Things I Won't Miss

I guess you all knew it was coming. I have finally made the decision to leave the warmth and safety of the cyberschool nest and make my way in the world.

I can't say exactly what it was this week that pushed me over the edge. First there was the composition mess last week. Then our cyber school decided to update their mail program, losing my address book and most of the useful functions from the previous program. It's funny...I thought a cyber school might be good with the whole 'technology' thing. Then there was the friendly reminder that EM should take the second of four online assessments for the year. I sent an email stating that I thought the tests were poorly designed, that EM had placed above grade level in all the tests in September so I thought he should not need to take them. The answer I was given is that the state is holding the cybers to the same standards as the other public schools. I'm sorry...that's not an answer. The other schools are NOT required to give assessments like these 4 times a year.

So while all of this is going on I am reading a book "Home Schooling: A Family's Journey" by Gregory and Martine Millman. Every page I turn is making me more and more sure the path we are heading down now is not the best option for our family. One of the takeaways from Chapter Two sealed the deal for me... "A school-like curriculum and school-like pedagogy only make sense in the context of a school." I realized I am not fulfilling the vision I had for my children. I also finally faced the fact that fear was the only thing stopping me from taking the leap.

We will finish out the school year with PACyber. However, we will not push ourselves to do as much of their material as we would have. I will be very sad when we have to pack up the laptops and printers and the much coveted Bamboo... We get to keep all of the textbooks (some of them might be useful in the future). I will not miss the excessive testing and busy work given to my children. I will not miss the lack of time to stumble upon new and exciting adventures. And finally, I will not miss the horrible tunnel vision we have been suffering from ever since we tried to conform to someone else's plan for the lives of our children.

Composition

I know I've said it a million times...JT despises composition. Because of this, I try to assign the least I can to meet the school's requirements. Our Calvert curriculum typically requires one composition and one other writing assignment (sometimes a poem) per test lesson. PACyber had the brilliant plan this year to send along additional required test sheets for the Calvert students. So, for the lesson 40 test, JT is required to write a composition from a list of three topics, a Cinquain and a 2 paragraph composition about Robinson Crusoe. This news was NOT greeted with enthusiasm in our household. I have tried to break the work up into smaller pieces to keep the distress to a minimum. I told him to go ahead and print for the bonus work. I know they probably want him to use cursive, but I am one of those people that think the need to write in cursive is a waste of time. I want him to be able to read it (important historical documents are no fun to view if you have no idea what they say) but I assume my kids will be working with keyboards far more than fountain pens in the future. Plus, I never mastered cursive myself, so I have no room to expect perfection. All of my teachers seemed to think my penmanship indicated a certain career in medicine.

I do want my children to be able to communicate their thoughts in written form. I just wish there was a way to pull that off in a less painful way for all of us. Earlier this week JT put together his shape planner for the composition. The school requires one for most writing assignments in 4th grade. Today I had him pull that out and get to work. His paragraphs are well written as far as entertainment value goes. I'm not so sure the teacher will grade them based on that. We shall see...

No Time

Some weeks just seem like we are doomed to accomplish nothing from the start. We came back from our trip relaxed and ready for action. Then I took out the calendar...interruptions everywhere I looked! Monday JT had a piano lesson at 2pm and EM's birthday party was that night. Tuesday we all had flu shot appointments at 1:30. Wednesday I had to be out of the house for most of the day, so JT spent his day with my dad and EM worked independently while my husband worked at home. Today we had a violin lesson scheduled for 2:30. Then a wonderful thing happened. It was canceled! Suddenly I had a free afternoon ahead of me. Plus, we had a freak snow storm (completely unheard of this time of year in our area) that gave us a half inch of heavy, wet snow. The boys were thrilled with the turn of events. They pulled the sleds from the garage and proceeded to get soaked. When they came in, we had hot chocolate. We also finally had the time to remove our eggs from their solutions and check them out. We also pulled our hot dog mummy out of his baking soda and measured and recorded the changes. Not everyone would be thrilled with our idea of fun, but we thought it was great!

So now I ask myself...how can I re-work our schedule to allow more free time? Most weeks we are cramming all of our Calvert work into the morning hours. IF we have any available time in the afternoon, we get to do the 'fun' stuff. It seems like more and more of our afternoons get scheduled with appointments and lessons. Originally I thought it was great that we could get the lessons 'out of the way' by having them in the afternoons. But now our evenings are just getting filled with other things. I'm going to need to rethink that concept. We might have to move at least one of our lessons to after school hours.

