If you need to "catch" your child up, how many years...

[momsuz123]

can you make up in homeschooling?

 

Long story short, I homeschooled my 2 girls for 2 years. The older one is at a great private school and loving it (she really needed to be challenged much more then I was able to keep up with). My younger one had some hearing/auditory issues early on, and is doing well, but, not good enough.

 

We moved to a neighborhood chalked full of kids, so my 8 year old really wanted to try the ps. It is an integrated arts school, and she is my right brain artsy kid, so we thought why not? Well, she is strong enough to not qualify for any help, but too weak to keep up on her own. Plus there is very little teaching going on in the school. The teachers are so overwhelmed with learning how to grade for the common core, then the became an integrated arts school, and now we get the email they are combining the classes for team teaching (50+kids with 2 teachers). If you are a strong student, you will be fine, otherwise forget it.

 

I was so mad when I realized that my 8 year old forgot how to do long addition/subtraction that involves carrying/borrowing. I taught her that in 2nd grade and she totally had it down. Now, she has no clue. How do I know this? Well, I was/am considering transferring her to her sisters private school, and they picked up on how far behind she is. She actually LOST ground by going to ps, she didn't gain anything. UGH! I am so frustrated.

 

But I digress, so, if I hs her again, which I am totally for, how much ground can you cover in a year? Anyone been there done that?

 

Thanks for any advice, and thanks for the rant.

 

 

[My3girls]

It really depends on the child, and how quickly they catch on to things.  I don't think you can really push them to learn things quicker than they are capable of, kwim?  DD2 had an awful 2nd grade year, but the school passed her to third where I knew she would drown.  Pulled her out and am redoing 2nd grade with her.  She is on a 3rd grade level, now, in some things and grade 2.5 in others, and beyond 3rd grade in others.  In math in particular, she is about 2 weeks a head of dd3 who is a true second grader.   Now, if your daughter is just having issues in certain areas in math, Math Mammoth Blue, Khan Academy, and IXL would probably be helpful in remediating those topics to bring her up to speed.  However, it's more than that it might take a while.

[GoVanGogh]

I think there are too many variables to give a number.

With a strong, committed homeschool mom (and/or dad) and a motivated student, you can catch up quicker, obviously. But I would expect to hit some walls and struggle over some hurdles along the way.

 

My DS got a late diagnosis for what was causing him to struggle with the mechanics of writing. He improved around six/sevenyears (from ~ four year old to age level) with one year of intensive therapy. That had an impressive impact on our schooling - speed, accuracy for completing math problems, etc. But it did nothing for his ability to write/compose and we are still struggling with bringing that up to grade level.

 

Are the auditory issues being addressed or have they been addressed? That is what we are working with now in therapy. Progress has been a much slower for us, but when I look back over the past year I am happy with where we are now.

 

I would throw as much "help" at it as you can. Diane Craft has some stuff on her website about auditory processing. There are books and therapy programs available.

[Plink]

Aww Suz! No advice, but lots of hugs. I can feel the frustration and disappointment in your words.

[AK_Mom4]

It really just depends.  If all you are dealing with is a kid out of practice with certain math skills, then you can bring that up to grade level fairly quickly - probably even just over the summer if you work at it consistently.  One of my DS's has hearing issues and basically lost most of a year in 5th grade.  We pulled him out of public school and once we took the "can't hear the teacher" problem out of the picture, he was able to come up to speed rapidly in most school work. 

 

On the other hand, he struggled terribly with writing and fixing that did NOT come quickly.  We spent three solid years bring him up to grade level - he still struggles with what he calls "writer's block", but now he recognizes it and has tools to work with it.  DS18 is a high school senior now and you would never know from his writing that he had struggled.

 

All to say - some things can be remediated quickly with concentration and one-on-one attention, other things take more effort and more time.