Week # 3

September 8-14
This week was overwhelming. It was 3 weeks ago but I remember the feelings well. I went to bed crying more than one night that week.
Things at work were crazy. My three year old niece came to stay with us for an indefinite amount of time. DS was getting frustrated with Math. The only subject he still wanted to do was Bible. DD was doing fine and still eager to learn.

So it was a hard week. We were still trying to figure out what does and doesn't work.

Bible-

Missionary kids
Overview of the Bible
Dwight Moody

Language Arts/HandWriting/Spelling

DS Yellow Book
Watched a documentary on dwarfism- DS then wrote a paper on what he learned, DD drew a picture showing what she learned. (This wasn't something we had planned on doing, saw the show and didn't feel like fighting with DS about Math or anything else at the moment so we made a lesson out of it.)
DD- Phonix Workbooks Pg 10-19 with daily review of previously learned sight words.
Not So long lost Treasure Hunt- I asked DH for help with this assignment and was really excited to see what he had come up with! He made a neighborhood map to scale with a seperate set of directions- It was really impressive. We had some visiting friends that weekend so they joined in too! See http://4twinklingstars.blogspot.com/ for pictures of our FLAT FRIENDS! The kids really enjoyed the hunt and we hope to do another one in the near future!
MATH-
DS- Lessons 16-18
DD-Lessons 8-11
Drills-Workbooks

Geography-
DS began an advanced Geography packet- It is a little tough for him, designed for older students so we are working on it together and very slowly.
Pre Test- Kids were given a US Map, a World Map and maps of the other continents to see what they knew coming in to this assignment. DS could locate the US on the world map. Other than that they were left blank.
Intermediate World Atlas Pg 22-25, 39
Maps and Globes pg 38-42
US Puzzle, worked on it once a day.
Lots of review of the Globe and the States.

Science/ Nature Notebook-
Deserts- What lives in the desert, how the desert changes
We grew our "magic rocks" that they found on thier treasure hunt
The difference between natural and manmade
Identified spiders and insects we found out in the garden and the garage and entered them in our Nature Notebooks. We found a snake skin this week too. The kids thought this was sooo cool! I on the other hand, was not excited to find shed snake skin in the garage right next to where I get in the car!!

Music/Art
American Indian song- The crooked Path- (follow the leader, I was impressed at how fast the kids picked up the words. It was much more difficult for me to do so!) I really want to find a foreign language class for them.

Reading-

Journeys- A book about a dog sled race. The kids loved it and were wanting to learn all they could about snow dogs. They took a special interest since our Kona is a Samoyed and often refered to as a snow dog herself.
We watched a movie that weekend that went with the theme, For the life of me I can't remember the name of it, but it was really good and the kids enjoyed it. (It had John Cusak in it and was probobally near 10 years old. I could be wrong..) Afterwards we discussed it as a family and made comparrisions/ contrasts to the book that we had read all week and the movie.
DS continued to read Stuart Little on his own. Can't find his reading log at the moment so I don't know how far he got that week.

Cameron Townsend Chapters 3-6

Sports/ Extra Activities -
Cheer continues, We had our first official meeting with our newly established Homeschool group. There was a great turn out and I was excited to see two other families that we knew from school with children in each of my kids' grade levels. We came up with a group name, took a group photo, made frames for our photos, played at the playground and had an ice cream party. This meeting was really for everyone to get to know each other. DD had a great time, DS had an ok time, playing with his two buddies that he already knows from church and when those boys were off doing something else he would come hide behind me... He has never had an easy time in group settings. Hopefully this becomes easier for him soon. We attended Bible study as usual, which is a play date for the kids who spend the evening running around with all thier friends and eating goodies
We got a guitar for $20.00 from another family at homeschool group! We were really excited about this!

