I have a good reason for starting now. I want to get a head start while the kids are burned out on playing outside. I want to be able to take as much time as I need after Lucky is born. And I want to jump on this great thing my kids have going that we call child-led interest-based education. That right there is the beauty of homeschooling without the school district.
So here is the run down:
Ian will be a sixth grader. I seriously considered sending him to middle school this year. With all the extra work I had to put in for the MP3 program, important things like grading Ian's math seemed to slip to the side. I looked at the bus routes, bell schedule, and available classes at the middle school and decided it would be better if the two of us just got up a little earlier to spend some time doing math, just the two of us-it's not like he is behind or anything, I just need to be able to focus on him. If Ian were to catch the bus, he would need to be walking out the door at 7:10 every morning to catch the 7:30 bus. Which means waking up by 6:00. School starts at 8:15, but first period doesn't begin until 8:55. What the students do for forty minutes every morning is a mystery to me and it sounds like a waste of time. When I informed Ian he would be getting up at 7:00 every morning to start his math by 8:00, he whined until I reminded him of the public school schedule. Ian and I could get a lot of work done between the hours of 6:00 and 8:55 if we wanted to! That is nearly three hours of wasted time everyday!
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| Ian going off the high jump at Camp Parsons |
8th grade math. None of those classes are available to sixth graders.
Because I do not know when he will be "main-streamed," I'm going to adjust his schedule so he can slip easily into courses at the public school if he needs to in the next year or two. Since we just did ancients and the seventh graders do middle ages, I'm taking him out of my normal history cycle. He is going to use Sonlight's Core F, which is all about the countries in the Eastern Hemisphere. This is a research and writing intensive course that I have been looking forward to using since he was in kindergarten. I am so thrilled we get to use it! Next year, his seventh grade year, he can finish up world history and be ready to start US history in eighth grade.
I'm taking a year off from teaching science to Ian. He is welcome to follow his interests and design projects to his heart's content, but I am not scheduling anything specific for him. We have plenty of books about physics and chemistry and hopefully he will get the Visual Basic program he wanted for Christmas!
I need to add that Ian accomplished an amazing feat at the YMCA yesterday. After they go through a taekwondo class, Mark takes the four older kids to the pool for some instructional/fun swim time. Ian swam 112 lengths of the pool without stopping or touching bottom or pushing off the edge! He is ready for the Mile Swim at Boy Scouts!
