a new year

Well, on Wednesday I got an e-mail. Four, to be more exact. UPS sent me 4 e-mails with tracking numbers for 4 packages from k12, all our school supplies for the upcoming fall. Those packages arrived today while I was sleeping, Scott handled the UPS delivery for me.

Now, I haven't even packed up our stuff from this past school year with OHVA, so I'm terribly unprepared for this new delivery. So, the first thing I had to do today was get ALL our materials out that we've been using and go through them. I threw away a bunch of finished workbooks and activity sheets, stacked up a bunch of books to ship back, and got all the manipulatives together to sort before sending most of them back. I have one box of books and one of manipulatives sitting on the living room floor, I'll go through them later and send back what I need to.

Then I started unpacking what we were sent, and getting it organized for the upcoming school year to start next month. I leafed through the books briefly as I put the stuff away, and I had Scott carry two boxes full of art supplies (paints, oil pastels, modeling clay, and brushes all times 2) into our bedroom for safe-keeping (ok more to keep them from painting my walls and furniture LOL we learned this one this past school year when Kimmy painted half my kitchen with tempra paints). I also noticed that this year, we have a lot less in terms of books than we did last school year. Lydia's 1st grade materials are the same as what Melissa did last school year, but Melissa has about half as many books for 2nd grade compared to 1st. Or maybe that's just because we haven't gotten her language arts materials yet (I had to contact k12 about the mixup on that one, the materials should be shipping hopefully next week sometime).

One thing I did want to comment on though is the new math. This year, k12 has a new math program. The old program had a BUNCH of manipulatives and a workbook, plus a HUGE book of student pages (this thing is at least 5" thick). Most of the instruction is done with me using the lesson plans on the online school pulled up on the computer as reference. However, the new math program has one workbook and a teacher's book, plus there aren't as many manipulatives from what I'm seeing. I haven't seen what all the OLS will have for math there, but it appears that it is going to be a more independent program. I know there will be practice games and the assessments will problably be online after looking at the new math materials, but other than that I don't know what it will have going on.

I'm starting to see the beginning of Melissa becoming more independent, and this is going to be a GOOD thing I think. Especially if I can get her through phonics and lang arts 1 at a faster pace than scheduled so that she can move up to grade 2 there, I'm really hoping that she'll be a more independent learner in 3rd grade for sure. I am really starting to see advantages to a more independent program, especially as the kids are getting older and I'm having to do more daily with schooling them and taking care of everything else (plus my own college for the next 2+ years)