Our Journey to homeschooling-Part 3

The summer went by fast. The whole summer I felt anxious about sending him back to school. He didn't want to go back either. But I felt trapped. Not knowing of any other options (Private schools were way too far out of our price range to even consider, we had just opened a business in January.) The word "Homeschool" came back in to our vocabulary as my DH's sister had made the decision to homeschool her daughter. DS began 2nd grade and DD began Kindergarten (With the same teacher DS had)A few months went by before we noticed things getting even worse. His teacher this year wouldn't allow parents in the classroom. He said it was a distraction and he didn't need the help. He was always bothered to talk about how DS was doing, never seemed to have the time. Wouldn't return phone calls.
DS spent more time moping. Crying over studying spelling words, worried he was going to fail his upcoming tests. I contacted the school councilor who started to see him for his anxiety. We again stopped doing our extra work. I was at a loss. I didn't know what to do to help him.
I asked his teacher to meet with me and he did so telling me that he was really disapointed in DS because he was a good boy capable of more than he was giving. That he hurried through his work just to be done with it. So I asked him to send fresh copies of everything he found unacceptable and that I would have DS work on them on the weekends. That first week his teacher sent home an entire packet of work for him to redo. The next week nothing came home. I would have loved to think that the lesson worked so well that he had learned instantly but I decided to ask the teacher about it. He told me he didn't have time to do this for every student who was struggling and would no longer be able to do it. I was really upset, one week and he gave up. Back to the workbooks at home.
Among some of the other issues, Every time I "popped in" the teacher was constantly disciplining some one. I spent a lot of time there and honestly only remember three or four times walking in to him teaching. I asked him about this and he told me that he had the roughest class he had ever had in his entire teaching career. There was a group of 5 boys that constantly caused major disruption. By the end of the year 3 of those boys had been put on permanent in school suspension.
The neighbor boy came over one day and asked if DS was ok- Confused I said "yeah, why?" Finding out that DS had been crying at school because the teacher had yelled at him making him feel silly about asking a math question. Come to find out this wasn't an isolated event. After many more talks with the teacher I found out that DS would often ask questions after the teacher had said "Any question ask Now" The teacher didn't stop to take in to account that DS is extremley shy and terribly afraid of failing. He didn't want to raise his hand in front of everyone. He was afraid of people thinking he wasn't smart enough. And he figured because no one else had asked the questions that he wanted to ask, that maybe he wasn't as smart as the rest of them. So he would wait until everyone was busy with thier work to ask. Or he wouldn't ask at all and end up not knowing how to do the assignment.
Meanwhile DD is in kindergarten and loving it. Doing great, only trouble is talking a little too much.
One day while helping in DD's class I see DS rush out to the hallway. Face bright red and crying terribly. Long story short, one of the "trouble" boys had punched him in the face and threatened to kill him in the middle of the classroom! I followed him and the other boy to the principles office where she told the boy to apologize and go on his merry way. I was outraged. I was not suggesting that you throw the kid to the alligators but the kid physically hit another person! And he gets told " next time be a self manager" If he were an adult and had punched another adult he would have been carted off to jail. Yet in school it is normal to shrug it off as part of "the school experience" I went and got DD and took them both home. I called DH and told him and he too thought this was normal and not such a big deal. I still stand unconvinced that someone else putting their hands on another person is "no big deal"
In first grade my son was knocked unconcious, recieved a concussion, dragged across the school yard, had someone sitting on his chest with thier hands on his mouth, In second grade he is punched in the face in the middle of his classroom. I couldn't help but wonder what would happen in third grade and the following years when the angry kids were even angrier and bigger kids were even stronger...

After two long depressing years I knew that I had to find a better way. I felt alone. All the moms I talked to from the school told me of thier similar experiences but had the " But what can ya do?" attitude. Since there was only a couple weeks left in school I decided to let them finish the year out. That may have been my biggest mistake yet.

While surfing the internet in the computer lab (I was completley unaware they were even allowed to Google!) DS and his two friends searched the word "poop" After clicking on the first few links, which included poop freezing spray claiming to make dog poop easier to pick up (they thought that was pretty funny so decided to look on)
The next link they clicked on was a naked man pooping in a naked womans mouth. Now, the have Pokemon, and Nickelodeon blocked there but somehow this slipped through thier filter system!! DS didn't tell us immediatley. It came out after two weeks of odd behavior. He wouldn't talk to us, would go to his room and just sit. It finally came out on a Friday night while flipping through channels. A commercial for the poop freezing spray came on. DH and I were laughing about the silliness of it. Then the story slowly came out as he cried. Needless to say he was confused. Traumatized, and his innocence was stolen. Once again I had not trusted my instincts and I had failed my son miserably for yet another year that we could never get back.

