I can do it all…the myth.

This post is part of the Blog Carnival being hosted over at Mama Squirrel's Blog this week. Go check it out.



I don’t remember how to do algebra; I can’t carry a tune in a bucket or identify classical music by composer or period. I don’t like to paint, I have a black thumb, and I can barely sew on a button, much less make an article of clothing from fabric on a bolt. I don’t grind my own wheat, grow my own vegetables (very well) or have the slightest idea how to milk a cow, or bake bread from scratch.

In spite of all these inabilities, I teach my children at home. Let me tell you how.

I believe in learning right along with my children. If I don’t know how to do it, then we look it up. If I can’t figure it out even after looking it up, we ask for help.

You might find this approach a bit haphazard or even downright frightening, but let me ask you a question. Remember that teacher you had in high school biology, the one who had the anatomy of a frog memorized and could recite all the names of the bones in the body in alphabetical order? How much did you learn from her? How much do you remember? I can tell my kids facts all day long, but if they are not part of the learning process, if they are not engaged, if they don’t have a curiosity for the information, it’s not going to stick.

I want to plant the seed of curiosity in my children, a desire to find out more, and the ability to know where to look. This is more than teaching. This is, as the old homeschooling adage goes, the lighting of a fire.

Children need to see that not knowing something is not bad, it is not failure. It is the beginning. It is the place to start. They learn this by watching their parents learning. My kids have watched me look up gardening on they internet, ask the guy at the gardening store, and finally try it myself. They have seen a lot of failure, and after some tweaking and more research, some success.

Children need to see that it is okay to ask for help. We don’t have to be good at everything, but to not try is a shame. My son has an algebra teacher. We struggled with upper math for 2 years before we sought help. Now he has a wonderful teacher who speaks his language mathematically and everyone is happier. My two dyslexic children went to classes for 2 years to get the proper help they needed that I did not have the training to offer. There is no shame in asking for help.

This job is hard and this job is time consuming, and no one ever said we had to go it alone. We have chosen to keep charge over our kid’s education and not turn that responsibility over to the state. That does not mean that we have to single handedly teach our children everything they need to know, in fact, that is an impossibility.

One of the things I have noticed about those veteran homeschoolers, the ones that have made it all the way, is that they have figured out the concept of delegation. Life is about learning all the time. When they are young we have to hold their hands and take them step by step through the process, but as they age, we can let go of that hand sometimes. We can stand back and let them walk ahead. We can give them that light and watch them run with it.

As my oldest is getting closer and closer to graduating from our homeschool, I am seeing with increasing clarity, how much he still has to learn, as well as how far he has come. I am starting to understand the importance of instilling that love of learning in him. In many ways, the love of learning is even more important than the learning itself. I will not always be around to make sure he has done his homework, or finished the project. He needs to have that fire in him. He will need that persistent desire to grow and learn and strive always for something better.

The cliché is right; education is caught, not taught.

Happy Birthday!

Today is B’s birthday. 16 years ago today I had my first child.

B was never dirty because he had a full bath every time he so much as spit up. His clothes always matched and he always had on shoes. His pacifiers even matched his outfits. His hair was always combed and his ears always clean.

This is the fate of the first born. He is the pride and joy of his parents, but he is constantly on display and under scrutiny. He must be brilliant. He must walk early, speak well, and read by four.

B was the perfect first child as he did everything right on time, exactly when the baby books said he should. B had a firm grasp on the world, trying to order it around by 3. Even his matchbox cars were organized. They were lined up and categorized by size, then color. His dinosaurs were always standing at attention, largest to smallest.

B was always the first to go through every stage of development; he was the first to ride a bike, the first to go to kindergarten, the first to follow his dad onto the dirt bike track.

Somehow I blinked, and his childhood zipped by. He is now a young man. He will be the first to drive, the first to date, the first to go off to college, and probably the first to marry.

I could not have asked for a better first child, you are now and always have been a joy. I could not have asked for a better first son. My prayer is that you continue to listen to the Holy Spirit and let God guide you always.

