Thursday, August 25, 2005

Back to School!

Well, I am going to order our curriculum today. Both Jozie and Luke will be starting in first grade with the Learning to Read program through accelerated Christian Education (ACE). Since they are so close in age, they said it shouldn't be much of a problem starting them together, Luke just may need a little more time and energy before he is ready to start with the next phase of first grade. I guess we will just take it as it comes, he is only 5 so if he ends up in first grade again next year, which I doubt will happen - he catches on pretty quick, than he wouldn't be any further behind if we had started him in Kindergarten this year. I am just worried that it wouldn't challenge him enough and he would be board with it and he'd HATE school, and that is definitely not the way that we want to start things off with him!

This will be my first year with 2 students - officially anyway! I'm excited and scared all at the same time. I just hope that I can balance them both and teach them where they are at individually.

We have chosen ACE because when our ministry team, Kingdom Christian Center Outreach Ministries, starts up their private school again, this is the curriculum that they are going to use so Jozie and Luke will be right in line to start where they left off in homeschool. And I may be teaching so it will be a good way to familiarize myself with the curriculum for when that time comes! It is a little on the expensive side but I figure it's worth it if what we do works for our family better than something that is less expensive - though saving money is ALWAYS a good thing! :)

Indiana public schools started yesterday so we are going to have to get the ball rolling here soon. Though there are no state requirements for homeshcooling here as far as testing or reporting, you are required to teach the same amount of days that public schools do so that is a minimum of 180 days. I will have to keep an attendance record of some sort but I haven't exactly decided how I'm going to do that yet. If you have any suggestions, that would be great! I would rather use something on the computer than on paper but if I used paper it would be a hard copy and I wouldn't have to worry about loosing it...I guess it could go both ways, maybe something that I could print out and put in a 3 ring binder would do the trick. I'm going to have to start looking, I hope to start as soon as our curriculum comes.

1 Comments For Risa:

Jamie said...

I am a bit nervous to begin homeschooling also. It's a whole different world than how I grew up! I found this site: http://our.homewithgod.com/marcyspage/homeschool.html. Maybe they have some sort of attendance record thing you can print up. We start school on Monday! I have so much to do to prepare, or so I feel, but I know we'll get it;)