Week One: More Put Together Than the Public Schools

“The only way to get through life is to laugh your way through it. You either have to laugh or cry. I prefer to laugh. Crying gives me a headache.”

― Marjorie Pay Hinckley 

Well, it's exciting times over here.  Our philosophy is every kid, every year, we will decide what is best for them.  And this year has been a massive comedy of errors (and chaos from the beginning).

My oldest is entering high school!😱 And my baby is going to kindergarten.😭 A1, who've I homeschool for 2 years in a row, decided he wanted to go back for his last year of elementary.  K, who is autistic, was in public school last year, but had trouble with making friends and realizing who was a good/bad influence. The "social skills" he was learning there were not ones that would be helpful for his life.

So, we decided we would homeschool K. And we're feeling really good about that.

The kindergarten teachers are fabulous, so we decided to let A2 go half day. However, we learned the day before school started, she is the only one going half day and all the other parents chose full day. I could write a lot about my feelings of full day kindergarten, how studies have shown it doesn't produce long lasting academic benefits. But multiple studies show the lasting emotional, social, and mental benefits of unstructured imaginative free play in early childhood. So we will be the odd ones out; a place we've grown accustomed to.  

This "day before school" was where we decided to laugh instead of cry. I had not heard any communication from the school about whether they got the registration for A1, nor who his teacher was.  No letter, no email, nothing.  So I finally called.  I also learned about a meeting I was supposed to attend for him that evening only after they sent out a message canceling it. They are starting a new rotational teacher system in the upper grades, but no one seems to know exactly how that's going to work.  Good luck kid.

We also got a good laugh out of J's schedule and the high school is literally a construction zone.  Teachers don't have classrooms, kids don't have schedules.  They actually didn't even let us pick a schedule until 4 days before school started and that was a circus. And it worked out she didn't have an A3 class and she couldn't take another class she wanted because it was only offered on B days (just like the rest of her required classes.)  We finally opted for an online class to get it all worked out. 

They printed her schedule and only the day before school started, did we realize there were no room numbers for any class and her "homeroom" teacher that students are required to report to at the end of every day, wasn't listed.

Back to the school we went. We discovered in the chaos, no student was assigned a teacher for the last 45 minutes of school. And once we got room numbers (which they moved a lot of classroom due the the construction and blocked off a lot of doors) we learned she would literally be circling the entire outside of the school every "A" day between the beginning of A1 and the end of A2 just to get into an unlocked door after her class held in an out building. We laughed that a least she would be getting her PE in.  

This week she, and the rest of the student body, had to navigate the high school turned maze, like oversized lab mice in an experiment gone wrong. And her online class didn't open on time. Between that and my kindergartener getting hit in the face by a 4th grader's basketball on her first day, the year was off to an interesting start.

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While I left the rest of the kids to figure out the public school chaos, K and I had a great beginning that was nowhere near as chaotic as the public schools. (At least for our first day. More on that coming next week.)

We set up the calendar and lunch menus.  He loves schedules, so we wrote one out I will attempt to stick to. 

We began reviewing 2nd grade math and started writing on day one. We had fun with MadLibs and learning why commas are important.  He laughed when I wrote him a grocery list. "Please go buy cheese bread soup and crackers." He responded that he didn't want to eat cheese bread soup.

A2's drawing of "cheese bread soup".

We also baked cookies for his other siblings.

Both batches cooked for the same time in a preheated oven, hm...

K and A2 completed an art project hosted by OpenEd.

They continued to make more on their own all week.

K is an avid reader.  This week he read a couple of Minecraft books, among others.

He made a sand castle in Craft Club.

And my Lego loving boy is very excited to build with his ibrick kit this year.  

While the end of the week ended up a bit chaotic and emotional, we did go to a homeschool get together on Thursday and Dad and K were able to go on a bike ride on Friday.

It was a crazy week, but we persevered. And next week, another tough choice needs to be made.

Coming next... 

What happened to Coach?