So...How's it going?

[BabyBre]

We've been back to school for four days now, beforeschooling for three (didn't want to push it on day one), and so far so good! Besides an expected degree of tiredness, the kids have done very well, the carpool is working out, the schedule seems to be working out, I think we're devoting enough time to each subject, however, I do fear the inevitable morning where I forget to make lunches the night before. :tongue_smilie: Hectic, but tolerable, so far.

 

So, how's it going for everyone else?

[Roadrunner]

So far so good. The biggest difference from last year is that I now have two boys that I am afterschooling (my little one started K). It was easier to adjust than I thought.

[LittleIzumi]

I pulled dd from her first charter school already (started three weeks ago). She is now in a homeschool charter--they pay for a certain amount of our curricula, we teach the main subjects at home like normal, and dd goes there one day a week for a fine arts intensive all day (music, art, dance, etc). They have other options but the one-day only works best for us. They assist with the state testing as well. Dd is registered as a 1st grader there with no hassle like the other school gave us. (K students don't get to go to the fine arts intensive.)

[lisamarie]

I haven't officially started yet. We've done some reading--just the kids reading out loud to me to fill out their 15 minute reading charts. This is the first week back and my kids who have never done full day school and are used to a 2 hour "quiet time" every afternoon are a total wreck when I pick them up after school. I am waiting until they adjust to full day school without being crabby patties before trying to do anything educational with them. But I do plan to do a little work tomorrow for some weekend schooling.

[momsquared]

Good here. We read SOTW every night. We do some science about 3 days a week. DD reads to me a bit every day. She definitely is finding school easy, but we keep plugging along at home to keep her working at her level.

[SKL]

Not bad. We've been at it for about 2.5 weeks now. Mostly we are going through books I've had in the basement forever (I used to collect kids' educational books before I had kids). This covers a broad spectrum of science, social studies, and math, in addition to plenty of reading practice. We work with coins, the clock, and the globe, and spend time in the car drilling stuff that can be drilled orally. Just a little here and there. And we have made several trips to the zoo and natural history museum. The one thing I am not thrilled about is that we haven't done much writing. I have some good ideas, but we don't seem to get time most days.

 

Motivation-wise, it's not bad overall, but it can get frustrating on days when the lessons go much beyond their "theoretical" bedtime. I can't blame them for that. We're all still trying to find our rhythm. I also think it will get easier as the weather gets colder. Right now I feel like every nice evening should be spent outdoors, because you never know when it will be nice again.

[Little Nyssa]

Oh, OK I guess. I am putting off the afterschooling til they get adjusted to PS. Maybe 1 or 2 weeks more. It has been a bigger adjustment for me than them!

DS also comes home needing time alone-- fortunately he learned this about himself and likes to go quietly to his room for Lego time after school. How insightful of him! I recall when he went to private K he used to come home completely wound up and neither I nor he really knew how to handle it.

DD starts PS Monday.

[ondreeuh]

We just started school on Tuesday, and this is my son's first year back at PS so we still have a long ways to go to figure out how to make this all work.

 

His school starts late; he has to leave the house at 8:30. He is never productive in the mornings, so this isn't really a good time to do anything serious but I may work in some FLL since that is pretty easy. He comes home for lunch but we only have about 40 minutes. I've been able to have lunch ready and I'm thinking we can use lunch time to do an audiobook. He gets home at 3:30 and we've been doing a spelling lesson and 30 minutes of free reading, and will soon add math homework to the list. We have kids knocking on the door and calling on the phone wanting to play, so I'm not sure how much more I can do without being a meanie. ;)

 

I would like to do American History (mainly through literature) and Elemental Chemistry, but I'm not sure how to fit that in. Next week Open Gym will start at the school, and I hope he will be able to go up there in the evenings to play with his friends and I can use that as a carrot to encourage him to finish his work.

 

My preschooler is having a GREAT time at home alone with me in the mornings. We are listening to educational songs, playing games, reading, doing puzzles, and playing on More Starfall. He just had his first day of afternoon preschool and I will be helping out for a little while.

 

My oldest isn't really afterschooling; the school is nontraditional and Spanish will go on her transcript even though she is doing it independently. She is doing her math during the "math hour" at school and is able to work ahead. She will have to do both Biology and Spanish on her own since she is participating in the Environmental Science unit at school (taught by her dad!).

