Well, here I go...I have set up my new blog post, now lets see if anyone reads it. In case you do, the photo to the left is one of my son with two of his favorite Civil War heros. They are Longstreet (on the left) & Ewell (on the right). We went to Gettysburg last summer to see the reenactment of Picketts Charge & we had an awesome time! If your kids love Civil War history you need to take them. It is held every year around the 4th of July weekend...no better way to show patriotism on our Independence holiday.
As for our current activities. I homeschooled my son second through fourth grade & then he decided that he wanted to go back to school this year for his final year of elementary school. I was really torn about the decision but I decided to let him go back to public school. He is an only child & even though he has a lot of contacts & friends through our church & neighborhood, I thought he might enjoy being around other kids at school.
I was curious as his homeschool teacher to see how he had progressed academically compared to the other kids. I knew he did well with the curriculum we chose but I did not know how it compared to the curriculum used by our public school system. So I took him in for the placement testing & he tested ahead in every subject. The only area he was weak in was writing (creative writing). I have talked to other homeschool moms & they tend to agree that boys are hard to teach when it comes to writing, so I wasn't surprised by that outcome.
The curriculum I use is the Alpha Omega LifePac system. If you are looking for a curriculum I highly recommend this one. It has easy to follow lesson plans & consumble workbooks for the kids, plus a teachers book with extra activities that you can add to your everyday work to help engage your child in a hands on learning experience.
Anyway, he went back to school & loved it...for awhile. He made new friends, was placed on the all A's Honor Roll & loved his teacher. Then he started asking me to homeschool him again because the kids in his class did not behave. They did not obey the teacher & the teacher had to constantly discipline the class, plus kids kept trying to copy off his paper which was distracting him from his work. So I was faced with a decision...should I make him stick out the rest of the year so that he could finish what he started or return him to homeschooling.
Would he be missing some great socialization lesson or coping skill that he needed to learn? Then a small voice inside my head said, "Do you really want the public school system to teach him socialization skills?" I knew my answer was "no".
So we have been back to homeschooling for the last 2 weeks. I can't say it was an easy transition because we all had our doubts still if it was the right thing to do & he truly missed the friends he had made. Now that we are settled in it is wonderful! The second guessing is gone & we are focusing on the work that needs to be done.
My husband travels for his job & last week we were able to travel with him, so my next post will be about our trip. Thanks for reading, I would love to hear from you.
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