Our Journey to homeschooling- Part 1

It took us a long time to come to the decision to homeschool. Before our kids were even old enough to go to school I had brought the subject up to hubby that I wanted to seriously consider homeschooling. Hubby was flat out against it. His reasons being that homeschooled kids were "wierd" and didn't know how to act around other kids (Socialization problems.) There was no discussing it with him at the time. time flew by and it became time for preschool. Being a first time parent I was concerned about doing everything right and preschool was on that unwritten "How to be a Perfect Mom and do everything right" list. We enrolled DS in the local Christian Preschool. To be honest, I spent most of my time loitering in the halls or sitting in the parking lot. I thought sending him to preschool was what I was supposed to do but I really felt in my heart he was to be young to be away from us and it seemed rather unneccesary. He didn't seem to be ready and didn't look forward to his time at school. On top of that I felt that everything he was learning were things I was capable of teaching him at home. So after a short two weeks we pulled him out of school and I began to work with him on the basics, letters, writing his name and such. (I later found out that the preschool teachers at that school were not certified teachers and were using a homeschool program in the classroom.)

It was soon time for kindergarten. The homeschooling subject was still dead in the water with hubby. I was really nervous to send him to school for many reasons, one of the top being that I had heard horror stories of the security in the school. (I graduated high school the same year as the Thurston High shooting which was/is 15 minutes from us) which affected me deeply and plays a roll in my lack of trust in the safety at school. Another top reason being that we had always heard that the school district here was horrible. (We moved here when the kids were babies and only intended on staying two years.... We ended up falling in love with the community and 10 years later and we are still here) Not knowing an alternative (or the fact that kids aren't even required by law to be registered as a schooler until age 7) I enrolled him in to the local public school.
I was not thrilled and spent a lot of time in his classroom. (Everyone kept telling me, "Just wait before long you will be so happy that he is off and you have some ME time" I kept waiting for that day to come. It never did. I know it sounds like I am totally crazy. Maybe I am. But I wanted to know what he was doing. What he was learning. He was exploring new things and I wanted to see what he liked and didn't like. He was only 5 and a young 5 at that. It still felt too soon for him to be gone for so long.
We did luck out and got an awesome teacher and she didn't seem to mind that I was crazy about my son. She welcomed me in the classroom and always kept me informed. DS liked school. He could live with out it, but he didn't cry about going and it was obvious he loved his teacher. He was having trouble in some areas though. He was very quiet and would stay to himself most of the time. He didn't interact with other kids much. By the middle of the year it came to my attention that he had major test anxiety. He went in to school knowing his ABC's, how to write his name, all the basic stuff. A few weeks in to school he was tested on these skills. I still remember the day his teacher called me in to talk about the test results. I was shocked at what I heard. According to her test he could only identify a few letters of the alphabet and a few sounds and could not write his name! I cried right there on the spot, I was confused. I knew he could do all of those things! I had taught him myself! I went home confused but remained vigilent on our after school work. I bought every phonix book out there and worked continuously with him afternoons and weekends.
It soon became time for the next semesters testing. Again his teacher called me in and gave me the same news. This time though, she knew for herself that he had mastered these skills as she had seen it in his daily work and he had been in school now for several months. It finally clicked for both of us that it was test anxiety. I instantly took the blame thinking that I had put too much pressure on him with the extra work we did at home. I quit working with him at home for the rest of the school year (other than our night reading time and his homework) thinking that it would help. Last test came around- Same results, no changes. He finished the kindergarten year with compliments from every teacher that worked with him that he was one of the sweetest most gentle people they had ever worked with.

Jumping on the blogging bandwagon...

So here is my first attempt at blogging. I have been thinking about it for a while and finally decided to do so as an attempt to keep record of our homeschooling journey. I don't really know how to work this site or how to blog in general so this is a learning experience for me... I have spent the past few hours trying to get the basics down. (Thanks for your help Eva!) This is going to take me a little bit to get familiar with. My goal is to use this site to keep a log of our homeschooling journey for my own reference and also to keep friends and family up to date on what is going on in our life. Hopefully I can keep up on it!