Edited September 10, 2011 by ondreeuh

[Pamela H in Texas]

School started on the 22nd of August and Princess is doing beautifully with before-schooling. There have been a couple times we didn't do as much as I'd like or anything because of behavior or dawdling. We will work on that issue. We are actually hoping to get her finished with her morning routine a full 15 minutes sooner which would give me even more time with her. She has a great attitude towards before-schooling though I sometimes worry what she's gonna say to her teacher at school about it. LOL

 

I really want to pull her out. Working on accepting things I can't change :)

[3Blessings]

I am really enjoying it and I think the kids are, too. We are busy, but having fun. Just this week I added FLL into my WWE with 2 big kids. Piano is part of our afterschool time and I'm pleased to say that is going well as well. The biggest hit here has been doing Artistic Pursuits on Sat. mornings!

[ApronMama]

I would like to do American History (mainly through literature) and Elemental Chemistry,

 

That's what we are doing! :) We started Elemental Chem this summer. From our first few lessons, its clear to me that we can do reading and narration one day and have one experiment day and fit in a chapter a week. My kid inhales science reading, so I think its going to work. Keeping him to the 3 pages a day suggested by the book was impossible.

 

We have only had 3 days of school. Kinder ds and I are having fun in the mornings with math manipulatives, alphabet games and reading.

 

We've done one day of our unit study on Native Americans and the boys really enjoyed it. We were reading together and discussing maps, rather than doing narration and map work from SOTW and the change was nice, though it required a great deal more prep work from mom! We are really enjoying our read aloud--Children of the Longhouse, which clips along much more quickly than our previous book.

 

Latin and Bible Study start next week. Its all working out well since the school homework hasn't started coming home yet and activities haven't ramped up yet.

[MBM]

We've been back to school for four days now, beforeschooling for three (didn't want to push it on day one), and so far so good! Besides an expected degree of tiredness, the kids have done very well, the carpool is working out, the schedule seems to be working out, I think we're devoting enough time to each subject, however, I do fear the inevitable morning where I forget to make lunches the night before. :tongue_smilie: Hectic, but tolerable, so far.

 

So, how's it going for everyone else?

 

My youngest is a freshman, and it look like this year is going to be busy even though I won't be personally afterschooling anything. (Academically, the high school is outstanding, and I am totally digging that!) Outside of school, he has a lot going on with extra math and music classes, but he seems to be thriving and enjoying everything.

 

As far as food goes, the high school's hot lunch program is fantastic. I do love not having to make lunch every day.

[sleepymommy]

We've only had 3 days of school so far, so I've not quite gotten in the groove of things yet. We've done a little afterschooling and a little before schooling. I really want to be more consistent with a schedule though. It's way too easy for me to let things slide.

[heartosunshine]

My youngest is a freshman, and it look like this year is going to be busy even though I won't be personally afterschooling anything. (Academically, the high school is outstanding, and I am totally digging that!) Outside of school, he has a lot going on with extra math and music classes, but he seems to be thriving and enjoying everything.

 

As far as food goes, the high school's hot lunch program is fantastic. I do love not having to make lunch every day.

 

Just curious, what extra math? Is it offered by the school? I have a very mathy 8th grader. :001_smile:

[MBM]

Just curious, what extra math? Is it offered by the school? I have a very mathy 8th grader. :001_smile:

 

School math:

 

AMC/AIME tests. You might want to look into taking the AMC-8 this November and possibly even sitting for the AMC-10 in February (I think).

 

American Regional Math League (ARML) -- a regional and national high school math competition.

 

Non-school math -- what my son likes most:

 

Awesome Math Year-round (AMY). A year-long correspondence math program of courses not typically found at most high schools. Run by Titu Andreescu and other mathematicians. Divided into six topics that change yearly. Students are sent a packet of problems -- the current topic has 25 problems -- and are given two months to write up solutions and send them back to Titu and Co. They then look over the solutions and send back feedback. My son's first packet is all about Diophantine Equations, and I'd say he has finished about 3/4 of them. They are not easy he says, especially the linear ones!

 

http://awesomemath.org/year-round-program/

 

Young Scholars Program (YSP) at U of Chicago. This is a Saturday program offered by U of C for kids who want to delve deeply into math, sort of like the Ross Program (but that's all number theory and is a summer program only). YSP meets twice a month, and we are waiting to see if they will allow a suburban kid in. It's mainly for Chicago students.

 

http://www.math.uchicago.edu/ysp/

 

eIMACS. An online math logics program of three courses (10 months for each course) as well as their Elements of Mathematics available to those who finish the logics sequences and who are invited to take the course (I don't know much about EM except that some people think it's really good). My son really liked the first course and finished it in two months while at summer school and math camp to boot! He became interested in Bertrand Russell after taking it. We plan to sign up for the second course at the end of October.

 

http://www.eimacs.com/

 

AoPS. He wants to do everything they offer even if he has to do the problems after he's done with school. He's working on pre-calc now.

