Homeschooling has shifted over time. I used to spend hours crafting assignments and learning topics, but now I am tired, depressed, and just lacking the motivation I had months ago. The kids, on the other hand, have taken the to opportunity to lead the way. Now I can simply request an essay on a topic when I'm too busy with work. they will research and produce a piece that we can proofread and edit together. I can simply say, pick 5 pages out of a workbook. They don't pick the quickest 5 to do, they pick the 5 that are the most interesting to them. That's huge. They are learning because they want to and not because they have to. Well, ok, not all the time, but more and more often. We also tailor the lessons to current events and holidays, so on St. Patrick's Day, my son did and essay on St. Patrick. My daughter researched leprechauns. Couple that with some shamrock art and "Voila!" it's learning and creativity in action with 20 minutes of planning. Later, I spent an hour with my son going over his essay which is often what I do during lunch. Working and homeschooling can be done!
My son is also taking 2 online classes that both have 2-3 hours of homework per week, so I don't have to assign much for him to do. He also attends an outside day of homeschooling classes, so I only have 2 days a week to consider assignments for him. While it's awesome that I don't have to do so much, it also makes it hard to do the bigger topics that was fun to have both kids work together on. He's studying meteorology and really likes the class. I sat in and listened a couple of times and it is easily a high school level class with the depth of study. I found it very interesting! He's so fortunate to have opportunities like this. The other class he's taking is about the Middle Ages and utilizes the Horrible Histories books as the primary reading material. He now knows more about the Middle Ages than I was ever taught. He schooled me on the Crusades last week. He seems to really like the online classes, and I hope we can get the funds together to continue. He saw a class on botany and was interested in it. I asked him why he was interested in plants and he said "If I'm going to go to Mars, I need to know about plants, storms, and chemistry." Well, ok then interplanetary pioneer, you are one for three.
My daughter has fizzled a bit and some days is impossible to get anything out of. She can be so head strong and stubborn. I generally let her do very little on the day that her brother is out of the house. She draws a lot. She likes art projects. She builds things. She's a typical first grader in that respect, but she's already gone through nearly 2 years of curriculum. She's halfway through 3rd grade, so if she's not feeling like working, then I've been letting her relax more. She's just such an organized thinker who is fantastic at problem-solving. She's on the same trajectory as her brother, except she has nothing but encouragement to keep challenging herself. She skipped 1st grade and finished 2nd before the holidays. I'm sure she'll be done with 3rd by the end of May, so I'm letting her study science to slow things down. She loves art, animals, math, and science. She doesn't at all sound like me *sarcasm*.
Part of the reason I'm also feeling more relaxed about homeschooling is because I had them take the MAP test. I found a website, Affordable Homeschool Tests, that I could have them take the same out of level test they had taken last year. I wanted to see if I was doing a good job at teaching them. I was particularly interested in how far my son had come with some focus on math since he had lost all momentum for 2 years.
When I got the results, I teared up a bit. They are thriving. My "first grade" daughter, who is technically too young for the test, is at a 3rd grade level in math and 5th grade in reading and language. My "4th grade" son is at a 9th grade level in reading and language and 7th in math. My son's math score shot up 20 points by getting the instruction he needed. Both kids have increased multiple grade levels. The test proxy recommended that my son take the middle school level test next time because he's hitting scores outside of the elementary school test. That proved I was doing a good job. Through all the stress, tears, sacrifice, and anxiety over not knowing whether we made the right choice, this was good evidence that our non-traditional approach is working.
I can't imagine them being stuck in age appropriate material. I don't know what next year holds. I haven't tried to place them in school next year. We aren't moving. We are hitting a personal financial crisis because work was so slow for 6 months. Well, work wasn't slow, we made a bad business decision, a client took advantage, and then decided to not pay us. That's the shitty part of being a small business. Being a husband and wife team though, that made it hard to even have money for food. Yeah, THAT bad. We had to drop all extracurricular activities. We barely managed to keep a roof over our head. It's been ridiculously hard, but things will change in a couple months. We learn from our mistakes and keep moving.
