Halloween

I suddenly realized as I was eating my lunch... I forgot to do my blog! Considering how crazy things are, it's amazing this is the first time I forgot.

We spent a lot of the free time we had this week working on JT's costume. As you can see, it turned out to be pretty cool! My husband wants to keep it in his office after Halloween is over.

We had a good school week. The writing assignment about the civil war soldier has really kept his interest. He took the Lesson 100 math test, only 3 more to the end of the 3rd grade math material. Now we will be starting the chapter on units of measurement. That one may actually require a little bit of work. JT has not really covered metric yet, so those will be new concepts.

The Spanish class we signed up for has turned out to be a waste of time. I thought it would be similar to the Fine Arts podcasts that he does for Art. Instead, it's a cartoon woman, poorly animated, saying a word in Spanish and asking you to repeat it. Each one is about 5 minutes long. Very boring and slow paced. Her mouth isn't even animated to match the sounds she is making! Plus, if you pause the video, the audio and video get out of synch and she's saying, "cinco", with a picture of a 3 on the screen. I guess we'll handle Spanish on our own!

We also had a playdate this week with a family we met at a PA Cyber event. They live in our district and this is also their first year with cyber schooling. It was a nice day. It was especially nice to have someone I could connect with about previous school experiences and the new challenges of cyber school. Hopefully this will help to provide JT with the socialization everyone is so worried about!

Have a Happy Halloween!

Is this part of the new cruelty?

I finally had to crack down this week. I couldn't take another day of..."PLEASE do your work so we can move onto something else. Wouldn't you like to get done early once????" I know I would! I don't expect our days to go the same as a brick and mortar school. I do not expect JT to sit still all day. In fact, he usually spends most of the school day bouncing around the classroom or tilting his ottoman he sits on at all sorts of dangerous angles. Some days he even sits ON the desk. So, I am not being ridiculous thinking that one lousy math worksheet should be finished in less than 1 1/2 hours.

We now have a two part plan. The first part involves completing assignments. I show JT what I would like him to do. I give him more than ample time to finish it. If it is not done, it's homework. Homework! What kind of craziness is that? We are already doing 'homework' all day. My husband thought this brilliant plan up and it works like a charm. The mere mention of the dreaded 'homework' has turned my procrastinator into an industrious worker.

We'll see how long that lasts....

I also borrowed another motivational technique from one of my friends. Up until now, our usual punishment for misbehavior is taking away computer privileges. It's hard to make that work very well when JT is capable of losing it within the first five minutes of the school day. My friend has a system where the child gets ten 'ticks' before they lose the computer. Now I keep a tally of the ticks on the chalkboard throughout the day. Morale is improving! Especially mine!

I finally dug through my pile of enrichment materials this week. Today I gave JT a creative writing assignment I found in a book called "Historic Happenings Projects to Integrate History and Language Arts" (I did not pay the price Amazon is asking for this book, it was just the first link I found with a description of it...you can buy it for much less) His assignment is to keep a journal as a Civil War soldier. He needs to describe himself, family and home. He will also need to choose one battle from the war and describe it from his point of view. JT is very excited about it and has started preliminary planning. He loves history and writing (as long as it's not in cursive) so it's a great supplement for us.

This week will bring a new challenge. When asked what he wanted to dress up as for Halloween, my son thought for one second and said, "An angler fish!" Now I get to try to come up with that costume. Luckily, I found a step by step guide on making an angler fish paper mache head online. Isn't the internet a wonderful thing? Just when you think you have the weirdest child on the planet, you find out there are full grown adults out there just as weird as he is!

Reality

This week was spent debating whether cyber is truly the best fit for our situation. I have only had fleeting thoughts of traditional homeschooling, mostly due to the fact that I would have to document so much of what we are doing instead of the cyber school taking care of that for us. I feel sometimes like I spend too much time working through tedious, unnecessary material just because it's in the Lesson Plan. I bought a lot of educational material from many different places as soon as I made the decision to pull JT out of brick and mortar school. I never seem to have the time to supplement with those activities.

Two of my friends who are cyber schooling as well helped me work through my dilemma. I am a list person. I write lists for everything. I LOVE to check things off of the list. The problem with Calvert's material is that every lesson plan is laid out in list form. When I don't 'check' things off the list, my little mental dysfunction screams, "You can't skip that, you need to check it off the list!"

So yesterday I decided not to look at the list during our school day. I made up my own list and followed that instead. We did a little better. Last night, I went online and found a good site for challenging math word problems. Today instead of the monotonous worksheets, we did math that took up the whole chalkboard. We found the volume of two tubes we made out of paper. We calculated problems involving speed and distance. We had fun and JT learned useful math. He will still have no problem passing the math tests as long as I am sure to instruct him in their definitions and methods for specific problems. Hopefully as I work through my own behavior therapy I can come up with a happy medium that allows JT to learn with flexibility.

JT finally experienced his first virtual class on Wednesday. It is an enrichment class meant for 5th-8th graders. I signed him up anyway based on his reading level. The class had 4 students. JT is the youngest, but he did fine. I listened in for the whole session to help him with the little details of the technology. I think he'll be fine on his own for the next one. The kids had a good discussion on the elements of a mystery novel. They will be reading a book and doing enrichment activities covering math, art and history. The book is 'Chasing Vermeer'. The only problem is that the teacher only wants them to read the first 4 chapters before next week. JT had already read 3 before the class began. Luckily he's preoccupied reading 'The Fellowship of the Ring' for now. He's only a couple chapters from the end, so I'll have to throw something else his way to keep him from jumping ahead too far in the book for his class.