 

Other things you might like:

 

MathCounts competition. For 8th graders and below. If you don't have a team, you can make your own or just show up and take the test with other individuals. We had a team of individuals who placed very high at State last year. I think you'd have to register, though.

 

Math Circles. Explore all kinds of cool math topics.

 

Math camps. These are really wonderful for developing a kid's interest and abilities.

 

The AoPS forum discusses a bunch of other competitions, math resources and information about all of the above if you'd like to learn more.

 

HTH. Have fun! :)

Edited September 13, 2011 by MBM

[prairiebird]

We haven't been doing anything extra yet because I wanted the kids to get used to the new living situation, new town, and new school first. They are so exhausted when they get home right now, not counting homework, so I need to reassess what they are doing. Most of it is serious busywork.

 

They are using Everyday Math at school, and while I haven't met with the teachers yet, it seems like they are supplimenting it quite a bit.

 

I may look into doing unit studies for a while. It's not a favorite of mine, but it might work for this situation.

[mich311e]

I feel like we're playing catch up with math and math facts right now. School has been back in for a month. I was working with my son on getting his addition facts faster and he usually does a page or two in his Kumon workbooks, most days.

 

Homework from yesterday was multiplication! Like 11x12. I haven't taught him this yet and I don't think they got this far last year. So I'm going to get intense with addition & subtraction at home for the next two weeks so we can really dive in to multiplication. So we'll be using a combination of Kumon, flashcards, Singapore CWP 1 & Intense Practice 1B. We hadn't started on Singapore 2A yet so I'm ok with that. I just hadn't expected big multiplication yet.

 

We haven't touched SOTW or anything else since school started but my son has been reading a lot!

[LolaT]

We just started our official 2nd grade curriculum this week. WWE2 is a bit more challenging but it went well on the first day of Narration with the more pointed questions. DD has been going to charter ps for 3 wks. I'm doing dual enrollment, HS'ing in the morning until 10:30 Lang. Arts and then afterschooling RSM C, SOTW 1, RSO Life, and other extras if time allows. I'm probably overbooking myself right now but I still feel like I want to do it all. We were HS'ing exclusively for the past year and thru summer.

 

It can get hurried trying to get to school at the right time, packing lunch, not forgetting things. We're also trying audiobooks in the car on the way to school to utilize that time. Started with Beethoven Lives Upstairs which I found on the forum. I'm treating our schooling as primary and ps as secondary right now. So, even though she goes there for math, science, and soc studies, I'm considering it extra practice. She gets to do a lot of fine arts there: music, drama, dance, art, spanish, ASL. And, she's really enjoyed making friends. We'll keep tweaking the schedule to make it work for us.

 

Sometimes, she says she wants to go to ps all day, sometimes she wants to be HS'ed all the time.

[caedmyn]

Going...it's not. I hope figuring out a schedule gets easier or afterschooling is not going to happen. DD comes home and is just a stinker. She acts the way she acts after her gramma has been here for a weekend. Doesn't listen to a word I say. I don't know if they don't make her listen very well or if she's just tired of listening & paying attention by the time she gets home or what.

 

Not to mention afternoons have never been a good time to do anything around here, and the baby won't nap for more than 30 minutes at a stretch, which doesn't really allow enough time to get anything done. So far all I've managed to get done is a couple minutes of copywork (writing one letter very neatly 5 times) a day, plus her school memory work. Maybe I will have to stick to weekend-schooling and scrap the plans to do the 2nd half of OPGTR.

[RebekahnDavidMom]

I wish things were going better. We are just so busy that I haven't really figured out how to AS yet. My dd is in PM Pre-K so I thought we could use mornings but that hasn't worked out well yet. My dc dawdle over breakfast and getting ready and we get some Bible reading done but I'm working on getting us up earlier, but with me working nights right now it's hard becasue their bedtime is so late from having to pick me up at 11pm. We do have about 1/2 an hour in the car while waiting for my DH to get out of work but my dd usually falls asleep after school. I'm going to bring her SL LA reader today and see if we can at least fit that in. Then from picking up DH, we eat dinner early and I'm at work by 5 or 5:30. I also work all weekend (6am to 11pm.... 2 jobs) so I'm just not sure this whole AS-ing thing is going to work out but I REALLY need it to becasue I'm so frustrated with her education in school right now it's not even funny. (see my frustration post on the board). Just need some encouragement I guess that even if we only fit in 20 minutes of things a day it's better than nothing :-)

 

Andrea

[E829YH]

We're inching along. DC7 is happy to do a little math or LA after school and DC5 will sometimes concede to doing some OPGTR. I'm trying to ease into this.