Happy 16th birthday B!

Day 5, Sort Of.

Homeschool Week At Randi's Blog, Day 5, even though I am answering it on day 4, but don't be confused it is the question for day 5, really it is.

This is the day I have been waiting for. Please leave me a comment and I'll be popping over to everyone else's blogs to see what they use.

Because we all know that if there are more than two homeschoolers in the room, someone will ask "What do you use?" and sometimes this can happen if there is only one homeschooler in the room, but that is because she probably needs therapy.

So back to the answer...I posted all about it last week. Long detailed posts with links and reviews. I did it in 4 parts because I am looking for anything else to do with my time but the laundry.

Here goes...

Part 1 What to do with A.

Part 2 What to do with E.

Part 3 What to do with G.

Part 4 What to do with B, The Highschooler.

So, What are you using?

What Have I Learned, You Ask?

It is time for question #4 over at Randy's Back To Homeschool Week

Thursday, August 9---If I had only known...
What have you learned on your homeschooling journey? What would you/did you change?

I love this question. There are so many things that I have learned on this journey and I wish I had known all those years ago.

1. They don’t need to know it all in Kindergarten. K should be a year to gently introduce them to learning. This year is for letters and numbers and finger painting and noticing nature and reading some of the really great picture books that are out there. If you try to pack everything they need to know into the K year, your going to kill their love of learning before it even has a chance to blossom.

2. Learning rarely takes place on paper in the early years. I think all workbooks should be banned from the desks of anyone under third grade! (I have no strong opinions on this topic :o) So much more can be learned from copying sentences from great picture books and reading great picture books and talking about great picture books. So much of learning is relational in those early years. It kills me that I put my first in front of so many workbooks when really what he needed was to touch, taste, see and talk to me about everything.

3. The whole world is my classroom. On vacation this year we learned so many things about the flora and fauna of CO, just by buying a few field guides and looking things up on our walks. They also learned so much about map skills because sometimes one of the kids would sit in the front seat and navigate for Daddy. There are things to be learned everywhere, even on vacation.

4. When you see a budding interest or talent pay attention and fuel it. We have noticed recently that G has taken some great photos that are creative. He now has a used (but once very expensive) camera with all the bells and whistles for him try his hat at photography. He may never do anything other than have photography as a hobby, but who knows, It might become his profession. Even thought I am not an artist two of my kids are, so I try to keep supplied in water colors and special pencils and sketch pads and special paper. I want them to have the time and materials to discover who God wants them to be.

5. This one is big for me…It is okay to ask for help. This job we do is hard and time consuming and draining. We are not bad parents because our kids are struggling. I waited so long to seek help for G’s dyslexia because I felt like such a failure. He was the first child I taught to read (B was in a private K where he learned to read) and I was failing, big time! We worked from the time he was 4 until he was 10 before I finally sought help. Once he was diagnosed with dyslexia we could get him the help he needed. I did not wait so long with A. Also, B and I don’t speak the same language mathematically. I can remember one day spending hours with him trying to explain a concept in his Pre Algebra book. He just did not understand. I told him to sit down with his Dad tonight and see if D could explain it to him. I listened to D explain it and what D said made NO sense to me, but B went OH! Now I get it. That is when I knew I needed to seek help. We got him an algebra teacher. She is more than just a tutor, she handles ALL his algebra, she sets the schedule, she administers the tests, and she chose the curriculum. All I do is check the answers on his homework and pay the bill. I LOVE it.

6. I try to remember that I am not going to be able to teach them everything there is to know. And really, that is not my job. My job is to teach them the basis of course, but really, it is to teach them how to learn. I can’t possibly teach them everything, but I can give them a love for learning and an aptitude for figuring it out. I can’t teach them every fact, but I can teach then how to find the answer.

7. I think my most important job is teaching them to follow Christ. Teaching them to develop a relationship with Christ apart from me. I am not always going to be there and they need to have Christ the center of their lives.

