Saturday, September 15, 2012

Homeschooling

Connor has been in preschool at one of the better Montessori preschools for the last 5 or 6 weeks. I've had my concerns with it all along because it seems that there are no kids his age or older and part of the reason that we put him there was that the class was open for 3-6 yr olds. Turns out there are 17 kids in the class and 10 of them are 3! The rest are 4 but Connor really seems to be one of the oldest.

Each time I go to pick him up, the teacher talks to me about how he's not doing his work or asking her too many questions. So I asked for a list of choices that he had during work time so I could help him make a choice before school. She gave me the list and I immediately knew why he wasn't doing it...it's too easy and he's just not interested in it. They're still working on letter puzzles and one-to-one correspondence and the only thing that they've told me that they've brought in for him to do is a US state puzzle..which he spends at least an hour a day at home doing. I talked with the director about his choices and she said that actually anything for him isn't even in the room so he has no chance of getting something interesting to do. They "ordered" stuff for him and were working on thinking of things for him to do. It's the only 1/2 day room they have so moving him to another room wasn't an option. It just wasn't working....esp for how much we were paying a month....so we gave our notice and this Wed is his last day.

We decided to officially start home schooling. I started a year and half ago, but with all of my health issues I just couldn't find the energy to continue. This week Connor has spent trying to memorize the states in alphabetical order. We have to sing the song a few thousand times a day, but he's getting good at it. We've gotten some apps on the iPad that he really enjoys and that work on K-1 skills. We're working our way through the Magic Tree House series. We've gotten some Usborne books and are looking at some more to help with Science experiments. And I've joined some online secular homeschooling communities to get some ideas. We were supposed to meet up with some of the people yesterday, but it was raining.

I feel so much better about this idea. He complains so much about not liking school and I really don't want him to learn at such an early age that school is boring and something to hate. I can let his interests direct us this year and see where we go and then next year we'll reevaluate and see what our options are for Kindergarten. Meanwhile, Evan is getting really good at all these skills too!

We've really been working on getting Connor to write. He really fights it so we've had to really push it. Today he went to the table and drew a picture all by himself...which is a really big deal! Here's the picture:


He said it was picture of an Argentinosaurus...and that the number 6 is next to it to tell us that it's 6 months old. We lost it and laughed, but luckily he didn't pay any attention to us!

Today marks the 1 yr anniversary of Nathan's loss. We remember, we mourn and we look towards the future.

1 comment:

Linda said...

I hope that you enjoy homeschooling. We have been homeschooling for almost 6 years now and I can't imagine any other way of educating my daughter. Since you mentioned secular homeschool groups, I just wanted to mention SecularHomeschool.com. It is an online group and I have gotten lots of good information from them.
You've already been homeschooling, really, and I bet your family will do great with it. Best of luck!