At Long Last- Our Plan!

So its been a long time coming!  Typically what happens is that I decide at tax return time what we will be doing the following year, then purchase what we need.  Then, as the year progresses our needs and situation changes and we end up scrapping at least part of the plan and starting over.   Well, this year was no different in that respect.  The one thing that set apart this spring's planning session was that we decided to homeschool Leif and Anna at the end of the year. 

We'd been considering the move for a few months, but it was a really really hard decision for both of them.  For Anna, her school was going through a transition and was not looking good.  It had been going downhill progressively each year that we had students in it, (Anna and before her, Chloe)  And our capacity to deal with any more downhill motion was maxed out.

 At home, Anna will have the ability to work at her own pace, have more 1 on one attention, and be able to have social studies, for goodness sake!! Since the school nixed the choir program, the one remaining draw was her amazing math teacher.  She was such a huge blessing to us.  And Anna made some major progress when we switched to Ms. D. partway through the year.  Now the baton will be passed off to our wonderful math tutor Stephanie, and me, to supplement her tutoring.   Anna is an 8th grader and plans to go back to school next year, largely to be able to participate in the renowned Decatur choir program.

With Leif it was a somewhat harder decision.  His school was fine, however, being twice exceptional, (gifted and adhd) he found himself being bored more than i'd like.  The problem is that he tested above 7th grade in both language and math and was only able to work through 4th grade work (in math)  LA was a little better since they had leveled readers that he could work at a higher level.  Leif, however, is such a creative, joyful person and he LOVES to learn, (He'll decide to focus on a subject.  For a while it was almanacs, the latest has been chemistry) and he'll read and do activities, and research...  He's still got that amazing love of learning that many students have lost by his age.   One thing about Leif is that he does have special needs that need to be accommodated and home is a perfect place to do so.  Leif is in 5/6th grade. (We initially held him back in Kindergarten since he has a late summer birthday and he was lacking in maturity when Kindergarten rolled around.  At this point we will figure out which will be more advantageous to him when the time comes.  It might be better to maintain his status as a 5th grader if he'll be more prepared for running start, for example.)

Nik is a 12th grader.  He struggled with academics greatly and we opted to hold him back a year in 9th grade, to give him more time to blossom.  And blossom he did!  Last year, as an 11th grader, he was excelling at his schoolwork, even math, which has been a horrid struggle for him from the get-go.  Thanks to Ms. Stephanie, he's working on algebra and doing really well.  He does have to progress to college algebra level in order to get his associates degree, so the extra year has been really helpful.  This year he's doing a combination homeschool/running start.  Running start is a Washington thing.  11th and 12th graders can choose to go to college instead of, or in conjunction with, high school.  He will earn both high school and college credit simultaneously.   The first quarter he will be taking an online english class and hopefully in winter quarter will transition to on campus course (s)  He works slowly so we wanted to start him out gradually.  He has a 504 plan to give him accommodations in college, (thank goodness!!) but he still has limited hours in the day so I don't want to make it impossible to get his work done.  His fall english course will meet the entire year's english requirement, however, he'll also be doing NaNoWriMo this year, which is a month long novel writing experience.  He'll do planning and outlining before November, and write his novel in November, and spend the rest of the year editing.  He'll be earning an ELA credit for that class as well.   He'll also be doing conceptual chemistry and physics science course at home.  Additionally he'll be completing year 2 of Latin.  Ideally he will take 2 classes in winter quarter at the community college, and 2 in the spring quarter which will be social studies and electives which will complete his high school course of study. 

Elliott is our final student this year.  He's in 3rd grade.  He's gifted like Leif, and is super easy to teach.  For him, i need to help him to challenge himself, as he tends to get in a place where he's doing grade level work, which is way easy, and then isn't challenging himself further. Its my understanding that this is a common thing with gifted students.  The curriculum we are using this year, I think will be a huge help with this. 

So what is the primary curriculum we are using this year?  Its Moving Beyond the Page!  MBTP is a program designed for gifted kids.  It will be a great fit for all three of the littles, with Anna working at Leif's level.  One thing I like about this curriculum is that they have a few different themes.  so in science, instead of only studying human body and astronomy as originally planned they will be studying a few topics, including the human body, astronomy, energy, the living seas, biomes and technology and invention.  Fun stuff! Its going to be a great year! 

Other curricula we are using-  Teaching textbooks math for all three youngers, and algebra TT for Nik.   I'll be putting together a course of study of the middle ages for the youngers, drawing from Build your library curriculum, and Story of the world, medieval level.  We'll also be doing daily nature study, and i'm hoping to fit our daily Ted Talk, "big idea of the day" that we did when we were homeschooling everyone.  What else? I'm sure i'm missing stuff. Oh well.  you get the idea.  Anyway, this year is going to be a slamming good year and i hope to keep up with posting some of our projects and day to day stuff we are doing.