekend. It’ll be 2 kids, a dog, 2 cats and myself in a very loaded Sienna mini-van traveling the 1200 miles from New Mexico to Indiana.
It’s time to go East.
It hit me the other day (especially after reading a post of Doc’s) that a conversation that almost always takes place when 2 homeschoolers get to know each other in IRL, I’ve never touched on here. Namely, How did we happen to start homeschooling our kids?
And it’s funny. I’ve spoken to many, many other homeschoolers over the years and can only remember one story of ‘we just never got around to signing them up for school and years later realized that we were homeschooling them.’ For everyone else, there has always been a moment of decision.
We were no different. Our moment came when we moved from Silicon Valley (California) to a small town in the Midwest. I usually tend to describe the transition as falling into it, kicking and fighting the idea the whole way. Anyway, here’s a little background and the story of our ‘first year.’
We started homeschooling Boy when he entered the 4th grade. Up to that point, he had been in one of the small private schools, that are all over the San Jose area, for the previous 3 years. His only year of public school had been kindergarten.
We hadn’t wanted to do that year of public school, but in our naive ‘first child’ state, we didn’t realize that we could have just kept him home. The summer he turned 5, we were in the midst of moving from NY (down state, but 50 some miles north of the City) back to California. To complicate things, Hubby was doing a summer research project outside DC, so Step-mom, the kids and I went cross-country without him to find a place and arrange for our stuff to get there. My sister had a place in the East Bay and had offered to let us stay with her while we found a place. Step-mom stayed a day or so, and then flew back to NY.
That left me with the 2 kids (ages 5 and 1.5) to find a place to live. The catches, as I soon found out:
So, we did that year of public school. It didn’t leave us wanting another. For first grade, we moved Boy into a wonderful private school that went from K to 12. He was in a classroom of about 10 kids, and, as it happened, had the same teacher for all 3 years. It wasn’t a perfect fit, but it worked. I’m not even sure that I had heard of homeschooling as a viable alternative at this point.
Then came the move to a small town in Indiana. We were faced with 3 choices for Boy. He could go to the public school, which didn’t seem like a good idea given where he was coming from. He could go to the local christian school, no way; or we could try homeschooling. I wasn’t happy with any of the choices, but Hubby pushed for homeschooling.
And pushed, and pushed. All I could see was that here was this child that fought me day and night over everything (or so it seemed) and I was going to be able to ‘teach’ him? NO WAY, it wouldn’t work.
But after talking about it, and looking at the choices, I agreed to try it. So, with less than a week’s notice we were homeschooling 4th grade. Because of our relationship with that private school in California, we decided to arrange to do that year with them setting up the curriculum and sending us the books and syllabus.
This was the only year that I can describe as doing ’school at home.’ I didn’t know any different. Here’s your work, here’s the lesson, do these problems, I’m off to unpack, set up, etc. I had him writing everything out, answering every question, doing every page because we needed to send his work back to the private school. Needless to say, it didn’t work.
It was complicated by the fact that Girl was entering kindergarten, and because we didn’t really know much about homeschooling, we sent her off to the public school. (These weren’t California schools!) That year was fine for her, but because she was on 1/2 days, it was totally disruptive for Boy. Add to that, that we started off the year living in an hotel, went to living in a temporary house, and didn’t get moved into our house until the end of October.
Oh, and remember that I knew nothing about homeschooling? I hadn’t heard about giving them decompression time or anything. That fall was a total mess. Nothing got done and everyone got stressed out. The only thing good that came out of it, was that I found a local homeschooling group. There were actually 2, a ’statement of faith’ christian group and a secular group for everyone else. (Which actually does attract some christians that could join the first group, but choose us instead.) While no one told me what I was doing wrong, they were wonderful about sharing what they were doing and their kids were great role models.
Once we got past Christmas break, we realized that we needed to make some changes. After trying different things, we basically threw ’school at home’ out the window. It was probably March before we got our stride. Everything and anything that could be done out loud, we did out loud. We discussed the books and stories that he was reading, grammar lessons were done verbally, instead of writing out all those sentences, and math was done with chalk out on the concrete pad by the swimming pool.
