Wow... the words I swore I'd never say... "I'll be homeschooling my children".
Now that ya'll hate me...
I was homeschooled my whole life. As were my 6 other siblings. I am NOT against homeschooling. However, I'm not the world's most patient person. This is just something I cannot see myself doing, and doing well. But yet here I am.
My story...
I've come to the end of my rope with the public schools where my oldest two kids are concerned. My son was bumped from kindergarten to 1st grade. He was still top of his first grade class. He's now finishing out 3rd grade. Back at the start of the year, when I went in to meet his teacher, she wanted to talk to me about him skipping 3rd and going straight to 4th. She didn't know he'd already been bumped once. When they came back from Christmas break my son started being sick every single school morning. But never on days they didn't have school. When I finally got him to tell me what was going on, it turns out he's bored out of his mind at school. He can finish his work papers while his teacher is still showing the other kids how to do them. They're already giving him the "enrichment" packets instead of the normal work. He's in the offered GT classes - which for this district is advanced reading club (he reads at a high 7th grade level) and science club. But he's bored the rest of the time. His teacher tried to get them to let her give him some 4th grade math and was told he needed to stay on cirriculum(sp). So she started letting him take extra trips to the library as he needed so that he could stay supplied in reading materials. Now, if he finishes before everyone else, he gets to read quietly at his desk. But overall, he's still slowly sliding back into "school sucks".
My oldest daughter in essence tested out of kindergarten but wasn't allowed to go into first grade because her birthday is so late in the year (she's a may baby). This past fall when she went into 1st grade she took the 1st grade assessment test. Aced it. Her scores where higher than what they expect to see at the END of 1st grade. But she wasn't allowed to skip 1st grade. I was given two reasons. Her age, and because I had taken her out of kindergarten and let her be homeschooled with my mom (I'm a single parent). So they felt she didn't have the classroom skills needed for her to succeed in 2nd grade.
My mother and I have watched this past school year as both of their writing skills have gone down, words they were spelling perfectly fine at the start of the year they're now missing. They have stopped using basic concepts, their punctuation and grammar have also gone down hill. The last straw was when I was working with my daughter on her home work a couple weeks ago. Before she started first grade she could add two double digit numbers by carrying the 1. They're teaching her some method of using lines for the number in the 10's place, dots for the number in the 1's place and then you add those all up and get your sum. She couldn't remember how to add the normal way. And then I saw my son's assessment scores from the exact same test he took at the start of 3rd grade. His end of year score was lower than his start of the year score. Go figure
They're on the waiting list for the gifted school in the district, but they've been on it for over a year, and it's a long list. Both have started begging to be homeschooled. My son only likes PE, and my daughter likes art and music. Their friends all live on the same street as us. So I'm not worried really about the social aspect. And my son is signed up for sports teams, my daughter for dance. And because of the laws in our area, they should both still be able to attends specials at the school (like art, pe, music, science club, etc).
So... here I am...
Homeschooling in the Fall
Linear Mode
