And then there were two....

About three weeks ago, I saw Ashley reading an email from Megan.

(We do occasionally talk around here, but why bother when there is email! :) )

I saw this sentence Megan had written:

I HATE SCHOOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hmmm.

I started to talk to Megan about what made her write that. She told me how uncomfortable she was at school. A lot of it was boring to her, and she didn't like the cleanliness of the bathrooms or the cafeteria. (Funny, coming from my messy child.)

It's December, time for the annual I Don't Like School Anymore campaign from Megan. Every year she goes back to school excited, and by December she is hating life and we drag our way through the rest of the year. She has expectations of learning and fun in September, and by the time she has been told she just has to plod along like everyone else in material she already knows, she loses her passion for learning.

We approach her teacher each year about this, and we make no progress. Megan reluctantly attends the rest of the year because that is what she has to do.

I did approach her teacher about this, yet again. Typical answers: This is what school is, and we can't change it. She has to do phonics, even though she hates it because it is so easy. Yes, she has to do the afternoon 2nd grade math, even though she goes to third grade for math each morning.

As a wise friend of ours told us, the schools are willing to teach to a certain level, but not beyond.

It's hard to say she still has to go to school, since her sister got pulled out. So I now have both girls home for school. It makes my life easier in a lot of respects, since I am no longer bound by a school calendar or hours. It makes it harder, too, since I am now planning lessons for two children.

Soon after I withdrew Megan from school, I asked her how long she had wanted to homeschool.

"For years."

Megan's Letter to Santa

Tonight, we decided that we should charge people to observe Megan. She is just too funny.

Here is the letter she wrote to Santa tonight (for Christmas Eve--she wrote another one for him to come get today or tomorrow, in time for her birthday...she figures why wouldn't he come twice?!!)

(I have preserved her spelling where it makes sense.)

Dear Santa Clause,

What is your e-mail address? Please tell me. This year I want 6 things. When you come wake me up so I can see Rudolph and take a ride. Please [bring] as many items listed as you can. My dream is to see a alive real Orca. Come to my room and wake me up. Make sure that my house is the last house. Thank you every year for giving me gifts.

Your friend, Megan

I was the incubator....

Years ago, we did our familial duty and took our baby Ashley back to see Jesse's side of the family. I always feel a bit of an outsider when we visit North Carolina (I am a Yankee, after all :) My lack of belonging was only heightened when Jesse's cousin's wife declared (in all her southern twang), "You were just the incubator!"

I remember feeling very hurt at the time. Nine months and 12 days overdue, three hours pushing and a forceps delivery, I felt like a whole lot more than just an incubator.

11 years and a few days later, I feel vindicated. Enjoy the pictures!

It's a party, not a funeral...

There is a certain type of spider that takes up residence in our garage from time to time. It is leggy and large, and runs like crazy--just like I feel like doing when I spot one. When one of these spiders crosses the threshold of my garage, it has signed its own death warrant. Out comes the bug spray. Unfortunately, I have discovered that it won't just curl up and die when I hit it with a flood of poison point blank. It continues to sprint across the floor. About that time, I realize it might escape and breed, so I close my eyes and step on it.

I am beginning to think these spiders of Meg's are even hardier than those garage spiders. They have spent four days in captivity with no food, air, or water, they have been transferred from one container to another, they have been shaken hard enough to cause permanent damage, and one has even lost a leg, but they are still alive and well.

I guess they didn't want to miss the party.

Life is never dull with Megan

As I write this, there are two very large, very live, very ugly spiders in a plastic container on the top of my desk.

Why, you ask?

One word. Megan.

Megan loves all of God's creatures. I mean ALL - cute and cuddly or scary and ugly. An unfortunate side aspect of this is that if you find a cool bug, friendly or not, you know she wants it.

Yesterday, as Jesse was going back to work, we saw two large, marble orbweaver spiders on the fender of his car. Thank goodness he was home, or else she would never have the experience of seeing them. Of couse, he suggested freezing them. I had a moment of temporary insanity and said, No, let's keep them alive for her. (What was I thinking??????????)

This isn't a first. There was the day there was a longhorn beetle on the gasoline pump at the gas station. She was in tears as we left because I wouldn't catch it. Or the time I found a dead cricket on the front porch. Into the container. I later found it on her desk next to a page of notes about it. Let's not forget the time she took a real spider into Kindergarten for spider week. I made her catch that one. Then she lost it, and while she dried her tears, I caught her another one. EWWW!

So, what is the fate of these spiders? Nope, not going back out into the garden. They are being saved for her birthday party on Saturday. I think I have the only child in the world who wants to take spiders to show everyone at her birthday party.

There is only one Megan.

They let you what??!!!...continued....

Today, I was reminded yet again she doesn't know how to measure with a ruler.

I took a deep breath, bought her a good ruler, and she'll get a page of lines to measure tomorrow.

Public school magazines, I mean textbooks

I taught at school from her math book for the few days before we brought her home. The math book didn't feel like it had enough problems to create good understanding of the topic, and it was so full of pictures and pop-culture it was hard to find the math in it. Hello, Saxon math.