8. Social skills and relationships are just as important as the academics. If my kids are brilliant but can’t get along with others they will not do well in the work force. It will be hard for God to use them if they don’t have empathy for others. I guess what I mean is that my kids won’t live on an island. They will have to relate to people who don’t think like they do, who might even be apposed to the way they think, they must know how to deal with this. Homeschooling is great, but if they get out there and don’t know how to shine in a dark world, I have not done my job. It is easy to protect them and not let them see how dark the world is and I think this is appropriate to a point, but as my boys are becoming young men, I see the importance of teaching them how to stand strong, while being a beacon of light that draws others out of this dark world.

9. Use what works and throw out what doesn’t. This seems a simple concept, but it took me years to learn this. I am the authority on my kids, not the curriculum company. If it ceases to be useful, don’t torture your kids! Find something else. And that old adage is so true…just because it works with one student does not mean it will work with another. Find what works for each kid. (Of course it must work for the teacher too or you will give up on it. All you have to do is look at all the hands on activity boxes that are sitting on my shelf unopened, to see what I mean. I know the kids would love it, but because hand’s on drives me nuts, we don’t ever seem to get to it.)

10. Okay, this is the most cliché, but…enjoy the process as much as you can. I am looking ahead to next year and realizing that my oldest will be taking almost all of his classes at the Community College under the Duel Credit program. My years of being his teacher are coming to a swift end. I wish I’d enjoyed it more and worried less.

What about socialization, you ask?

Time for question #3 from Back To Homeschool Week at Randi's Blog.

Wednesday, August 8---Getting out there...
Extra-curricular activities, community involvement, volunteering, sports teams, music lessons, making sure your kids have opportunities to be social, co-ops, etc., etc., etc...

This is an area I excel. I am VERY good at getting the kids out of the house. I wish I were not so good. I just want to stay home!

As I have mentioned, A goes to the Scottish Rite Dyslexia Lab School 4 days a week for an hour and 45 min. This program goes for 2 years and one summer session. (We already did the summer session) It is downtown which is about 30 min away.

I also have a tutor for my oldest son. We struggled through Pre Algebra and I just could not see how we were going to make it in Algebra 1. He could have taken it at the co op, but I just felt that he was not quite ready as we had done such a poor job at Pre Algebra.

I talked to the Pre Algebra teacher at the co op asking her for advice, and she offered to tutor him in Algebra 1 & 2. God bless that woman! So they are going at his pace and will are about to finish up Algebra 1 and start Algebra 2 so he’ll be ready to start Geometry at the local community college the following fall.

We also have a Co Op. I LOVE co op. That is one of the biggest blessings to me as a homeschool mom.

I do not like to teach science. I do not like to teach hands on messy things like art. And doing science experiments on my kitchen table gives me the cold shivers. This is why I love our co op.

I am not an artist but two of my children are very artistic. They get to learn about art from other people who love art. This is really worth something to me. Also, I really feel like some things are better taught in a group if it is at all possible. I know B learns so much more from his Apologia science classes when he can take them with others, and discuss the experiments and what he has read with his peers and a teacher.

I also think writing is better taught in a group. They need a reason to write, a venue to show off all their hard work. I do think all these things can be taught at home, but I am so glad I have the co op.

I teach two children’s literature classes at our co op because that is my passion. I just love picture books and chapter books. My kids are too old for most picture books now, but I still get to share them with little ones via the co op.

We are also heavily involved in AWANA at our church. The boys are Leaders in Training and work hard with those kids. The girls are in the program and love it. For years D and I were the 5th and 6th grade boy’s director and secretary. We are taking this year off from that, but the kids will still be in AWANA.

The boys also are very involved in their Youth Group at church. I am so pleased with this group. They have some great kids and stellar leaders. It is not the youth group of my days!

One thing we do not do is sports. We decided early on that with 4 kids we just could not handle that kind of schedule. Because we live in a neighborhood with many missionaries, near the missionary base, we have lots of opportunity for sports. The boys play soccer every morning with other kids their age up to adult.

