Something about Columbus Day????

Those are the words Jason said to me this morning as he walked back through the front door at 7am!!!! We had gotten up as usual at 5am for him to go out to work at 5.30. Neither of us had any clue it was a holiday today... me, mainly because it wasn't a holiday on our school calendar. I don't know what Jason's reason was ;-) He would have stayed at work seeing as he was already there, but the office is closed so he can't get credit for working when the office is actually closed down for the day!!   

Well, anyway, it means we might get a bit more done around the house today. We still have school but I'm going to make it a short day. Cathy asked me about K12(cyber school) and mentioned that it seemed to be taking much more effort on my  part. I wanted to share a little more about it. First of all I will say, this IS taking more effort on my part than I had originally thought it would, but I don't mind that in the slightest. I never wanted to 'homeschool' Kristen, the way I thought homeschooling was (ie. I gather all the material for the curriculum and literally teach her myself) When Kristen mentioned she wanted to be homeschooled if we moved to Denver I immediately thought of the K12 virtual school that I'd been told about a few summers ago from a mom at the neighborhood pool. I thought it was an online school where Kristen did most of her work online and had a specific teacher that did 'virtual classrooms' so to speak. Well, it is all that, AND some. The some is the time I put in to it. 

The program is a public school program and all the material and lessons online are free. We were sent all the books for the year early in August. The way the program works is you log in to your personal page and it has your lessons all set out for the day. It's pretty flexible in that we can move ahead with lessons if we need to, or spend more time on lessons if we need to. We do however have to have so many school days in the year and a total of so many hours! As you open up a lesson online you will start reading the lesson and what it's about etc. It has samples on the screen and even a video sometimes of a teacher explaining, say a math problem. It will then tell you to turn to your text book and do some of the lesson from there. Then when you have gone through the lesson (in the book and reading it online) you go back on line and take an assessment. This is just a few questions about the lesson to test if you've retained the info and feel confident to move on to the next lesson.

From day one, I've sat with Kristen for all of her lessons, because I WANT To :-) To be honest I never really knew what she was learning in her elementary school. It is taking up many hours in my day but I love knowing what she's learning, and I often read the stories to her and then discuss them (Eng. Lit for instance) or she reads them to me. To be honest I find a lot of it interesting, especially American History which I was never taught at school!Needless to say I'm learning a lot too. There will come a time when Kristen can just open her text books, log on, and do the lessons herself. She can probably do that now, but I enjoy sitting with her. 

Then I can probably get on with an hour or two of housework, but for now I like doing it this way. We are usually finished school by 2.30. Then I can do other stuff like housework, only I don't get too much of that done what with having to keep an eye on Bindi. It's all very slow going at the minute, because of unpacking boxes too. But we'll get there in the end. I'm not sure if she'll want to do this next year, but I'm kinda hoping she does. I like having her home with me all day, knowing she's safe, and not having to worry about 'lock downs' because some crazy kid took a gun to school!!!. She has already made friends in the neighborhood, and we go on field trips with the school, so to me it's an ideal situation. She's learning at her own pace, (which is often much quicker than the other kids she was in class with). So for now, it works for us. There's also daily 'class connect' sessions where the teachers are online going through one of the lessons with the kids. They have live chat with her and can write on the 'white board' to answer questions, or talk on the mic. It's really an awesome program. I'd highly recommend it if you're considering homeschooling.

 

And because I can't have a post without a picture, I took this on Saturday as I was driving in to the neighborhood :-)  It looked more colorful than that, but it is taken through the glass window of the car, so not as bright as it would be. 

Happy Columbus Day!