Suddenly we were flying through his work. Those last 4 months we did about 8 months worth of work (after spending 6 months getting 2 months worth done.) On top of that, he and I developed a deeper connection and while we still ‘bumped heads’ it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had feared.
We finished the year realizing that it could work and also that we didn’t need the school in California for the books and plans. Over the summer, I contacted publishers for catalogs and ordered books. After discussing it, we decided for fifth grade to stay with most of the sequences that the private school had been using and so we went into our second year.
Looking back, I don’t remember when I first heard about decompression. But I do remember the ’slap my head’ moment of realizing that it fit our first year to a tee. Not everyone has so bad, but boy did we.
Coming up (at some point): Bringing Girl Home….
Well, the boys are gone and Girl is busy. And I should be either cleaning this place up or packing (ugh) but it’s much more fun to fiddle on the computer.
So, what are our summer plans? It’s called jumping back into our life (back home) with 2 feet.
The week we get back there’s the homeschool group’s June swim party that I’ve already mentioned, and then on Wednesday, Boy will be heading off to Purdue (University) for a 3 day 4H workshop for high schoolers. It’s Ambassader Workshop, or something like that, and who knows what they are going to be doing. He’ll live in a dorm and get a taste of being at a college.
Either when I drive him up or back, I’ll need to stop at the Tandy store in Indy (Indianapolis) for supplies for the following Monday. When I’ll be starting to teach a 3-day leathercarving workshop (multiple small classes over all or part of each day) for the 4H kids in my county. I’ve done the 4H homeschooled kids before, but the agent asked me to open them up for anyone in the county. Did I ever mention that my house and all it’s stuff is packed up in storage? (including all my leather stuff)
At this point we’ll be in a 3 week run up to Fair. That means we’ll be spending all of our time doing the paperwork that needs to be finished by the end of June and then putting together the displays that the kids will turn in.
Boy is fairly easy. At this point he mostly does the photography project (Level 3, advanced) and possible collections. With all the pictures he’s taken this year, we’ll just be printing and mounting the best. This pic from Gettyburg went to State last year and won a blue. 
I expect that he’d like to do it again.
Girl, OTH, doesn’t like to make it easy. And while she will be doing the work, I often get put into the overseer position of checking and helping what she’s up to. She’s already gone through the fair book and here’s her current list of what she’s doing:
There’s also an open show at fair and I’m hoping to submit some of the pictures that I’ve taken this year as well as make and submit a purse (that my mil requested) . We’ll see if I get to it.
Once we get through fair, the next big thing is going to Atlanta for Nationals in Magic, the Gathering. Boy qualified in a local scholarship tournament (called JSS) and will be competing. He has a $500 college scholarship from the local tournament and will be playing for up to $10,000 in scholarship money at Nationals. Needless to say, any free time that he has between getting home and the end of July will be spent at the local card store trying to improve his game. It’s a long shot, but someone has got to do it.
Once we leave Atlanta, it’ll be time to head to western NY. Hubby’s siblings are up there (Niagara Falls and Rochester) and his folks spend their summers up there as well. I’d like to also get down to my step-sister’s place in the Southern Tier as well, but time will be limited.
Because once we get home, the kids and I will be heading to my sister’s place in Maryland. She has only 1 week all summer where she’ll ‘only’ be teaching a class or two and so when we can go there will be rigid. But it’ll be great to see her and play with the horses for a week. A cousin from Boston is also planning on coming down while we’re there.
And by the time we get back home it’ll be time to start thinking about academics again. Did I mention that my house is packed up in boxes?
Of course, fitted in and around all of this will be nearly daily jumps in the pool and hanging out with friends. Also, while it’s still up in the air, we may be picking up a foreign exchange student sometime in August.
You’d think after being gone for 10 months, we’d have an easy summer to unpack and settle in. HAH.
In case anyone is interested, Barnes and Nobel has a summer reading program for grades 1 to 6. Kids that participate get a coupon for a free book and a chance for an autographed copy of the last of the Series of Unfortunate Events books.
They can do it twice over the summer (2 free books, 2 chances). The only catch is while you can download the journal form over the internet, you have to go to the store to turn it in.
Here’s the link.
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