Where Have I Been?

Sorry, I've been busy busy busy! Lot's of in general "life" stuff going on. Some good some *eye roll* worthy.

Sweet Little Baby Rebel has also decided she doesn't like to sleep anymore. I think part of it is that she is teething. Part of it is that she's just too darn afraid she is going to miss something, haha. So, she fights naps and fights going to sleep at night. Now she's also started waking up oh, about once an hour at night too. Ugh. I keep trying to remind myself I'm going to miss this stuff one day soon. ;-)

Sooo, what have I been so busy with that I haven't been able to check in? Why, I have finally decided to go ahead and take the plunge and start home schooling. I'm very excited about it. Problem is school starts, oh what next month, and I'm just deciding to do it.

It seems like it's spur of the moment and last minute and an 'on a whim' decision to most I'm sure. In all honesty though it's something I've thought about for years. Mainly since about two years ago. My very bright, talented and gifted student suddenly had grades low enough to drop her out of the TAG (talented and gifted program) and other activities and started bringing home not bad, but not honor roll worthy grades. As time went on, the grades got lower and lower. I got more and more unhappy with the way it was being handled and by the time she was going to start 6th grade I was very unhappy with the public school system in general.

She scores very high on her placement tests and end of year testing. I know she knows the material. I know that she is smart. Not just in that, "She's my kid so I brag about her way". Really, the kid is smart. She's just not motivated by the way she is being taught. Its much more fun to talk to her friends and socialize and get into trouble than it is to pay attention. But why doesn't anyone care? Why is it that by the end of 5th grade she had almost all "F's" on her progress report and no one bothered to let me know or call me or try to figure out the problem?

I went in for a parent teacher conference and found the problem. Well, she'd only turned in 2-3 assignments in each subject for the entire period! I understand accountability and responsibility, but as a teacher, wouldn't you take it upon yourself to figure out what's going on? I was not a happy camper. This should have been brought to my attention and something should have been done about it. Then the teacher goes on and on about how smart she is and how she's one of her brightest students so this is just silly. Yeah, I'd have to agree that this is just silly.

So here we are. I have an unchallenged, unmotivated 11 year old going into the 6th grade. What to do from there?

Oh wait, lets add some more 'icing' onto that cake... The school she is zoned to go to is fairly notorious around here for not being a good school. Lots of juvenile delinquents and children that end up in the legal system come from there as I've been told. I don't want that to be the crowd my impressionable middle schooler is around. So I planned to drive her back and fourth every day to a school not in our district. Well, with her less than stellar grades, we couldn't...

Looked into private schools, as I had been for the past few years and in the back of my mind I kept thinking, "home school!" just never really felt that I could do it at first.

Now here we are. We are enrolled in an umbrella school. We've got books, we are working on a curriculum and here we go!

So, that's what I'm doing and that's what's keeping me busy in between the baby and the housework and the shopping and the cooking and the in general running of a house. I've also been trying to get the garage and basement cleaned out so we can move my MIL in for other reasons... Busy busy bee! haha

Back with updates on how things are going later!