Homeschooling 101
While
public school started this week, we are finishing up our fourth week of
homeschool. I had mixed feelings with the start of school approaching. Did I
make the right decision to not enroll Owen in school? Will we have enough “play
dates,” and socialization for our already shy quiet guy? Will he be bored
staying home with me all the time? Today is the third day of public school and
after some of the stories that I heard I feel that we made the right decision.
We were unable to find a school that we felt would teach Owen the same values
and morals that we have, that is affordable, not 25 miles away and small enough
that there will be one on one attention. Kings Academy had 34 kids at the
beginning of the year and ended with around 25 kids. Owen’s class had 12 kids
at the beginning and 11 at the end. Of those King Academy families that I spoke
to who are attending local public schools this is what I heard, the class sizes
are over 30 kids in 1st grade through 5thgrade. They do
not get to interact with their child’s teacher on a daily basis, basically they
just pick up their kids outside the school, they have not heard anything about
their child’s day and how they are adapting to the new changes, and some of the
parents (not from Owen’s class) feel that their child is behind and not ready
for the work in 5th grade. Yeah, I feel that we as of right now, we
made the right decision. I want to be involved in the education of our children;
I do not mind volunteering my time in the classroom to help out in anyway that
I can. As of right now, we don’t know what the plan is for next year, weather
it will be homeschooling or enrolled in school we want to make sure that it is
a safe, loving, fun, educational environment for Owen, and Emma who will be
following soon. We want to find a school that we love, and hopefully we wont
have to continue to change schools.
I am
happy with our progress that we have made in the four weeks of homeschooling. I
have made some really great contacts and connections with support groups and
families that we can have weekly interactions with. There are quite a few King
Academy families that are homeschooling and I think that we are going to form
our own local group (a lot of the groups are in Ventura and I don’t mind going
down there, but a local group would be great) with about three to four other
families. Our homeschool is a four- day a week program and we leave one day for
field trips or group gatherings. So far it only takes us about 3 hours to cover
all of our material. We have made some adaptions to help make the time fun and
a little more interacting. Every Thursday we do science experiments. We have
been learning about magnets and all of our experiments have been about magnets.
Emma started Noah’s Ark Preschool this week and will be attending Tuesday and
Thursday mornings. These days I will focus on areas that I feel are better
obtained with Emma at school. She actually has been doing great and wants to be
involved with homeschool. I think that Owen is enjoying it. With most of his
friends starting school I asked him if he would rather be attending the same school
as them and he says, no. For now this is our decision and this is what is
working for our family.