Jesse thought we'd like the history book, though. I even used it for a little over 1 unit. I skipped the first 50 pages, because they wasn't any history there, just an overview of what a great country we have. By the time I hit explorers, I couldn't stand it. Our student encyclopedia had more information on the Vikings than her book. On one page, there might be three sentences with something somewhat meaningful in it. Pretty soon, I returned the teacher edition I'd borrowed. A few days later, I returned the textbook, too.

For the time being, I am using a series called The History of Us. I really like it, but I am not willing to fork out the big bucks for the teacher guides yet. So that means I am reading along and creating my own questions for her to answer.

It is a great history program, it's just a lot of work right now.

They let you what??!!!!

I found myself saying this very often our first couple of weeks at home.

So far, I've discovered that she was losing her ability to do simple calculations in her head because she was allowed to use her calculator for those at school.

She had forgotten how to write cursive because they didn't require it last year.

We had to switch grammar programs because she didn't know her nouns, verbs, subjects or predicates from monkeys and bananas.

I know she had used dictionaries since second grade, but she struggled to use ours at home.

Her school did a lot of things right, but we have seen some big gaps since she's been home. I hope we are closing those gaps.

What do you teach?

This was my biggest challenge. I am still figuring some things out, and I change some things just about every week. I have a good backbone started, though, and the kinks we'll work out as we go.

I was one lucky parent. One of our friends had homeschooled both her children in 5th grade, and, as a teacher by training, she had found excellent curricula. She passed along all her math and the whole 5th grade course curriculum she had used.

Math? Saxon math. The only one I've looked at. No frills, but very solid.

Language Arts? I've tried a couple of different directions. I received the Abeka LA books from my friend, but I wasn't so sure about diagramming Bible sentences along with regular sentences. I got the curriculum my friend is using in her 4th grade class this year, but it skipped a few steps. So, back to Abeka. I've been really happy. I've even gotten used to the Bible stories in the middle of learning prepositions.

Science? This one took a while, but I eventually discovered that Abeka's science curriculum is very solid, as well. You learn that God created camouflage to protect his creations, but I have learned a lot.

Reading? Still working on putting this all together. She likes the Abeka readers, even if they aren't a super challenge. We have been reading A Wrinkle in Time together, and we will move onto another novel when we hit colonial America. She has always been a voracious reader...so that helps.

Spelling? She has always been a strong speller, so I picked up a book called Mastering Vocabulary. In it, she learns Greek and Latin roots and learns to decipher words from that knowledge. She has really liked this, and has done a lot better than I expected with it.

History? A work in progress.

Writing? She journals on a topic I provide every day, and we have writing lessons a couple of times a week. I was following Abeka's writing course, but I discovered she wasn't good at writing paragraphs. So we've stepped back, and are going back to the bones of writing. She passed her state writing test last spring, but she isn't writing as well as she could. I found some exercises on-line, and I am working from those. She has needed more than a refresher on that.

I will keep you posted as we evolve.

What about socialization?

This is my favorite question. I admit, I didn't have a very good answer at first. Ashley is a well-adjusted child who is well-liked by her peers. She doesn't like the emotional soap opera that exists in the intermediate grades. She has no patience with the "popular" crowd antics, either. She'll be just fine with church, church activities, piano, and playdates.

Sounds pretty boring.

Then we got her a guinea pig. There was my answer.

How are we making sure she is socializing?

We got her a guinea pig.

What??? Homeschool???

Yes, you heard it right. We are homeschooling. Long story short (believe it or not), we had never planned to do this, but we were taken by surprise with this school year. Ashley (now in 5th grade) had a brand new teacher, 34 kids in her class, and getting the work differentiated to her level was not happening. After expressing our dismay, she was given the 6th grade math book, and she and two other boys were sent to a table and told to teach themselves, assign themselves homework, and grade their own papers. The teacher would come by when she had a minute (from teaching the other 31 kids) and answer questions. I started going in to teach the three math, which helped. Then we discovered she was having to do reading out of the 5th grade reading book (she reads around 10th grade level), and there weren't going to be reading groups at her level as there had been in the past. Our relationship with the principal was starting to break down as well.

OK, we thought, school is about a lot more than just schoolwork. If she is happy being there, we will work through this. However, for only the second time in her entire school career she uttered the words, "I'm bored." The straw that broke the camel's back was the day we were running late, and I was trying to hurry along so they wouldn't miss any more time that we already were. Ashley looked at me, dawdling along, and said, "Why? It's not like I am going to miss anything!"

Suddenly, my whole life turned upside down. It's been such a topsy-turvy year for us, what's one more major life decision?!!

We had been researching school options, including homeschool and charter schools. We found an excellent charter school, but we would have to leave the house at 7:15 am and we wouldn't get home until 4 pm. That wouldn't work well with Ashley's personality, even though it was only 4 days a week. That left homeschool.

And off we went....

Scary blogging!

I've taken the plunge into cyberworld...mostly to record our experiences homeschooling. I hope it will save you from the earfulls we've given the few souls who mistakenly asked how school was going! :)

Maybe I'll remember to update things about our family once in a while, too.