Math & Reading

Sorry it's been so long!  Internet problems, then computer problems.... argh! But alas, they are all fixed, for now.  Here is a video of Carly reading, we are so proud of her!  She now seeks out books to read and asks to read more and more in class.  Although at times it is hard with just her and I in the classroom, the rewards are so much greater.

Math is also going well, she is getting the hang of subtraction & addition, with the help of snacks :)

For activities Carly was asked to join the YMCA swim team! She is very excited!  She swims 3 days a week for 1.5 hours each practice.  Her best stroke is the butterfly.  The first swim meet for Carly will be on December 18-19.  She will do a 25 freestyle & 25 butterfly, just so she gets the feel of what a meet is.

Carly has also joined Girl Scouts, she is now a Daisy Scout and loves it!  Her troop is great and I love the leaders.  Our first field trip was to Explorations Kid Museum in Lakeland.  There they had the girls make butter, candles, rope and cookies that looked like turkeys! It was a fun filled day with 8 girls and everyone crashed when we got home!

Thats about it for now.  I will post more later.  Happy Thanksgiving :)

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

WHY?

We  have had a lot of folks wonder "Why Home School?".  There are many reasons and here are four of our top reasons:

1)  We want to teach our child and keep God in it. It's so important to be involved in your child's education and know what they are learning and who is the driving force.  Since God is our driving force, we want to teach her that too, sadly public school doesn't consider God important.

2) FCAT is drilled into them from Aug - Jan. Only the school benefits, financially, from the result.  They are taught to memorize subjects so the school will pass and receive a good grade so they can receive financial help with their programs. I guess that can be positive to have good programs but who is really benefiting from memorizing stuff to pass a test?  I think that was a part of MY issue taking tests is that I would concentrate on memorizing stuff and not really learning.


3)  What 5 yr old needs to be in class for 6-8 hrs?  With class sizes above 20, the teacher needs to teach according to the majority level in the class so it takes longer to learn.  This is great for most kids, the kids that need more attention aren't getting it and the kids that are more advanced are bored which can be miscalculated as ADD.  We wanted an environment where when Carly mastered one lesson, we can move on to the next without that boredom.  Creating that one on one personal attention.  


4)  3 leads to 4, we can adjust the curriculum to suit her needs and pace AND it only takes 1.5 to 2 hours a day! It's great to watch her grow as she learns!  The bonus is that we have time to go to the library, YMCA for swimming and get to cook together (of course there are more things!)  She is not hung up at school for 6 hours then at daycare until I would get home from work leaving a couple of hours to see each other.  Since Dave gets home at 4:30, we have awesome family time!

Those are just a few reasons we decided to home school, of course there are more and those might be shared in another blog post.

If you have any tips or resources you would like to share, let us know!  Thanks for reading!