Homeschool 3.0

Well, here we go again!

The first time was when we moved from VA to FL as Miss A was just about to start kinder.  Her teacher in FL was hardcore!  No naps.  Full day.  Minimum 45 minutes of homework per day.  I was like "Where's the finger painting and graham crackers?" and after a month and a half pulled her out.  My homeschooling attempts then were pretty sketchy, and it was a relief to move to GU after six months and put her into the DOD school there.  Then, we moved back to VA to a, shall we say, "marginal socio-economic" school district.  Great neighborhoods, wonderful location, don't know why everybody doesn't live here and why the politicians are such crooked corrupt people; but... not the best schools.

So the second time was when we found the perfect house in the perfect neighborhood in the perfect location.  But weren't too sure about the school.  I've always felt like teaching the girls myself is something I should do, or rather, something that if I were with it and organized and on top of everything, I would be the perfect homeschool teacher.  (Sadly that just never happens...)  So we found that we could enroll the kids in a different districts K-12 program online.  That worked well-ish.  B thought it was a complete cluster, and the girls barely survived with their minds intact.  I think it was a good learning experience.  I liked the checklist aspect of it, and that the curriculum was challenging.  I liked the history, science, and art lessons.  I didn't like trying to direct two kids on one computer with a three year old competing for attention.  Miss M was sad about not having any friends.  (GU had more friends than we knew what to do with, all living on the same block as us.)  And she was frustrated about having to click through all the phonics lessons when she could already read very well.  Miss A started throwing crying tantrum fits when she thought things were too hard.  They almost never were too hard, but she would just freak out!  That was happening more and more often.  So even though I felt I was learning to manage things better, by Thanksgiving we put them back in public school.

Now, the third time around, I'm ready to really do this.  Maybe.  The school is ok.  Kind of.  They're pretty anti-parent.  It's hard to get them to let me volunteer.  And if I say I need to talk to a teacher it's like I'm asking to personally blow up the school.  And then, if I can get past the front office to actually help in the class room, even if I've sent in a note the day before saying I'm coming, the teachers look at me like I've got ebola or something.  They clearly have no idea what to do with me and it makes them uncomfortable that I'm there.  It is such a shock to me, because the school in GU pushed everyone to volunteer.  When you registered your kid, you had to fill out the background check paperwork, and if you didn't come in, the teachers sent home things for you to cut out or staple.  So that's annoying.  The other thing is the lack of teacher communication.  I would love to get an email once a week saying what they're working on.  Maybe once a month?  But nothing ever.  I've never even met the gifted and talented teacher.  And that's another thing.  Miss M was only getting 45 minutes a week at gifted and talented, and I never knew what they were doing.  And if there is testing going on, that got scrapped.  There's always testing going on...  I went into Miss A's class last week.  The SOLs (VA's big test) are in May, and her class was reviewing for the test.  But they weren't reviewing math...  No, it was "What kind of question is this?  That's right, a click and drag question."  They were stinking learning how to use the mouse for the stupid test!  Isn't that crazy?

So we felt that we need to try something else.  Miss M can probably already pass the end of year test (VA law requires we turn in a test by August 1st), so if we're going to try it, I wanted to try it with her first, since I feel I can't really mess her up too much.  And we felt like she is really getting bored.  She doesn't even have any friends in her class.  She invited eight of her classmates to her birthday party, and two came.  And I know those two's moms, so she still hangs out with them.   If all goes well, we will pull Miss A out for next year.  We will send Miss R to kinder, so someone else can teach her to read (see attempt #one above...).  After that we will hopefully do all three for the foreseeable future at least until we see where we are moving next.