Homeschooling

Because of the whole RCBOE and illegal searching deal, we have pulled our oldest daughter out of the school district and are now homeschooling her. Of the kids we have, she is the only one who we can do this with because she has the ability to work on her own. If the younger ones were to be homeschooled, it would be a mess - they can not be controlled outside of a regular school environment.

Our homeschooling curriculum consists of classes in History, Language Arts, Math, Vocabulary, Spelling, Geography, Science, PE, Sign Language and Home Economics. She is required by the state to have school for four hours a day - she gets more than that. She starts school at around 0900 and is usually done by 3ish - much like a regular school day. However, when she was actually in school, she would leave the house at 0800 to catch the bus and not get back until 1700 on the bus. At public school, she only had five classes and had to learn at the pace of the slowest kid - which down here, is pretty slow. Most of her time was spent waiting for others or the bus. Waste, waste, waste.

So far, she has learned:
History - the origins of man from cavemen through Alexander the Great (so far)
Math - we just finished up Adding, Subtracting, Multiplying and Dividing fractions.
Science- learned about what the earth is made of, what the atmopshere is made of and the moon and its phases.
Geography - we have go in depth into Ethiopia, Egypt, and Greece.
Language Arts - the basics of english, the main parts of a sentence and paragraph and she has done a book report. She is now reading "Call of the Wild"
Spelling and Vocab - the basics, spelling words, learning new words, etc
PE - she runs every other day or does Yoga. She will have a PE test at the end of the quarter - next weekend.
Sign Language and Home Ec are done on an as-available basis - she helps with the household chores, cooking, cleaning, sewing, etc and learns a little bit more sign language every few days.

She is doing really good in some subjects and not so well in others.

Her math is what she is doing the worst in, but I think that isn't due to any inability or lack of understanding, but rather a lack of focus to do good. She just whips through the problems and makes silly mistakes.

I think part of the issue with her and us and homeschool is that we see every grade and every piece of work she does now. She can't slip on one assignment and have us not see it. Before, when she was in school, we really only saw the report card at the end of the quarter and made decisions based on that. Now, we see every week how she is doing and adjust things accordingly - sometimes in her favor and sometimes not. If she is doing well, we move on faster - if she isn't we do more of the same until she understands.