I've been a mom now for coming up on six years.
See? February 7th, 2007
In the grand scheme of things, six years is really not all that long, but it's hard to believe that I've been responsible for caring and making the right decisions for another human being for six years! Recently, I had to make what I found to be the most difficult decision I've ever had to make for Arianna thus far: where to send her to school.
Last year, Arianna attended pre-k at a public school on base. She had been asking to go to school for over a year and even though I had originally wanted to homeschool, I decided to give public school a shot because she wanted to go so badly. I figured if it ended up being a bad experience, it was just pre-k and she could still go to kindergarten and not be too far behind (plus we supplement her education at home).
First Day of Pre-k!
It turned out to be a really good year! Arianna was placed in a classroom with a wonderful teacher who loves what she does and really took the time to connect with and get to know each child. She communicated with us frequently and I was amazed at everything that Arianna learned throughout the year. It was a great experience for everybody and I'm glad that we did it. Still though, I felt like I would be able to do more and go further with Arianna's education if we kept her at home. I had thought long and hard as well as talked to several other homeschooling parents and by the end of the school year and well into June, I was about 90% certain that I was going to homeschool Arianna for kindergarten. There were a few different things that factored into that decision:
*Arianna's benefit. This is, of course, the number one reason that I was leaning toward homeschooling. I felt like there was less of a chance of her getting lost in the system and more of a chance to give her an individualized education. Most people have subjects that they are strong in and subjects that they tend to struggle with. I wanted to be able to make sure that if Arianna were ready to move on to a higher level of math (just an example) that she would be able to without any fuss about it and that if she needed extra help with reading, we could slow down and spend more time on that subject than she would be able to if she were in a classroom with 20+ students.
This is a small part of Arianna's class on a special movie day. All together I believe there were 18 students, although being on a military base kids were coming and going frequently.
*Because I'm able to. I have the luxury of being a stay-at-home mom. I am incredibly fortunate in that my husband's income is enough to meet our family's needs as well as allow us to live pretty comfortably. Last year, I volunteered several hours in Ari's classroom helping with parties and special events as well as volunteer for school wide events like the book fair and winter carnival. I also supplement her education at home with workbooks, crafts, activities, and computer programs. I felt like I was already doing as much as I could without actually homeschooling that there was no reason not to take the plunge and take 100% responsibility for her education.
*Flexibility. I have always wanted to travel with my children. I want them to see the world, become familiar with other countries and cultures, and experience things that I still have not yet gotten to experience at 26. If the opportunity to go to Japan for a week or Europe for a month or even just California for a few days comes up, I didn't want "but what about all of the school they'll miss??" to be the reason that we couldn't do it. Homeschooling allows much more flexibility when it comes to travel than public or private school does.
This was from a trip that Ari and I took to Colorado/Kansas in September 2010 to attend my uncle's funeral. If something were to come up and I NEEDED to go somewhere, I would have to take the kids with me because Jon wouldn't be able to get off of work unless he were traveling with us. Either way, we would have had to pull her out of school for a September trip.
From the same trip, visiting my grandma in Kansas
Some friends from our last duty station who we went and stayed with in January 2011 in order to attend a funeral of one of the other Marines in Jon's previous squadron. I can't remember the exact dates that we were out there so it's possible that had she been in school, this trip would have fallen into the week that she was off for Christmas break, but if not, she would have had to miss school again in order for us all to go.
From a February 2011 trip to AZ that the girls and I took.
Ari even got to celebrate her 4th birthday while we were out there!
From a November 2011 trip that we actually did pull her out of school for for two weeks since I guess they don't do Fall Break out here.
We also pulled her out one last time for a short trip up to NYC. This was at FAO Schwarz.
From the same trip, visiting my grandma in Kansas
Some friends from our last duty station who we went and stayed with in January 2011 in order to attend a funeral of one of the other Marines in Jon's previous squadron. I can't remember the exact dates that we were out there so it's possible that had she been in school, this trip would have fallen into the week that she was off for Christmas break, but if not, she would have had to miss school again in order for us all to go.
From a February 2011 trip to AZ that the girls and I took.
Ari even got to celebrate her 4th birthday while we were out there!
From a November 2011 trip that we actually did pull her out of school for for two weeks since I guess they don't do Fall Break out here.
We also pulled her out one last time for a short trip up to NYC. This was at FAO Schwarz.
All of that said, the decision did not end up being quite as easy as I had hoped. While I was confident that homeschool was best for Arianna and our family and was all set to start shopping for curriculum, Arianna was not on board. I had talked to her several times throughout the school year about doing "school at home" next year and at first, she seemed to be ok with the idea. She enjoys using Starfall and Time4Learning on the computer as well as workbooks with different math and reading exercises and I told her that what we would be doing was similar to all of that. As the year went on though, she started to become more and more resistant to the idea of not being able to return to school. Finally, on the second to last day of school, she outright told me that she did NOT want to do school at home and that she didn't want to use the computer or do workbooks or even spend the school day in her PJs. She wanted to go back to school.
