I got up this morning to a text from my sweet hubby reminding me to have a good day and to have fun educating our kids. Believe it or not, it is fun educating our kids.....and its sad.
In anticipation of our new lifestyle, I stopped in at Barnes & Nobles and for once did not head straight to the sl&t books but visited the surprisingly large homeschool section. I knew I needed a cheat sheet, so I picked up two treasures that I could not live without: What your fifth grader needs to know and What your first grader needs to know. These two books are filled with lessons and sharp! What saddened me is right off the bat I realized that my honor roll children did not have any exposure to half of what they should have already. When I sat down to order their A Beka christian curriculm it was very noticable to me that the books were going to be a challenge to my kids. I was excited and scared for them.
One: except for a brief 1.5 years Princess has been in public schools (the private school was amazing but we transferred). Duchess has only known private schools. I watch my oldest struggle with reading to this day and all I can think is "well I blew that" because she was in three different states before fifth grade with three different "reading" teach methods. One state was old school- it was all about phonics. Then another state was memorization with no spelling as the kids were encouraged to spell the way it sounds or use memorization. Another state was all about a mixture of both that left me dizzy and confused.
So the day my beloved A Beka program came in (highly anticipated as this was the cirriculm Dave used when he was growing up in Christian schools) I realized something. I was in trouble. Princess can't touch the math book. Half way throught the 5th grade and she knows nothing that is in the math book as they haven't made it that far.
Before we left Utah I had both of their teachers give me a detailed idea of where they are and what they were to meet by year end. The sheer lack of math and reading on these bother me. The kids are in for a challenge. Which means I'm in for a challenge.
But it's a good challenge. There is no purpose that has motivated me more than knowing that I have the chance to make a huge difference in my kids' lives. And honestly, I am not sure how I'll ever wrap my head around going back to public schools. That is gonna really kill me.
But for fun, let us look at what I'm currently teaching them:
Bible verses
Etiquette
Math and math comprehension
Spelling and vocab
Reading and reading comprehension
Creatism science
History
Writing
Health and PE
Now let's be honest, there is what else is in our daily schedule:
Making lunch together, cooking, baking
Long walks, going to the park to jog or basketball or play ground jungle gyms
trips to the post office, bank or grocery store
Now we'll look at the schedule of a day one had when I volunteered in their classes before we left Utah:
Spelling
Math
Science
Social Studies
Music Appreciation
Reading
Helping the teacher make goodie bags for a church event
3 recesses
1 lunch break (where it was more like an episode of gossip girl than lunch, dude where were the moniters?)
library time (yet another great social event)
Helper time (time spent in another classroom - helping)
the sheer amount of lines my kid stood in, I wished I'd have timed it. The main thing, the amount of time kids were lined up at the teacher's desk with questions, the amount of social time explained all the drama the kids were constantly bringing home. But even better, the schools there have so many freaking kids that they are on "tracks". My kids were A track: meaning they went to school from 830-110 and B track was later in the day. Do the math, how many hours were they actually in school learning?
So while my latest adventure is mind boggling, I feel good about what we're accomplishing with it. That said, please pray for me..........I gots me some kids with me 24/7 now dudes...
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Educating My Kids
