I'm a military wife and we are pcsing in April so I thought it would be best to start now than to pull her out of public school with only a month left at the end of the year. Before winter break I made the decision to finally homeschool my 1st grader. I heard from my neighbor that about 40% of the moms here on my base homeschool and they always went with K12 when they were first starting and that is the route I went, but my experience so far has been awful! To make a long story short I filled out the application a month ago and have made numerous phone calls( and horrible customer service!), but still no one is helping to enroll my daughter and winter break is coming to an end and I don't want her to fall behind. I was doing research on different homeschool moms and alot of women buy their own books and curriculum online, but I'm curious as to how you test them after each section or end of each year. I would greatly appreciation any help or if someone could lead me to some resources so I can start teaching my daughter right away. Thank you in advance!
Welcome to the "Spot" nila1920. Well there are lots of choices for curriculum out on the market. I can't really give you any advice on curriculum. When my kids were elementary school age I used workbooks... Spectrum, School Zone, Step Ahead, Brighter Child, American Education Publishing. We checked out tons of books at the library and used Jump Start computer software. I also used flash cards for phonics, math, time & money. I never did formal end of year testing, but I did do Spectrum Test Prep work books at home myself. These days you can do alot of the things I mentioned online free.
my husband just had a lot of questions as to if it would be a problem to enroll her in a public school later in the future if they're we no testings and such. I'm sooo new to this that I don't even know how that works.
nila1920 if you decide to homeschool for a while and later decide to go back to public school your child may or may not need to be tested for grade level placement. Each public school district will have they're own policies regarding admission procedures. I really don't think that having a kid tested for placement is really a big deal.
thats what I figured..thank you so much for answering my questions. You've really taken away alot of my worries. I'm so glad I found this forum!!
k12 is often not open enrollment through a charter school all year long. I am not sure if you are talking about a charter school or not. They normally only have open enrollment in February for about a month or 2 for the following calendar year. They will take your information and put you on a waiting list if you try to enroll mid-year. If you are military, make sure your child takes the IOWA test this year and public schools normally accept the results for placing back into public school from home school.
If you want a free curriculum for 1st grade that you can keep records with for the future...try http://www.theheadoftheclass.com/
k12/virtual school usually doesn't enroll mid-year. K12 is not one I would recommend for such a young child anyway. We've discussed k12 on this site a few times, so do a search for those threads to read more experiences/opinions. As for starting mid-year independently, there are so many curriculum choices. One thing you could do is buy 1st grade textbooks on Ebay. Take the number of chapters there are and divide by 2. That's where you should start. You don't need to be so strict at this age with tests and chapter reviews, though, and you don't absolutely HAVE to finish the WHOLE book by the end of the year. Be reasonable. A public school teacher does not hit EVERY SINGLE PAGE AND ACTIVITY IN THE BOOK either. If you decide to be independent, there's lots of ways you could homeschool. One is to print out your state's goals to see what's being taught in 1st grade. If you are using traditional textbooks, they already are set to state standards. Here's a list of usual subjects: Reading/Phonics Language Arts (grammar/literature/spelling/printing) Math Science (general) Social Studies (Communities/geography/People) Art PE You could stick to traditional curriculum for core subjects (Reading, Math, Literature) and then put together your own stuff for Sci, Social Studies and Art. For PE, just print out a calendar and keep track of time spent and activity. At this age, what I used to do is keep a teacher's calendar that's arranged by day/subject. At the end of the day, I'd write down what we did for each subject. I liked to do that so I could see that we were getting a lot done. It's good to keep records. Hope this helps
First, take a deep breath. Next learn the laws for the state you are in. Some states have no laws and are a cakewalk, others like PA and NY have you jumping through flaming hoops (which aren't as dangerous as they look.. I think the flames are made of paper or something because I have never been burned ) I remember when I first started I was going to go with a virtual charter because I was terrified. Then I read our laws and saw that I just had a list of subjects to cover. I knew I could pull that off on my own and I did. I used cheap workbooks from Sams Club (American Education Publishing's Complete Book of... books back then), found some "living books" for content subjects (science and social studies) and went on our merry way. I'm so glad I didn't go virtual. I love building our curriculum each year.
Welcome to the homeschooling world. Everyone here has lots of great advice. We are a military homeschooling family too. If I may ask, where are you pcsing too? We are currently at Fort Riley....we are always looking for more homeschooling friends. Good luck!
