Accidental Home Schooling Momma

    

     Hey all ! I know I've been MIA for a while. It's hard to keep anything routine when we are constantly making changes ourselves. That and having a toddler keeps me with minimal if any free time. One of the changes we made was moving to a new park. That in itself is quite a story, but since I have so much to tell you and so little time to write, I'll just say that there were only 20 or so spots for the winter and in order to secure one of them I found myself and the children on the front porch of the RV park office at 5 am on a Wednesday. So to make that long story short, we are now in Golden Colorado. It's a quaint town with a really cool downtown area that is in walking distance of our park. There is also a park , rec center  and library down the street. We are on Clear Creek so there is a walking path right behind u. Which is cool, unless Ian's barbecuing, in that case we have many people trying to invite themselves to dinner , which annoys Ian, but oh well. A small price to pay for the comforts of this beautiful little town. It feels good to be further away from the big city too.
     
    At the same time as our move, I was starting to have some problems with our school situation. You may or may not know that I have been using a charter school through California. It was completely online which I felt comfortable with. It was a great transition for us last year. I was able to see how my kids classes were organized and I felt they would be in sync with the California school system if we were to go back suddenly. Remember we had struck out on the road as a trial. We knew Ian would have to be on the road for a few more years and we didn't want him to miss out on our youngest first year of life. Once we got the hang of it, we felt it wasn't as much of a sacrifice to be on the road as it would be to be a family split up across the country. So we finished our first school year but I had noticed some hiccups along the way. Last year my first grader finished his school day in record time and while he was doing well at school I thought maybe he needed to be more challenged. Another issue I had was that he did not do as much writing as I thought he should, so I supplemented his writing and practiced on his form which I thought needed MUCH improvement.  Last year went fairly smooth for my 5th grader but 6th grade was a whole new beast. If you have an organized teacher online, everything is fairly smooth. Dropboxes are in place to submit your work, worksheets are where they are suppose to be. In 6th grade we had five different teachers, some of them new to the online program themselves. Throw in some technical difficulties and I felt like we were spending most of our times trying to find the work or get on the correct web page or email the teacher to see where the dropboxes were. I was getting very frustrated while  emailing 3 to 4 teachers a day. Then there was the art projects. Those were enough for me to pull my hair out. I like art and I think it's a great way to let creativity bloom but these art projects were tied to history and I often found myself trying to make an impossible project like constructing a castle out of cardboard boxes, which is near impossible when you have the space limitation of  a fifth wheel and I thought it was unfair that we should lose points or have our grade effected for something like that.
     So all of this really pushed me to thinking  that maybe I could find a curriculum that would  work better for us. I never in a million years thought of being a homeschool mom. To be honest I've been quite the opposite. I am terrified that my kids will be behind or lacking in a certain are and it will be all my fault. This is a serious issue for me, but with that kind of thinking I have been very critical of other programs and I have seen what my kids have and haven't learned and who knows more about what skills my kids are lacking other than me? So I have been researching curriculum's and methods of teaching. I plan on adding a section to this blog for homeschooling information, so I can pass along the things I have found. You never know what will help someone else who might find themselves in a situation like ours. Of course I realize that what works for one child or family for that matter doesn't always work for another, but it seems like the thing one home school mom says to another "you just have to do your research." Well, I will post for you what I have looked into and my thoughts on it.
      I would like to conclude from this post that I am NOT in any way an over achiever. You may remember my amazing idea to keep my toddler occupied, while we do school, from my last post. Yeah, that has really fell by the wayside. My boxes are all mixed together, we have a puzzle here and an instrument there. I haven't purchased any special snacks for him and he is currently watching Sesame Street. We are going to the library in a bit so I don't feel too terrible about it. I would also like to urge my friends to not be too concerned about me, although it might appear that I've lost my mind, I assure you I will not start telling you to pull your kids out of school, start wearing flowing skirts and  tye dyes or stop wearing make up. In fact I felt like after talking to a friend yesterday I had to wear a cheetah print sweater just so I knew I was anything but a stereo typical homeschooling momma. Not that there's a darn thing wrong with the pioneers of homeschooling , I sure have a lot to learn. It's just I feel like such an unlikely candidate. In fact I'm quite an accidental home schooling momma.

Disclaimer--I am quite aware that there are many run on sentences in my blogs. I assure you I do know how to write a proper sentence, however I read somewhere that you should blog as if you were talking to a good friend. Apparently, it makes a much more interesting reading experience. So there you have it, never fear, my kids are in good hands! ~Kristina