This week was not the best week we have had. I think JT had an ok week, but I had a sudden realization; I will be doing this until 2021. With our youngest in K this year and his projected graduation date in mind, I saw my life pass before my eyes. I spent a couple days being a little negative (my friends know this is stating it mildly) and now I'm going to press on trying to keep John Lennon's quote in mind. "Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans."

Technical Difficulties

One day this past week, I asked my husband to fill in for me for a couple hours while I ran a few errands. He had taken the week off of work to do some odds and ends around the house. I said, "Could you just help him review his multiplication tables?" The picture to the left is what I found them working on when I came home. I guess he figured why cover them all individually when you can put them into one massive problem?

JT's first virtual class was set up for this week. It was supposed to be held Wednesday from 2pm-3pm. The day before, I checked if we had it listed in his "courses". It wasn't there, so I contacted his IS (Instructional Supervisor) and she assured me he was registered. Wednesday at 1:45 pm I attempted to get things set up. The class wasn't showing up. I started worrying that I was doing something wrong. I had used the software once for a parent forum, so I figured we were probably good to go.

2:00, I really start to panic. I send an email to our IS and the gifted education coordinator. I also call and put in a tech ticket. Around 2:15, JT says, "Is it ready yet?" Then I get the email. Don't worry, you are all signed up. It's a virtual classroom tech issue. It will be ready next week.

I'm not feeling very impressed with the technical know-how here. This is a "CYBER" school...right? The tech guy called me today, nearly 24 hours later. I said, "Never mind."

This was also the first week that I was sick. I have a nasty bit of congestion going on. Unfortunately, there was no substitute available. So, we had a very lame day on Wednesday. We covered Math, Composition, and a little Science. Then I said, "Let's watch a video for History today." I slept on the couch while he watched Liberty! The American Revolution. It's a PBS series that is very well done. I had watched the first volume with him when I wasn't sick. I felt a little guilty dumping him like that, but considering the fact that we are already on lesson 81 in math...and there are 160 in the year, I think we can afford a day of slacking off.

I am still struggling to find a way to make the Science curriculum fit our situation. The third grade material is too simplistic and the sixth grade material isn't quite right either. I guess I'll really have to work to find an acceptable substitute while still covering enough of the curriculum specific terms in the Calvert material to have him pass the tests.

I also need to complain about math....WHY do these kids need to be able to explain how they answered a math question? Why can't the state just be happy that they know the right answer? I struggle to teach my child how to answer these questions. When I was complaining to a friend of mine about this problem she said, "Yes, I also hate needing to explain math with language instead of math. It is like playing baseball using your feet. Why? Why not just use your hands?"

Amen to that!

Test Packets

The Calvert curriculum that we use through PA Cyber has a packet of tests that you send in for grading every 20 lessons. We sent our lesson 20 packet in a little under 2 weeks ago. Today we received the graded tests along with a pile of information. We have been assigned our ETF (Elementary Teaching Facilitator). She sent a nice letter to JT, introducing herself and explaining some of the things she was looking for in his testing packets. We had been asked to fill out a student survey to send in with the first group of tests, so she knew some things about our family to allow for a bit of conversation in the note. She had also graded all the tests and sent a summary on each subject. JT had A's in all subjects. She did point out that he made a few spelling errors that she had overlooked for the first test, but would not on future testing. After we read the letter, JT said, "I think she'll be really good for us." It's funny to think of the long distance relationship we will have with this woman. It's so foreign to the standard student-teacher relationship we think of nowadays.

One of the other things that came with this package, was a new incentive the school is offering. PSSA's are a big focus with the cyber school, just as they are in our traditional schools. In fact, they are probably even more important to them, since they can lose their charters if they don't make AYP (annual yearly progress). The students are being offered a chance to add percentage points to their grades if they complete worksheets geared towards test prep. I'm not sure how I feel about this. I haven't looked at all of the materials. If they are below level, I can't see wasting JT's time (and mine) doing any busy work. We have a hard enough time squeezing in our regular subjects!

This coming Monday, we are going to attend our first "meet and greet". It's a lunch get together hosted by "family link". Family link is a cyber version of the PTA. We will have a chance to link up with other families in our area that are using PA Cyber. I'm hoping JT will find someone in his age range. He has lots of local friends, but it would be nice to have someone local within the same school system.

He will also be starting his first virtual class this coming week. Gifted students are offered a few enrichment courses throughout the year. JT has signed up for a class that will be reading the book, "Chasing Vermeer". There will be discussion and activities every Wednesday from 2-3 pm, virtually. I thought this would give him a chance to see what the virtual classes are like and maybe make a few connections with other advanced learners.

Once again we have had a good week. Today we were working on a little Spanish. JT said, "Let's practice having a conversation in Spanish." We have done this in the past. It usually consists of me saying, "Como estas?" (How are you?) He says, "Muy bien, gracias." (very well, thanks) I usually also ask him how old he is and if he likes school. He used to say that he didn't like school. Today he answered..."Me gusta escuela. Gracias por el aula." (I like school. Thank you for the classroom.) It was a good day.....