Hmm....How do I say this?

So far, homeschooling with this program (K12) is H.A.R.D.!!!!! I think the cause is multi-faceted in our case. Just to give you a bit of background, with this "public school at home" program we are supposed to be doing school 6.5 hours a day. That includes lunch, recess time, and P.E. so it's not 6.5 hours of actual work time, but it's still more rigorous than a lot of other programs. Also, it is a program where I need to be actively teaching the children much of the time. It becomes much more about independent learning in the older grades, but in 2nd and 3rd I would estimate I am actually teaching them 60-70% of their total school time. Add to that, it's not a multi-age program, so what I am teaching Samren in no way "goes" with what I'm teaching Taevy. Once we're in full swing I figure I will be actually teaching the kids about 4-5 hours of my day--that's actually "talk and teach" time--not counting when they are completing activities on their own. I know, I know (all you experienced homeschoolers)...it is way more time than is typical.

I've started REALLY slow, just trying to get our feet wet with the program. We've been messing around with it since July 27th. I started out doing 1 lesson a day with each of the kids, then today I did two lessons with Taevy. We've done 1 lesson each of Math, Language Arts, Science and History.

Samren--Samren and I, so far, have a pretty good dynamic going. Samren struggles, and is used to working hard. It is slow going with him, but his attitude is decent and he's eager to learn. I'm pretty optimistic about mine and Samren's teamwork with school this year, and it's been great to identify issues he has that I really didn't know about before (odd reading patterns, etc.).

Taevy--this is the challenge. There are lots of issues at play that are making it all very difficult. First, Taevy has always been "top of her class" at her elementary school. Everything has come easy to her. She's never had to work hard at anything. She's spent a lot of her school day in the past "helping" other kids with their work. Second, Taevy has this weird behavior thing. At brick and mortor school, church, etc., she appears to be the model young lady--excellent behavior, studious, conscientious, "perfect." However at home, Taevy acts very much like a child with ADHD. She is impulsive, cannot focus, is in constant motion, and is our "wild child." [Not that we don't love her!] Third, Taevy is actually BEHIND where she should be according to state standards! We thought she was ahead and doing great, but the fact is that the school wasn't able (with a very large immigrant population) to teach up to the state standards for her classes.

What do all of these issues look like when you put them together? I've got a 3rd grade child who cannot focus on schoolwork (at home), is used to getting perfect scores (because the standards were too low), and has no idea how to handle a program that is challenging to her. Honestly, her work is sloppy and lazy. She CAN write beautifully, but she's giving me her crappy writing. She is paying no attention to capitalization and spellings (even when she's copying words from a book). Her brain is absolutely unfocused to the point that she won't remember a topic (at all) that we just talked about 3 minutes before. She's trying to put everything into (very) short term memory to get by. And all of this frustrates me to no end!! LOL!

I think that Taevy has decided that if she doesn't work hard I will give up and send he back to her old school. [Hmm...this is all sort of mirroring attachment issues, isn't it?] I can't say that won't ever happen, but I have no plans for it to happen this year. I'm more convinced than ever that she wasn't getting the education she deserved at the old school. The problem is, with the way things are now I don't know that I can give her the education she deserves at home either. Something has GOT to change with the ADHD behaviors or she literally will not be able to learn. And of course all of these struggles during her lessons are causing us to spend WAY more time on each lesson than they were designed to take (think 3 hours instead of 60 minutes).

I was really discouraged today after working with Taevy. But (at this point at least!) I am resolved not to give up on this. My child has learned some very bad "getting by" habits at her old elementary school. She's got to learn that it's okay to be challenged and not get everything right the first time. She's got to learn how to be focused at home during school time. She's got to learn that she has a role in the responsibility for her education.

Next week we'll be starting school full days. I think for our own sanity we're going to have to focus less on getting done with each day's lesson plan (the lesson plan is given to you each day). I think we'll set a time limit and if we're not done, we're not done. If that means the kids don't get done with the year's lessons, then maybe they will need to repeat a year. So be it. I just know that being stressed isn't going to help any of us. Putting pressures on my kids to HURRY HURRY HURRY isn't going to work. We just have to take this at our own pace, trying our hardest each day.

If you're still reading this and are a homeschooling mommy, I do have a question for you. If Taevy were your child would you be more inclined to be very tough right now in order tolay down expectations, or would you be more inclined to take it easy right now, so that we can focus more on being "happy" during our schooling time? I know it sounds nice to focus on the happy, but is it really happiness if she's unfocused and unable to learn??? Look forward to your thoughts!

Anita
P.S. I KNOW the program we've chosen is not the route most homeschoolers go. I love your comments but please don't preach to me about the choice we've made. It's what we're trying for now, with the full knowledge that if it doesn't work for us we can "drop out" and do traditional homeschooling at any time.