I planned to continue working with her at home throughout the summer hoping that, come August, she would be so used to doing school at home that she wouldn't even notice the transition from what we had been doing to a formal curriculum. By the end of June though, she was still talking excitedly about going to kindergarten with her friends, getting a new backpack, meeting a new teacher, and eating in the cafeteria. So I set out to find a happy medium that would give her the education that we want her to have and also the classroom experience that she seems to desperately want. Private school was crossed off the list early on as we simply don't have an extra $1000+/month lying around. All of the Montessori schools are both out of our budget and also very far north of us. My last ditch effort to finding a mix between homeschool and classroom was a Christian based University Model School called Grace Preparatory. I went to their information meeting and I really fell in love with almost everything about it. I loved that it was Christian based, love how small the classes were, and loved that she would be able to do two days in a classroom and three days at home. I mainly loved that I would still be responsible as her main educator. I didn't love that it was going to be $300/month (not including books, supplies, the $100 application fee, the $75 registration fee, and the $60 testing fee). She would have to give up a lot of the extracurricular activities that she wants to do and I don't want her to have to give those up. I feel very strongly that participating in group activities that you enjoy and being a part of the community is just as important as getting a good education. So as much as I loved Grace Prep, I had to cross it off the list and went back to my plan to homeschool exclusively.
I narrowed homeschooling curriculum down to Oak Meadow and K12. I was wanting to know more about Oak Meadow online enrollment vs. just buying the curriculum and doing it myself so I posted in a homeschooling group looking for opinions for those who have used the curriculum. One person responded and said, "There are benefits to both, it really just depends on what type of learner your child is. Observe how she likes to do things and follow her lead! You'll both be happier if you make your decision based on what works for her."
And that's when I realized......
I've been asking homeschoolers that I know how they do things, what the best curriculum is, how they schedule school time vs play time at home and the most resounding answer that I've gotten from everybody has been "listen to your child. There is no one "right" way to do things, you follow your child's lead." You see, I had been doing that....but only as it applied to homeschooling. I let Arianna choose items from the learning store that she wanted to use to set up our learning space, I let her pick out workbooks, I let her choose what order to do the work in, and how much work she wants to do at one time, BUT I completely shut her out whenever she started talking about how much she wanted to go back to school.
Over the next week, I watched and listened to my child. I watched her walk into several different classroom settings (at church, at school last year) and thrive. I listened to her talk excitedly about going back to school. I watched her happily do workbooks and sound out words on Starfall and listen to her ask me every night to read her "one more story." My child WANTS to learn and I'm afraid that if I don't let her do it the way she needs to do it, that desire will go away. Not to mention, she also inherited my stubborn personality and if she's dead set against doing something, it's not going to be any fun trying to get her to do it. I still believe that I can give her a more personalized and well rounded education here at home, but how much is she going to learn if she's fighting me on it every step of the way? I've realized that while I do have the final say in this parent-child relationship, I still need to listen and let her have a say.
So....Arianna will definitely be going back to school next year! We've already re-enrolled her and finished our back to school shopping. She's all ready to go with brand new clothes, a new Brave backpack and matching lunchbox (uh, yea...that's one thing that I will be sticking to. She will be taking her lunch to school). When I enrolled Ari, I was told that we could request a specific teacher, but that since there are so many kids and four different teachers, the office couldn't guarantee that they would be able to honor our request and we wouldn't find out who she was assigned to until the week before school. We got a phone call on August 17th informing us that Arianna has been placed in the classroom with the teacher that we went into the office and specifically requested! Hallelujah! This is such a relief because we've heard amazing things about this teacher (and also heard not so amazing things about another teacher....) and we definitely wanted Ari in her class. So far I have a really good feeling about this school year and I can't wait to see how much Ari learns!
Riding the bus like a big girl! This is actually something that she won't get to do next year despite going back to public school. Buses are only provided for pre-k in the area of housing that we live in. Kindergarten and up have to either walk or be taken to and from school. Unfortunately this is really going to bum her out because she loved riding the bus.
Halloween Party at school
Crafting at the Christmas Carnival
Doing the daily calender
Excited that she got Candy Grams from some of her classmates
Taking in treats on her birthday!
Grandma came to visit for Dr. Seuss's birthday!
Second to last week of school she got to be Star of the Week! She got to take home the class bear, make a posted full of pictures of herself and her family, and take in a treat to share with the class on the last day.
Sharing a very special picture of herself and her daddy with the class.
This is our learning corner at home.
Working on number activities
We take weekly trips to the library
Along with wanting to learn herself, she LOVES teaching her sister which makes me so happy. Here they are doing an activity on Starfall. Ari is teaching Lucy how to sound out words.
Halloween Party at school
Crafting at the Christmas Carnival
Doing the daily calender
Excited that she got Candy Grams from some of her classmates
Taking in treats on her birthday!
Grandma came to visit for Dr. Seuss's birthday!
Second to last week of school she got to be Star of the Week! She got to take home the class bear, make a posted full of pictures of herself and her family, and take in a treat to share with the class on the last day.
Sharing a very special picture of herself and her daddy with the class.
This is our learning corner at home.
Working on number activities
We take weekly trips to the library
Along with wanting to learn herself, she LOVES teaching her sister which makes me so happy. Here they are doing an activity on Starfall. Ari is teaching Lucy how to sound out words.
Stay tuned for a post tomorrow about Ari's special Day Before School Day and her first day in kindergarten!
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