After a hiatus...

We will begin home schooling again this year.  This time it will be 1st grade, Kindergarten, and a smattering of pre-school fun.

We took a year off from home schooling (and I must admit, I loved nearly every minute of it).  Our oldest is finishing his kindergarten year up at the best school ever - Windsor Christian Academy.  We absolutely love the school - it has everything we wanted in a school.  Classical education.  Small class ratios.  Care and concern for implementing a Christian worldview.  Respect for the family and specifically parents.  Biblical instruction.  Loving faculty.  The list could literally go on and on.  

However, the days proved to take a toll on our oldest - a 40 hour school week for a 6 year old is just plain hard.  Because he was a full-day Kindergartener (due to the distance between our house and the school, 1/2 days made zero sense), he would leave at 8am each morning with my husband and return at 4:45 or after each afternoon via the bus.  My little man was frustrated and disappointed with the lack of time he was able to be around his family.  He has excelled in school this year, but has been struggling with family life.  So, after some very painful conversations between me and the hubby, some extensive prayer, and seeking the counsel of friends and family, we've decided to home school for the 2012-2013 school year.  The catch?  Now instead of one kiddo to worry about, there are three.  And, the twins will be mobile.  Yikes.

Our search for a school...

Well, I am starting to feel very overwhelmed by this whole schooling decision - maybe "starting to" is not accurate.  I've been unsettled about our schooling ventures since Asher turned three and we started having the "do we send him to preschool or not" conversations.  And now the rubber is meeting the road - he is "officially" old enough to start kindergarten in the fall.  We've received all the local "come and visit" and "please send your registration forms" paperwork, and so we've really had to dig dip to figure out where we stand on this whole issue...for this year.  I am a firm believer that there is not one correct way to "educate" or "school" ones children and that parents have the tough job of choosing the path that is right for their family and their individual children.  For the past two years we've played around with different homeschooling options for our oldest.  He is a little wanna-be scholar.  He loves to learn and it was evident early on that he loves to be around learning.  We participated in one year of Classical Conversations, and are currently participating in a supplementary school for homeschooling families called Faith Academy.  Both were excellent programs and we've no complaints about either.  However, it has become very clear to me and my husband that at this stage in our lives, homeschooling is not going to be something that works for us for this year.  So, we've been on the hunt these past few weeks for a school that fits.  We've attended Open Houses and had private tours and here's what we've discovered so far:

School #1: Phoenixville Kindergarten Center
Cost: Free - Public
Distance: 2 miles away from our house
Bus: Available for half day and full day
Class Options: AM and PM 1/2 day and full-day kindergarten (although full day is only for children who are invited into the full-day program because their testing results show they may need some extra help)
Curriculum: Standardized testing based, no art or music for 1/2 day students
Class Sizes: 19-22 children per teacher (with no aid)
Pros for us: free, close, morning program (because of where we live, he would automatically be in the AM program)
Cons for us: class size, curriculum is extremely standardized testing based, no art or music classes

School #2: Windsor Christian Academy
Cost: $3200/year
Distance: 2 minutes from Dyke's office
Bus: Yes, but not for 1/2 day kindergarten
Class Options: 1/2 day and full day (full day includes an Art and Latin)
Curriculum: Classically-based instruction incorporating the arts into daily and weekly lessons
Class Sizes: 12-15 children per teacher (no aid)
Pros for us: school curriculum - we LOVE classical education and have wanted this to be our means of educating our children since we first discovered it, school/director's philosophy of education, school leadership and teachers, classroom sizes, emphasis on the arts
Cons for us: cost, no bus

School #3: Renaissance Academy
Cost: Free - Public Charter School
Distance: about 5 minutes from our house
Bus: Yes
Class Options: Full day
Curriculum: Standardized testing based with an added emphasis on the arts
Class Size: 26-30 children per teacher and aid
Pros for us: free, close
Cons for us: very long schedule (class goes from 7:50am-3:30pm), class size, curriculum wasn't overwhelmingly impressive, bus options weren't ideal

Piano Lessons

It pays to have musical family members.  My husband comes from a long line of musicians and lucky for me his sister lives 15 minutes away and teaches violin and piano!  My 5-year-old just started piano lessons in September with his Auntie and is doing fantastic.  I think the best part of the whole arrangement is that he actually looks forward to his lesson days and has been bugging my husband and me to buy a piano so he can practice.  His aspirations actually are to take violin lessons, but Auntie has told him he has to know all his notes before she can teach him how to play the violin.  Well, it is that time again...lesson time!