My November calendar looks fairly clear right now. I am going to work hard to keep it that way. Maybe if I'm lucky...we'll have some free time so we can actually get something done!

Refreshed

What a week!

Last Friday, we drove to the city to hear the Harrisburg Symphony perform. They have two shows a year for school students that are free. It's a wonderful program. The conductor spends a great deal of time speaking to the students between pieces and explaining what is happening. I only took JT to the performance. EM does not have the same intense love of music. He also has some sensitivity issues with loud noises, so I wasn't sure he would enjoy it. Later that evening, we went to a Bela Fleck, Edgar Meyer and Zakir Hussain concert. Culture abounds!

Over the weekend I started the process of packing for a three day trip to Lake Arthur. We rented a cabin through the state park system. Even though it's a modern cabin, there seemed to be a ton of stuff we just MIGHT need on the trip. In between fits of packing, I was trying to look through both of the boys' lesson manuals and compact a full week of Calvert material into Monday at home, Tuesday through Thursday on the road and Friday at home. About the same time, I read a blog entry by the Pioneer Woman called October Homeschooling Blues. This post made me say, “HEY! That's us!”. Apparently I wasn't the only one having these feelings, since the comments were full of homeschoolers in the same boat. One of the commenters shared the fact that her family schools 6 weeks on, 1 week off. I looked at my lesson planner and realized we were heading into week 7 of this school year. I looked at that pile of workbooks and manuals I was trying to sort through. I looked at the heap of things I still needed to pack and I made a decision. We will now be schooling 6 weeks on and 1 week off! I put the manuals and school books away and declared a holiday.

When I pulled the calendar out and started counting weeks, I discovered that if we start in mid-August every year and follow the 6 to1 schedule, we will still finish a school year by June 1st. We will need to have one 5 week block and one 7 week block to fit Thanksgiving and Christmas in their proper locations. Otherwise all will be good.

Our vacation has been wonderful. In fact, I am in the cabin now with the lake right outside my door. We really only had one full day in the park. We hiked, we collected leaves, we explored and we were a bit chilly. It was overcast and windy most of the day. But, it has still been an excellent adventure. We had a campfire with 'smores last night. Tomorrow we will be examining some local geological features. Then we are spending the afternoon with fellow homeschoolers we rarely get to see before the long drive home.

All in all it has been a great trip. If I had tried to pack in worksheets and textbooks, we would have spent the evenings filling in the blanks. Instead we played Blokus and Pokemon together. If I had brought flashcards we could have sat on the picnic table drilling math facts instead of hiking around the lake and seeing a Blue Heron. Thanks to our flexible schedule my children learned how mine reclamation works while looking out over a pond with a muskrat lodge.

Who knew a week off could be so educational?

Motivation

First of all, the picture to the right is an ongoing project we have been playing with for the last two weeks. Naked eggs! We removed the shells from the eggs in vinegar (it took about 2 days). Then we took them out and felt them (lots of "eeewwws" with that). Now we are testing the permeability of their membranes. Salt water to the left, regular water in the center and corn syrup to the right. Of course, this is on the hutch in my dining room...

Motivation. How do you teach a child to be self-motivated? What if you yourself struggle with motivation issues? I used to be a bit more of a go-getter. I would have huge lists for each day of the week and would pat myself on the back after I crossed off each item. Now I have a vague idea each day that 'something should be done'. Schooling is always the priority. Because of that, I have lost some of my old structure. However, I still feel motivated to do things that need to be done and then...I do them. JT does not seem to feel that need for much of anything. Is this a trait that can be learned or is it mostly hereditary? I find myself saying things to him like, "This _____ (fill in the assignment) really needs to be done today. If you'd start now, we could do something fun in an hour." Nope. Does he not see the logic? No pain, no gain?

This year, one of my goals for JT is to help him do more independent work. I have been writing the workbook and reading assignments he has in a small notebook each evening for the next day. He is supposed to check the notebook and work his way through those assingments whenever I am not giving him one-on-one instruction. This has been successful some days. It just seems that he can see no positive benefit to working a little. That is something that worries me. Will he grow up to be a lazy bum?! It may seem a bit premature to be worrying if my 8 year old will be avoiding work 20 years from now, but it's the underlying attitude that seems troubling.