They also get neighborhood games of soccer, basketball, or whatever going. It is kinda like living in the 50’s around here as the kids actually go outside and play games with each other. No need to create opportunities for them to get exercise. They get plenty.

I also have a Monday Night bible study that is wonderful. It is full of many homeschoolers, but also some public schoolers and private schoolers. Not all are from my church, some are from other denominations. I love this bible study. They are wonderful ladies that help point me to God and it also allows me an outlet to speak to people over 16! :o)

So there you have it. We do the outside the house thing WELL. I look longingly back at the days when the kids were smaller and we actually HOMEschooled. :o)

How Do I Homeschool, You Ask?

Time for question #2 from Back To Homeschool Week at Randi's Blog.

Tuesday, August 7---How do you homeschool?
Scheduling, classical education, unschooling, getting the kids to help with chores, how to be "mom" and "teacher" at the same time, special needs, teaching an advanced child, how to teach the tough subjects, teaching high school, teaching with babies and preschoolers in the house, budgeting for homeschool supplies, notebooking, etc., etc., etc...

I hardly know how to answer this question as it changes year to year. I have some homeschooling styles that I try to incorporate like the Charlotte Mason philosophy. I love to use nature Study, copy work, narration, short lessons, and most of all GREAT literature.

I am big on whole literature. I love the idea of kids being inspired by what they read, and learning on their own. However these ideals only work well with one of my children. E would learn everything there was to learn (except math) with just a library card and pen and paper. She’s just that kind of student. B is a bit hyper focused on soccer. Everything else, I must make him learn. Fortunately he is a good reader and he enjoys it so I can assign him a lot of reading.

G & A are dyslexic so educating them is a bit of a trick. It is just harder. I love a literature based education, but getting the literature in them is tricky when there is such a gap between what they can read and what they can understand. I read to them a lot, but I only have so much time. Books on tape are our friends in this house!

I feel the tyranny of the urgent when it comes to homeschool. I would love to just sit and read great literature to my kids and discuss great spiritual truths from the Bible all day long. But sadly there is math, and science…

Back to the question…How do I homeschool.

This school year will be a bit different. A will be going to the Dyslexia Remediation Program at Scottish Rite Hospital for Children this year. It is a two year program. I will be driving her one day a week and then twice a week every third week. (It is a carpool of 3 and there are 4 days) I have done it before with G in 04 - 05 and 05-06.

I have to take B to his Algebra tutor twice a week and I will be teaching at the Homeschool Co Op once a week. I have never been this busy. I have wracked my brain to try to figure out how to not be so busy this year but I can’t do it. I committed to the Co Op before I knew I’d be taking A downtown to Scottish Rite.

It is important to me for my kids to have some time with other kids and with other teachers within reason. They all will be taking a writing class among other classes. In order to pay for these classes I must teach.

B’s tutor is a non negotiable because I am incapable of teaching algebra.

I know God will work it out but I am a bit nervous about how I am going to get it all done. B will be driving in Nov so that will take getting him to tutoring out of the equation for me.

I’ve been doing this long enough that I know I will fall short of my ideal, but I am trying to lean on God and teach my kids in the way that is best for them, not me.

If it were up to me we’d have a very Charlotte Mason\Sally Clarkson style homeschool, but God choose to give me two dyslexic kids who needed some specific help, which takes me out of the house more than I want to be.

I also have fibromyalgia and sometimes I just have to stop. I hate it when that happens and then the kids really have to do more on their own. The flair up’s have been less frequent lately, but I still have to monitor my activity level closely to not overdo it. I am a bit nervous about next years schedule.

As for the nitty gritty…

We don’t have a daily schedule, but each child has their own daily assignment sheet. The things we do together (History\literature, and our state study) we’ll do at around the same time daily, usually around 10:30 am. The kids usually get up and get started with their independent stuff at 8:30. I try to have them do LA and Math then at the table. I am usually eating my breakfast and drinking my coffee and hovering around the table to help whoever needs it. Then around 10:30 we move into the living room for our together stuff. In the afternoons when I am gone the kids will have to be working on their state study stuff or independent history reading. On Friday’s we do our regular stuff and our co op homework. This is the one day I won’t have to leave the house at least until B is driving.

