Updates

Well after much thinking and debate I decided to go ahead and pull Katie out of her school and start homeschooling her. The final straw was when I picked her up on Friday and asked her what she did and she told me "We had Spanish today and we had to watch Dora the Explorer - it was so dumb". WTH? I'm paying a very large amount of money for you to watch Dora?! On top of all other issues with her not being able to get help from her teacher when she needs it I just decided that was it. I went home and ordered her the curriculum I had been looking at and decided that would be her last day at that school She was thrilled with this decision and was so excited about it she was asking to do school work over the weekend. We are now about 5 days into it and I am SO glad I made this decision. I have seen more progress in her over the past week than I have in the past 2 months of her being in school. I have really been able to focus in on the areas where she needs to most work and tailor the curriculum to suit her individual needs. We've gone back to the basics on things like handwriting (print and cursive) to correct some mistakes that had started to become habits. It's been wonderful, both she and I are enjoying it a lot. I forgot how much I loved homeschooling, the only reason we stopped was because I was so swamped with trying to run Hip Monkey and a household with no help. What a difference having help makes. I feel like I have my life back and am not chained to worrying about the business 24/7 - which is NOT how I want my life to be. Anyhow, I decided to go with the Sonlight curriculum this year and am extremely impressed with it so far. They are based in Littleton (outside of Denver) so I ordered it on Friday and got it on Monday. It is very comprehensive and advanced. The 3rd grade math is stuff I remember doing in middle school! Seriously, they are working on basic algebra - finding "n" & multiplying and dividing fractions by the end of the year. Even Kevin was extremely impressed with it (and he minored in math!) The science program is also really cool and comes with lots of supplies for science experiments and even a DVD to help guide the experiments. This week we are growing radish seeds and Katie is keeping a journal of their progress and studying the whole life cycle and doing bar graphs to chart their growth. In addition to the great math and science, the curriculum is very literature intense and came with 3 huge boxes of books. They really go in depth into American History this year and the books actually make it fun and interesting. We are also doing the Rosetta Stone program for Spanish - a step up from "Dora the Explorer" I think. ;)
I also ordered the pre3/4 program for Kobe which was another huge box of books - all Caldecot medal winning books at that! He is really developing a love of reading and must have heard at least a dozen different stories in the past few days between me, Kevin and Katie reading to him. He is always carrying a book around and asking someone to read to him. He's also enjoying being a part of Katie's schooling and has so much fun helping with the science experiments.

I think we have finally found a good balance, I'm happier than I've been in a long time. I'm having fun teaching Katie, she's having fun learning and I'm positive she will learn SO much more this year at home with this new curriculum than she would have if we left her in school.

BTW - Hasn't Kaleb changed SO much lately??!