At the same time, EM is an orderly do-gooder. He enjoys working. All I need to do is say, "Finish that worksheet and I'll give you a sticker". Boom! He's done! He also leaps out of bed at the crack of dawn, makes his bed and gets dressed without being told. Where did those genes come from?

One more thing. This week I read an excellent article about homeschooling. Check it out. :-)

Tests, Tests, Tests...

As a student I adored tests. I looked forward to showing off what I had learned. I still like to play trivia games and take quizzes online. Yes, I am one of those people. So why do I detest tests aimed at my children?

Our cyber school sent us the results of the testing the boys took part in this month. Both tested above their current grade levels. One of the annoying things about the test for EM was in the results I found out one of the tests was timed. Hmmm, a TIMED test for a 5 year old involving clicking the appropriate answers on the computer screen. They didn't tell you it was timed when the test started. I probably wouldn't have let him wander around the room while taking the test if I knew that! I want to know; were they trying to test his motor skills or his recognition of high-frequency words?

The school wants EM to take these same tests 3 more times this school year. JT is going to have to take Scantron at least one more time. We are in the process of having EM evaluated for giftedness through the school. If he ends up with a GIEP, I'm planning on asking that he be excused from the testing except one time a year. I think I have a pretty good argument since their reason for testing is to assure that the kids are keeping up for the PSSAs. If he's already testing above level, I think we are good to go.

Because of this, I was already at high irritation level when I received another package from the school. It contained the "Fourth Grade Calvert Math and Reading Test Additions". Inside: "To ensure that we continue to meet the state requirements, we have made a few adjustments to the Math and Reading Calvert curriculum. Beginning with Test #40 and continuing through Test #160, you will receive the mandatory Math and Reading tests that must completed (their typo, not mine) in addition to the ones you have already received from Calvert."

Argh!

I have been stewing for two days. Am I nuts to be annoyed by these extra test sheets? JT does fine on his tests. He doesn't like to write, so the extra reading tests are not going to make him happy. They are full of essay questions. I almost sent out an email while I was still clutching the offending test booklet in my hands. My wise husband saw me at the keyboard and suggested I wait to send it, or at least let him preview what I wanted to send. So I waited...and stewed some more. I know my IS is about due to call me. At least, I think she is. I haven't heard from her in 3 weeks.

So...can I be nice?

Some Improvement

After the insanity of last week, this week was relatively peaceful. We put in several productive days for both boys. EM had a bit of a cold/cough most of the week, so he was not always a pleasant participant. JT enthusiastically completed a rough draft for a composition! However, the promise to do the final copy the next day should have been greeted with skepticism. He only wasted half a day resisting that one. I guess that could be counted as progress.

EM spent several hours in front of the laptop completing some testing for the cyber school. They employ the DORA/DOMA online assessments. This was NOT an enjoyable experience for either of us. Sitting still is really not in EM's skill set. As far as I can tell, the purpose of this testing is to determine if any early intervention is needed for the almighty PSSA tests. I am really wishing I had waited until the compulsory education age of 8 in PA to enroll EM in a formal school program. I could have happily educated him in my own way for the next 2 years. Instead, we will be jumping through the hoops. Lesson learned.

I have a few things I found/read this week that I want to share. First.... I found a wonderful book that is providing loads of fun activities. Exploratopia. In my opinion, this is a must buy book. We are currently working to mummify a hot dog thanks to this book!

I have added a blog to my following list: Art Projects for Kids , thanks to Annie from Learn at Every Turn for that one!

I also highly recommend the blog The Pioneer Woman. This post about socialization is a must read for any homeschoolers or even more for those who have doubts about homeschooling.

Tomorrow EM will spend the day with my dad as his teacher. Last year, JT went with him one day a week. This year the boys will alternate weeks to spend some time away from me and with their grandparents. It will not give me the free time I had last year, since I will still have one boy with me. It will offer me a chance to get that one on one time with the boys that is so hard to come by during our busy school days. I have promised that if the homebound boy helps me with the errands and grocery shopping in the morning, I will completely devote the rest of the day to an activity of their choice. Since JT's idea of a good time is laying on the couch reading together or watching a nature video, I think I should have fun tomorrow!