I don’t like to be this busy but I’ve been told that right before your first gets his drivers license, you feel like you’re about to go mad with driving! This is totally true. All the stuff I drive too is good and necessary, but I’m ready for that boy to get himself where he needs to go!

Another thing I try to keep in mind at all times is that our homeschool is bigger than just the academics. It is about life. My kids get side jobs here and there, they get opportunities to ride along with an electrician (their uncle) or a plumber (friend of the family) or work at an auto shop (another friend of the family) and I try to make it possible for them to take those opportunities, even if we have to put off the academics for another day.

The academics are just one thing in a large list of things D and I feel our kids need to know in order to be ready for the world. Life is bigger than algebra and history. If my kids are brilliant academically but have black souls what good will their brilliance do them? Conversely, if they are in love with and following the Lord but cannot read and write, they will be of limited use for God.

I want to keep it in perspective, Algebra and Language Arts are not more important than relationship building and learning to love the Lord and get along with siblings. I am trying to make it all a bit more seamless. In order to be a tool the Lord can use, I want them to be well rounded academically, spiritually, socially, and relationally. I think the way to get there is by keeping their education in all things, in perspective.

That is the ideal, reality is…well, reality.

Why do you do what you do, you ask?

As part of Back To Homeschool Week over at Randi's Blog, I'll be answering one question a day, all week, about homeschooling. Go on over to her blog and check out all the other's who'll be doing it too.

I am going to enjoy reading all the responses!

Monday, August 6---What led to your decision to homeschool?
Why do you do what you do? What brought you to homeschooling? What factors played a part in your decision?

I’m going to try to make this short and sweet (yeah right!). I started homeschooling because we couldn’t afford private school for more than one kid at a time and the public school system where I live stinks (I know I graduated from it). So really that is it. I’d love to say that I had some noble and grand reason to begin on this crazy journey, but the reason really boils down to finances.

Sometimes I thank God that we were not wealthy back then (although, wealth would be okay now God, because I’m so much more mature and sensible, hint…hint…hint.) because I would have stuck all my kids in a Christian Private school and missed out on this incredible journey called homeschool.

I think I am STILL homeschooling because I have seen the benefits of it. I have seen that it can really be a superior method of education, simply because it can be tailored to each specific child. I don’t care how prestigious a private school is, not many can claim that. And when you have two dyslexic kids who need a lot of “tailoring” it is worth every hassle.

I am convinced my dyslexic kids would not be who they are today if they had been in a school setting. They would have been crushed. But at home we could get them the help they needed and go at the pace they needed to go. They have not decided they are dumb, quite the contrary, they have discovered just how talented they are in many areas because they have had the time and freedom to develop their areas of interest and talent, while working to better their week areas.

I am not arrogant enough to say that without a doubt we will always homeschool, all the way through, but I do pray that God gives me the strength to get through each new school year. I am so close to graduating my first, I can hardly believe it. This job is just too darn hard and consuming to stop now. I want to finish well. I love the benefits I am seeing to homeschooling highschooloers. I never thought we’d make it all the way through high school. It was incredibly hard for ME to finish high school (I thought Algebra and Biology were going to kill me!) but I have seen God provide in miraculous ways, like an Algebra tutor (God Bless that woman) and homeschool Co op’s.

So there you have it. It is not grand or noble, but It’s the truth.

Hopefully the reasons I continue to homeschool will be more inspiring than the reason we started in the first place.

To enhance or not to enhance, that seems to be the question.

I have begun to notice what I consider to be an alarming trend.

