Thanks for sharing!

Very cool. Off to check it out!

August 31st here with no appeals.

We are dealing with this right now. Avery just moved from a pre-k class with 1.5 hours of nap to a kindy class with 30 mins rest time. She comes home exhausted. We are still working on getting a new routine set but she goes to bed about 30 mins earlier. She can't go any earlier because of other requirements. I am also letting her sleep about 30 mins long in the morning. That seems to be helping a little but by Friday she falls asleep in the car on the ride home!

Our local library stinks so we don't go very often. Most of our books I end up ordering. The most that we have checked out recently is 6 when we were starting to learn about maps and geography and I was waiting on our books to get in. I really wish we had a better library here!!

I have posted before about why we had to start afterschooling but here it is in a nut shell. My 5 year old missed the kindy cut off in our state by a month and even thought she was more than ready to start there is no "testing in" at all. So we were presented with a pre K option that sounded great. Only to find out they changed the program this year and it wasn't what we were told it was going to be. The original plan was for Avery to complete pre K, move to kindy then skip into 2nd grade since that would be the first year she would be old enough to skip according to state laws. Well from the beginning of the year all I have heard about is how boring it is etc. The middle of the year she started regressing and BAD! I went and met with the teacher and thought things were going to be better but nothing changed. Before school started I contacted all the private schools in town and no one would take her early. I called again after things were getting worse for Avery and found one school that was willing to look at her so we went to visit and they felt she was more than capable to be in their kindy program. We are all so excited. We are still doing some afterschooling at home but I am so much more relaxed. It was really really hard juggling working full time and trying to homeschool too. Now I feel like I can truly afterschool and focus on supplementing instead of having to do all the teaching like we were before!!

Before last week I was making up for the lack of education from her school in areas she needed so we were covering reading, math, geography and art. We just moved schools this past week and she moved from pre-K in the public school to Kindy in private school. Now she is getting reading, math and some geography. We are still doing some geography at home because it's something she really enjoys. I plan on adding History in the fall, and science. We are also going to continue with fine arts since that's one area her school is really lacking. I agree with the PP I would start with any areas that need to be supplemented to help them stay with their grade level, followed by subjects that aren't taught and finally what interests your kiddos.

Another vote for magnet. I would try it and see how it goes. As others have said you can always go back to the neighborhood school if it doesn't work out but it would be much more difficult to go to the magnet program.

I haven't read either of them but now I'm going to. Something has to give with my oldest...maybe this will help us out.

We are using Erica from Confessions of a Homeschoolers Expedition Earth download and Avery really likes it.

Sounds like how things are done here. My DD is in a pre-K class room that we pay for through the public school system. It is basically the same as what she will do again next year in K (but that's a whole different issue). Anyway they are tested a few days before the end of the 6 weeks and the teacher records their scores. Other than counting they are given a score of C (consistently), O (occasionally), or W (working on). We are about to finish the 4th 6 weeks and there hasn't been a single change on Avery's report card since the first time she took the test. I had a conference with her teacher and she said that it is a one time deal and whatever they happen to do at that one time is the score they get. It is also a timed test so if they don't immediately rattle off the answers then they get them wrong. I just doesn't make much sense to me!

This is what I do too when working in my head. It took me a minute to see it how you wrote it out but it makes sense to me now.

Thanks for the tip. I will check out the book. Thank you for all the welcomes.

Congrats!! That's a wonderful accomplishment!

Thank you for your response and suggestions. I ordered The Well Trained Mind and it should be delivered tomorrow or Wed at the latest. I have talked to Avery and she has said the reason she doesn't want to go to school is because some boys (and she has told me names) are making fun of her for being smart. I talked to her teacher about it and she basically thought it was ridiculous and that couldn't be. Avery is very caring and wears her heart on her sleeve so it could be that they just hurt her feelings but she doesn't want to get anyone in trouble so she won't tell me what they were saying just that it was not nice. I have talked to another mom who has a son in the same class and she said that she was asking her son a question and he didn't know the answer so his response to her was "Just ask Avery she will know." That answer alone lets me know that the other kids in class do notice that she is different from them. Every since I talked to her about afterschooling, and we rearranged the playroom to make a whole new learning area she has shown a renewed desire to learn, which makes me so excited. I'm also shocked at how quickly she has learned and retained things we have talked about in just the past couple of days. She is really interested in Countries, and maps right now so that is where the bulk of our "teaching" has been. I'm also trying to get some of the early math skills in there as well because while I know she knows them she still won't show her teacher that she knows them. I have also noticed in the more structured teaching we have been doing that she really is a perfectionist and does seem to be afraid to make a mistake. I have noticed that she hesitates answering sometimes to try and gauge if she is going to get it right or not so I'm trying to work on that as well. Lots of "little" things but they are all the building blocks!!