Teaching my kiddo phonics and how to read

...is WAY more fun than I anticipated.  I must admit that teaching him to read was a very daunting task when I first realized that if I chose to home school him for Pre-K and Kindergarten the task would fall to me.  Reading, after all, is a basis for learning anything and everything!  I knew I wanted him to be a great reader and not just a decent reader.  I wanted to instill in his curious little brain an understanding of WHY words worked and not just and understanding of what words looked like.  I knew I wanted him to learn to read phonetically and not by sight words.  I totally believed that someone else should be teaching him this important thing.  I agonized over my selection of curriculum, but finally landed on Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons when a close friend suggested it.  I hated the weight of this major milestone sitting on my shoulders.  I dreaded the day by day lessons and felt utterly under qualified to even be attempting this task.  The "helps" the book offered didn't seem clear or helpful and I was constantly second guessing my ability to teach him to read {let me insert here that I needed a major attitude check during this time and the Lord was working on me and my lack of trusting Him to give me the understanding and the ability to do this task}.  Then we got to lesson 6 and he read his first word - me.  I was hooked.  My baby, my four year old had actually phonetically sounded out and read his first word!  He turned five in October and his desire to learn to read deepened during a break that we necessarily took from our reading lessons.  He has been locating words in library books and can successfully read Bob Books that are focused on the sounds he has learned. - currently those sounds include m, long e, s, short i, th, t, d, and short a.  He is reading short sentences and today we will finish up lesson 16.  I hope to get through 2 lessons a week from now through Christmas.  His enthusiasm and excitement to learn to read keeps me going and I am very thankful that the Lord brought me to a breaking point and made me face my fears and repent of my lack of trust in His abilities!  I can teach my child to read because "I can do all things through Jesus Christ who gives me strength." (Phil 4:13)

Day #2

Today we had a busy day of YMCA classes.  The boys attended "Mess Class" this morning (an art class where they use all the art supplies that you really would rather not do in your house) and then "Whale of a Tale" this afternoon (a story time).  This afternoon I spent about 15 minutes working on reading with my kindergartner.  He is doing awesome!  We did lesson 13 in Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.  He flew through it, getting everything right the first time!  He has slight difficulty pronouncing his "r" sound, but each day he is improving.  Today we reviewed sounds "m, e, r, t, and s" and we added "d."  We have been checking out Bob books from the library and he is reading many of them very well.  He is also starting to recognize/read words like "me, see, read, seed, meet, and seat" in other books.  We will spend this evening at the farm (we are members of a CSA) collecting our fresh produce and enjoying the beautiful weather.  The kids love to help us collect and weigh our 1/2 share of produce.  I love that part of my "educating" my kids is giving them opportunities outside of the home.  I am so thankful for the YMCA and our CSA and the learning experiences they receive from these two places.  

Day 1

Today marks day #1 of school.  The boys started at Faith Academy on Monday, but due to some ongoing house projects I decided not to attempt starting until today.  Today was pretty basic.  We focused on math.  I am still undecided as to what curriculum I am going to use, but for now I am using an abacus and math games from Family Math.  Today we played "On The Dot" from the Family Math book.  Here's the basics:  Draw four large dots on 5+ pieces of paper (I used 4x6 unlined index cards).  Pour out a variety of small objects (I used coins and buttons).  Have the child count out four of the small objects while placing them on top of the black dots on the paper (and repeat for each sheet).  Repetition is the key.  Once the child is doing well at counting out the shapes onto the dots, give the child 5+ pieces of blank paper and ask them to count out four small objects onto the blank sheets.  When this can be successfully done, move on to the next number.  Don't rush.  The boys are definitely at different learning levels (Pre-K and Kindergarten).  I had to make adaptations to the lesson to meet their different learning levels.  My pre-schooler worked on counting the objects onto the dots on the card.  We worked on repetition, on counting out load, and on only counting to four.  When we first started he wanted to keep counting not understanding that we were only counting up to the number of dots that were on the paper.  After we did this exercise several times, I asked him to sort the small objects into "same" and "different" piles.  At first I had him sort all of the coins into one pile and all of the buttons into another pile.  Then I had him sort all of the pennies from the rest of the coins.  By the time he accomplished that, he was ready to be done.  My kindergartner did very well with this game and was able to count four pennies onto the dots and onto blank paper without any problem.  We're going to move on to fives next.  He seemed to grasp the concepts easily and didn't have any problems.  I then explained addition to him.  We talked about the + sign and the = sign.  I wrote out a few simple addition problems on a piece of paper and we then focused on using the abacus to solve the math problems.  He did very well.  We finished up the lesson by practicing on writing numbers 1-10 and on him saying them out loud while he wrote.

The Lesson

Asher

The boys

Isaiah

An up close of the game

Is it really time to think about school?

Man, this school year is fast approaching and I feel like I am still way behind in the planning stage.  I think I may push off our official start to later in the fall.  The boys start with Faith Academy on Monday, September 13th, but we may wait to officially start work here at home until a week or two later.  The house is in constant upheaval right now - consignments sale stuff, re-organizing church youth ministry supplies, new windows are coming soon, and painting the downstairs...yes, starting later may be a better idea for my nerves.  :)