I was at a meeting about G’s dyslexia on Friday. (The place where he had his dyslexia classes tests every year for their records and I get to keep a copy) The tester was a nice looking lady somewhere in her 30’s I’d guess, but I was having a hard time paying attention to the very important things she was telling me about,

HEPA requirements…

Confidentiality…

Test results will be back in…

I could not focus on her words because her unusually large breasts were distracting me! They were a very unlikely size for a woman as slender as she was. She had small shoulders, her hands and wrists were small too. Could it be just a super-bra? Not likely. Maybe she was nursing? Probably not as her stomach showed no sighs of recently being stretched three times it's size. She simply was not the type of person that would get her breasts done, in my mind. She was dressed conservatively, she was not wearing a lot of make up, and she did not seem to be putting out the come-hither vibe at all, except for the unusually large breasts.

Then I started thinking…I’ve noticed a lot of women lately that looked like that; large breasts, perfectly clear and taut skin that curved in all the right places. I thought maybe God had started making more women with the American Ideal of the perfect body since I was created. But really, they were everywhere. Normal women you’d see at the coffee shop or at church, and yet, somehow they seamed…enhanced.

This new trend has me a bit worried. Am I going to be the only 70ish year old woman with wrinkles, and parts pudging out in places they shouldn’t, and parts pointing down where they should be pointing out? Will I be the only one in the knitting club with grey hair?

We haven’t gone so far in our society as to not appreciate a face like this, that exudes wisdom and grace. But here’s the thing, getting to that is a process. It involves years of sort-of grey hair, and a few laugh lines (that by the way, are not funny) and crows feet.

Each of these children that I bore have left an indelible mark (or ten) on this body. Nursing them each for around year has also left an equally indelible mark on my once perky breasts. And while I don’t buy off on the old adage that says I have earned each one of the grey hairs that my teens are giving me, I am not willing to spend all my time and my husbands money trying to avoid them.

So people, I beseech, entreat, implore and beg you; stand strong! It is going to be very hard for the few of us who have decided to age naturally, to avoid Dr Nip-Tuck when everyone around us is doing it.

By all means, spend the extra money on the specialty creams and hair products that promise a long wrinkle free life and lustrous locks of gold (or whatever your pre-grey hair color is). But I beg you, embrace your age. Live it. Claim it. Be it.

Because people, I can’t be the only one who actually looks 50 when I’m 50.

What in the World are we Going To Do This Year? Part 4 – The Highschooler

B is going to be in 10th grade this year. I am not sure how that happened. One minute he was a little guy just learning his letters, not he’s a big guy learning things I don’t even remember learning.

The way we homeschool him has evolved quite a bit. In fact, I am almost hesitant to say I homeschool him because so much of his schooling is done outside the house. I am really only responsible for his History at this point.

He is old enough to start at the JR. College near us taking Duel Credit classes, meaning if he can test into the class, he can earn college and high school credit.
We decided to wait until next semester to sign him up, maybe even next year. He really needs to concentrate on finishing up his Algebra 1 & 2 and his writing class this year before we feel like he is ready to take college level classes.

Anyway, here is what he is taking this year.

At Co op

Language Arts – He is taking an intensive, college prep writing class this year. It focuses on Essays, Sat writing, paper writing etc. There is not much creative writing in this class. Creative writing is a separate class he will probably take next year. There is some grammar and editing associated with this class as well.

Biology – He will be taking the Apologia Biology class at the co op. I love the teacher; she is a nurse and really knows her stuff.

Speech – This is a great class, it is not speech and debate, but public speaking. She will teach in the areas of how to conduct a job interview, how to give your testimony, how to speak in church or Sunday school. She’s going to make it applicable to what these kids need to learn, (sometimes homeschoolers get a bad name in the public speaking department)

Algebra 1 & 2 – This is not at the co op, but by a tutor. This tutor teaches the Pre algebra at the co op. She is my hero, because she is teaching my son algebra! He is a bit behind because they are going at his pace. I am happy and sad about this. I know I want him to GET IT not just get through the book, but I hate that my kids are behind. The plan is that they will get the last part of algebra 1 done quickly and move on to algebra 2. They are starting next week and will probably work through the summer next year so he’ll be done by 11th grade and can start geometry.

