I've blogged on this in the past here, about God leading us in places we don't expect sometimes. So far, this year God has led me to transfer to a new college and pursue a degree in ministry, which totally freaks me out. He has also strengthened my desire to continue homeschooling, so now my need to homeschool and pursue this degree both are so strong that I am unable to fight either one. Sometimes I don't like where God is leading me, but I know it is the right thing to just follow Him and His guidance until I get to wherever it is I am headed.
Well, now God is leading me again. Scott and I had decided that this upcoming year we'd be leaving OHVA, and going back to Sonlight full time instead of just supplementing. We had a plan in place, and I started gathering materials to do starting next month. Well, God led me into a completely different direction this week, completely different from our plans. I ended up changing our status for OHVA to reflect us being enrolled in the fall. It will be a very difficult juggle, but I have a great support system with a friend and my husband both willing to step in as needed to do lessons with the kids.
Now, I know you are asking. How did I go from planning to go independent as a homeschooler to staying with OHVA for the kids and doing that much juggling again? Well, its a long story. You see, this past month I've been sick, and have been in and out of the doctor's office and on all kinds of different medications. Through all that, I've managed to finish up our school year with OHVA because I was kept accountable. I had to meet requirements on attendance because OHVA is a public school and they are required to meet certain regulations. Just like sending the kids to Newark schools, I have truancy laws to follow. If we don't log a certain number hours halfway through the year and at the end of the year both, then we could get in trouble. I have always kissed the reporting rules for hours with Melissa, sometimes we're a little ahead and sometimes we're behind. But as a general rule, we do pretty well with it all.
This strict accountability with logging hours and lessons is going to be VERY important for me come fall. With my own full time college courseload, I will need to be organized to get everything done since my husband works such long hours he is unable to help much sometimes. I know that my own college work will push aside homeschooling if I don't have this kind of accountability to get it done daily. I will be spending a lot of time daily working on schooling for both the kids and myself, so chores won't be at the top of my list. This is where the majority of Scott's helping and supporting me will come in.
Also, this school year coming up k12 has some changes that I'm looking forward to. Math will be more online than before, which will help a lot. There are some other things too, but they aren't as important in my opinion. Mostly they are administrative stuff for me as the learning coach. But I'm going to be seeing some more independent learning for Melissa starting up soon. She's becoming slightly more solid with her reading, and this will lead to her being able to do her math more herself and some of her phonics and lang. arts on her own as well. And who knows, she may even be able to do some history and science herself. This will be a big change from last school year when she struggled to do any worksheets at all without my help.
But if I can make it through this upcoming school year, the next year when I add Kimmy to the mix as well Melissa will be doing more independent work for sure. Our teacher this year for the girls has already told me that starting in 3rd grade the kids start doing more work themselves in a noticeable fashion, so I just have to survive that. And then I can decide if we're holding Jordan back a year so that she's 6 when school starts instead of 5 because of her September birthday (we're leaning toward holding her back, I'm planning on letting her join in on math and phonics with Kimmy though as she desires to get a better idea of her readiness)
But isn't it amazing how God can lead us in a completely different direction than we ever imagined at times? I literally had NO intentions of staying with OHVA after this school year, and now I'm planning to stick with them and supplement with Sonlight like I did this school year.
No comments:
Post a Comment