Our Journey to Homeschooling - Part 3

Connections Academy (CA) - one of our state's virtual charter schools - was a very good place for us to start homeschooling. The curriculum they used was Calvert (which I've heard GREAT things about - and did like) and they had teacher support available. There was some flexibility in the scheduling and your child could work at their pace (to a point).

When we enrolled the boys, they gave them both a placement test for math and both placed one year up from their school grade. They also had a gifted program for 3rd grade and up which JA enrolled in. However, the gifted program was really just a literature study class that added extra work to JAs normal school load. Not exactly what I had in mind for 3rd grade gifted. In addition, it was a teacher-led class which required JA to log in at a specific time each week. The only problem was it was during the time when CP was at church watching the kids for the MOPS moms.

CA states that children can work at their own pace and this is true. However, what we discovered was that if your child finished their subject work after Feb, they would not be allowed to move ahead in that subject area. They also had to have completed over 80% of all work in all other subjects. As a result, they just had to find other academic stuff to fill up their required 4 hrs a day of instructional time.

At the beginning of the next school year, Florida had changed their rules regarding who could attend the virtual charter schools. As a result, SG, who would be starting K, was not allowed to enroll in CA. So, she became our first officially homeschooled student. Because we were familiar with the Calvert curriculum from CA, we purchased a used curriculum off of Ebay and used that. We now had 3 kids in different grades all doing Calvert. CP was kept hopping trying to keep up with the boys' requests for help and trying to walk SG through her school work. Also, it was becoming obvious that HJ was struggling and was going to need extra help.

At work, I overheard a co-worker talking about some of the things his son was doing for school and was very intrigued. He and I began discussing the curriculum they were using and the philosophy behind it. The more I heard, the more I liked it.

I'll finish up with the next part tomorrow!