At Home –

History – He will be doing Sonlight’s Core 100 (American History In Depth) He does all the reading himself. He reads the Readers, Read Alouds and History Readers; He is a good reader and can handle this amount. I also count this as a literature credit.

Spanish – He is doing the same Rosetta Stone as the other kids, however he has to do it daily, and pass all the levels. HE did Spanish 1 last year, he will be doing Spanish 2 this year.

PE – He plays soccer daily with some of the other missionaries in the base. He gets up in the morning at 6 am to play. I have no worries that this kid does not get enough exercise!

That is really it. It does not seem like a lot but he will be quite busy. I hate that he is not taking art this year. He has been taking art for years and is really good but he just does not have the time this year.

This will get him 7 credits.

This is really my last year teaching him. After this year he will be taking most of his academic classes at the local Community College.

What in the World are We Going to do This Year? Part 3

Just in case some of you were starting to feel inferior, or you beginning to think, ‘wow this homeschooling family has it all together, and their kids are brilliant’ this post is for you.

G is going into 7th grade in the fall and I am a little freaked out about that. The years I have to squeeze all the information into him that he needs to know are dwindling, but the information is not.

G is dyslexic and has been through the Scottish Rite Remediation program that A is currently going to. And while it helped him immensely, he is still not the best reader, he does not like to read, and spelling…well, let’s just not go there. His handwriting is also awful, and he is a year behind in math. So academically thing are not going so well for G. However, if you need to build a deck, rewire a lamp, unhook a trailer, or do just about anything mechanical, he’s your guy. He is also great with people, and is a great helper. He is also a good teacher as he is patient and will spend the time to show you how to do it. (this is the only reason I know how to work the DVR) And he has a great attitude, he has a lot he could complain about, but he is not a complainer.

I don’t know what God has planned for G. I wish I did so I could better prepare him. No matter what he does he’s going to have to be able to read and write better than he does now.

So we plug along and do our best, but I worry that our best may not be good enough. Just the thought of that boy taking algebra gives me the cold shivers.

So enough qualifications, here is what my 7th grade boy is doing this year.

Language Arts – I will be using the new and improved Sonlight LA 3 with E & G. He will also be taking a writing class at Co op. He will continue to do his journal writing daily, using the Love to Learn journal I mentioned in A’s post. I am quite scared of this writing class, it is going to be A LOT of work for both of us, but it needs to be done.

Spelling – I have tried every spelling program on the market with little luck with G. His dyslexia remediation teacher basically said, keep working on it but don’t make a big issue of it, and give him a spell checker.

Math – Bob Jones 6th Grade and Calculadder

History – Sonlight Core 3 along with A & E. He will read the readers, he will not like it but they are only 3rd grade readers and I’m going to make him READ them. I will probably make him listen to some books on tape that B will be reading with his American history study, just so he can get some higher level thinking.

Geography – Simply stated. I posted a while ago about this. I am very excited about this study. I think it will be a lot of fun. You can go check out that post if you like. (links are in A’s post)

Electives –

Typing – He has been doing a typing program for a couple of years now. He has got to get better at his typing if he ever hopes to use a spell checker correctly!

Spanish – We have access to the full program of Rosetta Stone through the library. I don’t make him do it too much as we’re still working on the English language.

Classes at the Homeschooling Co op –

PE – G lives for the PE class. He loves it.

Writing - This is the first year he will be taking the writing class. Yikes, this will be so much work for me.

Science – G will be helping out in the younger kids science taught by my SIL. She is going to give me some advanced notice of what she will be teaching so I can have G do a little research on the topics before class

PE Helper – G will also be helping out the PE teacher with the K – 3rd boys class. He is really good at helping. He really shines there.

So there you have it. Not much in the way of academics, but we’re plugging along. If you start to think I’m a bad homeschooler go look at E’s schedule! She’s my academic one. If I didn’t have her, I might have given up on this homeschool thing years ago! A girl needs a little bit of success now and then!