Well time has flown by and it has been a long time since we last posted. We have made some major life changes. We moved across the country to the Seattle area. We have experienced kindergarten in a public school and now are homeschooling for first grade and presumably for the rest of her academic years. We have speech therapy once a week with a one on one speech therapist(our child is autistic) and we attend a home school co op where she attends classes that she chose. We are very happy with the co-op and how she is learning.
We originally allowed her to attend public school at her request and stayed the year but our dislike of the public education system was only intensified by our first hand experience .
Don't get me wrong, I adored her teachers (class and resource room ) but the way things are handled and the lack of social skills that are taught furthered our desire to home school her.
We have been entertaining the idea of moving to a commune sometime in the near future and are currently on the hunt for the perfect fit.
Conan has recently discovered the awesomeness of "Minecraft" and we let her pay it offline. It is super awesome for home school learning and she enjoys it!
My current struggle is this game she has stumbled upon called "Roblox". She gets so frustrated and many a meltdown can be linked directly to her dying in the game. I am not sure if we will cutting this game out of our rotation of entertainment during freetime in our time.
ABCMouse has been a great help as well. We love ABCMouse and PBS Kids. My husband and I differ in some ways of parenting. She is more laid back and approaches things in an unschooling fashion. I am a follower of schedules and routines. We have discovered that our son is more of a schedule and routine person than not and so we schedule our day . I allow a good amount of freetime (he can do whatever , this includes video games and tv). We also have one day a week where she can "veg out".
Veg out day is just that , no schedule , just chill!
A sample schedule may look something like this (non co-op day)
900am -930 am :Breakfast
930am-10am:free time
10-1015:workbook
1015-1030:play dough
1030-1130:leggos
1130-1230:free time
1230-100:lunch
100-115:speech worksheets
115-215:playtime with mommy
215-315: read /no electronics
315-500:freetime
500-600 :dinner
600-800pm:movie time
800-900:bath,brush teeth ,read and bed
We attend co-op three days a week and speech for an hour once a week so this is how we roll two and a half days a week (One of the co op days is just an hour long class and of course one day a week is chill out day)
I wanna hear from other parents. How does your day look? Am I the only one that breaks it up this much? Id love to see other examples of homeschooling and unschooling !
