For the Record

Yes. I did go with Matthew to an information night for a local High School. I heard and considered everything they said and as I think I said before what they offer is exactly what I am already doing. It is expensive. It is more money then I can justify putting forth to do exactly what I am already doing. The extra things would be fun for Matthew, including making some new friends, but there is also an expense to that which would be fragmenting our family. If you the reader can not understand that, the phone is open for inquiries or you can trust me on this.

Going to that night helped me to evaluate what needs to change or be improved upon here in our school. We DO have a school here and we are not just pretending. I co-op with my dear friend LaRena, who has the same challenges; small children, only so much of her to go around and then there is the motivation to keep after the schooling without being distracted by the laundry. So we work together. She teaches Latin to both the younger and older groups, spelling and science to the younger kids. She does a thorough and great job with them and I am grateful for that as I would never get to the Latin without her help or Science with the younger set for that matter. I teach Literary Analysis, Chemistry, writing and history to both the older and younger kids. I read the literature which the kids are reading so that we can discuss it together and they write papers accordingly. I would like to step up the pace for the younger group as the time is now so they are ready for their upper level work. All the kids are quite busy keeping up with their work and they work very hard in accomplishing their task. For those struggling with getting to their homework, we work with them to help them along and strive to do better.

We meet for co-op two days a week and the other three are for homework and the classes they have with me at home. Those classes are Math, Grammar, Swedish, and piano. The kids are BUSY! This is what we do every week. The challenge is keeping up but keep up we do to the best of our ability and considering how well Anna is doing at Indiana University in very challenging course work, I don't think I am doing too badly for my kids. Her grades first semester were great. She must not have done to shabbily by my assistance in her high school work.

Financial Aid............this school offers it but I seriously doubt they would offer any to us. Our house is paid off, we have investments, and we have only one other student in school paying any tuition. Ummmm......doubt that would bode well with the school no matter how many kids we have. We will NOT go into debt to pay for something we already do here. I doubt they take into consideration the work it requires me to keep after them all.

Discovery: My Saturdays are needed to plan and take care of errands etc to keep me away from errand land during the week. The more I can be home and chase after the house responsibilities and the planning the better. I also can use that time to try to keep up with the reading for my classes. I don't think I am doing too badly in that department considering everything else.

So.............with the mention of looking into a High School for Matthew. Sure. The school is a great school and in a dream world they might attend but the cons far outweigh the pros and it is Charley and my decision as to whether we go that route anyway. No one should get too excited about how 'ah, they have finally seen the light.' I don't continue to homeschool out of pride but more out of how it works and frankly I enjoy working with the kids especially on their history and literature. I'm working on the other kinks and together, meaning Charley and I, we will figure this out.

There.............that's the update................forging ahead now and............if you don't understand what I am talking about I don't think there is any amount of my blogging which will help it make sense. A few books which might help for you the reader to better understand would be "The Well Trained Mind" and "Wisdom and Eloquence". I cannot remember the authors off hand but I believe the first book's author is Bauer and this book is available at most libraries. Read it! It will help you understand what this mom is doing.