Update- The Decisions and Drama

A few months after my last post unexpectedly my husband was offered a new job (higher pay) in a new city. We packed up everything, sold our house and drove a U-haul, our car with a trailer attached and FIVE chickens in my front seat to our new house. A new start! With a new house, and having to pay for a new house we had to adjust our budget. Seeing our budget we realized that I needed to go back to work. This meant that our son needed to go back to public school.

The new school. (grade 2 Half way through the year)
We ended up with transferring our son in November. I know, I know we were asking for trouble bringing our son to a new school in the middle of the school year. We were faced with bullying, lack of communication from his teacher and the inevitable acting out from our son due to all the stress.

This teacher let school work build up in our son's desk for over a month and sent home the heaping pile and said that it all needed to be done right away! This did not make us very happy as we had been asking for feedback and check ups since day one. This teacher also kept pushing us to get our son on prescription medications for ADHD. While we do struggle with our son being on the lower end of the spectrum with Asperger's Syndrome. ( Yes, he was diagnosed by an actual doctor .... NOT Dr. Google) We will not put him on medication.
Some of our struggles are:
-Obsessive Interests (He can tell you every detail of the Titanic, also information on dinosaurs and there correct names)
-Volume issues when speaking (often WAY too loud)
-Social isolation- This is a huge issue for our son. Other kids make fun of him for his "odd" behavior. He lacks social cues from others.
-He had a few motor skill issues. He didn't learn (despite all of our efforts) to tie his shoes until after his 9th birthday.
-He had a bit of issue with imagination play at school. He would get angry if another student "played the game wrong" which in reality was the other kids not playing the games just like our son had pictured or expected.

At his winter parent/teacher conference the teacher talked down on us and told us that at this time he would not be willing to pass him on to the next grade. A few weeks later the teacher called me and yelled in my ear when I told him that I was not willing to hold my child back. He told me that he was the teacher and I (the parent) don't want to do what is best for him. The thing is my child is plenty smart. He is fully capable of doing the work, but needs closer attention and strong communication between parent/teacher or else our son takes advantage of both parties.

(Grade 3)

This school year we had a great teacher for our son that was very cooperative with communication. We had a few snags but we don't really have any complaints. By snags I mean issues with bullying. He was attacked walking home from school and on the playground on a number of occasions. He was passed to grade 4 with no problems. We did still deal with his Asperger's issues but that's normal for us.

(Grade 4) Current year

This year has been very challenging. The teacher almost refuses to communicate with us. We have begged and pleaded for communication and all we get is a few emails and a "I'm sorry it slipped my mind" He has been bullied and has been suspended 4-5 times if I am remembering correctly. 2- 1 day suspensions, 2- 3 day suspensions and this latest one was a 10 day suspension ( that I got knocked down to a 3 day so I could enroll him in K12 online public homeschool. This decision was a long time coming I think. The school was blaming our son for his reactions to the bullies with the bullies getting away with everything. The principal talking down on us for our sons behavior at school. Which is very frustrating because I can't keep him in check when he is not in my care... he is at school. Our son's report card this year does not in any way reflect his ability which is very frustrating. The teacher says he can't do multiplication, whereas with us he can do 2-3 sheets of multiplication in under 10 minutes. The teacher says he is a terrible reader, but he reads chapter books and spends Christmas money on more chapter books ($50).

So here we are. In the middle to end of the 4th grade and starting K12 online public charter school. We are set to start on the 17th of February, 2015. I am able to homeschool again because I am a stay at home mom again and we also have a 10 month old now to take care of. Lets hope this transition goes smoothly.

The Curriculum We Have Chosen

After doing endless amounts of research on the different types of curriculum my husband and I have decided to go the traditional textbook type of learning.

Why:

•  We feel that it would make for a smoother transition from public school to home school for our son.
• This option will also allow us to have the option to put him back in public school without having to worry that he isn't up to grade standards. 
• We will follow fairly close to what materials the public schools are using.
•  Our family thrives on a schedule and discipline. As a busy young family with two parents still in college we knew that having a curriculum that lays out lesson plans for us would be the easiest route for us. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying home schooling will be easy just that having the lesson plan already mapped out for us will be one less thing that we have to do in a day.

What we use:

• Saxon Math 2 Home School Kit (Math Grade 2)
• Saxon Math Manipulative Kit  (K-3) 
• Saxon Phonics Home School Kit (Phonics and Spelling Grade 2)
• Harcourt Horizons Home School Package with Parent CD-ROM's (Social Studies Grade 2)
• Science Fusion Home School Kit (Grade 2)

I am sure that this is not going to be everything we will be using this year, but this is the start of our curriculum. This is what I call "The Basics" for school. Our son is showing interest in learning Spanish so by the end of the year I will most likely add Spanish to the mix. 

Making the Decision to Home School For Our Family

To get you up to speed, our son is 7 years old and he is currently at the tail end of 1st grade in public school. Throughout our son's public school journey (2 years of preschool starting at the age of 3, kindergarten, and 1st grade) we have had his teachers tell us he wasn't ready to move on in the grades.

 The second year of preschool:

His teacher told us he wasn't ready for kindergarten because he couldn't sit down to focus and do his work. My husband and I both knew he was ready for the next level of learning so we took the next steps and found him a new school. 

Kindergarten:

We had moved to a new city right after the school year which gave us the opportunity to pick a new school. We chose a charter school. It was a very nice school, the teachers were nice, the staff was nice, and the curriculum seemed like it would be challenging for him. Our son passed the kindergarten entrance assessment with flying colors.

We didn't have too many problems in this grade. We did have the same issues with him not sitting down to do his work. During that school year at his parent teacher conferences we heard "He is a very bright boy, I just need to be very strict with him to make sure he does his work." We loved that teacher because she seemed to "get" our son's learning style. He is very hands on, gets bored and distracted very easily and most importantly he needs encouragement often or he shuts down and gets very upset and angry and we hear things like, " I just can't do it! I don't want to do it! I hate school!

First Grade:

This is where things start to lead us to our ultimate decision to home school our son. At the beginning of the school year things start off well. Our son pays attention, follows rules and does his homework. Somewhere in the middle of the school year we start to notice that our son is refusing to do his homework at home, comes home super grouchy, and is not interested in things related to school. At the parent teacher conference my husband and I mentioned our concerns to the teacher where she told us that our son is not only a distraction to others but to himself as well so during school she has him sitting off in a desk by himself. I can understand that during tests and individual activities but all day? Our son already feels like no one likes him at school and this concerns us. The year progresses and we hear more from the teacher. She tells us that our son doesn't want to do the coursework when the whole class is working on it so now she doesn't have our son participating with coursework. This started to make us very angry because our son is going to school to learn and this teacher isn't doing anything to help him learn. I thought schools were supposed to have structure and discipline but maybe I am wrong. At the last conference we went to she told us that our son emotionally and behaviorally was not ready for 2nd grade and possibly academically even, because our son hasn't show her that he knows the material. We hear often from our son that he is sick of doing the same stuff all the time, which to me tells me he is ready to move on to new things. There has been a few incidents where our son has come home completely embarrassed and upset because the teacher singled him out for something he didn't do. Our son is learning to hate school and I am so upset by this. 

After the struggles we have went through with public schools my husband and I talked for weeks about what to do for school for our son. We weighed the pros and the cons to both types of schools and we came out with home school being on top. We are starting our 2nd grade home school curriculum very soon and we all are very excited about learning.