Week 2 of homeschooling

Oh how the mouse loves to play

When the cat is away!

Finally had time to really set down and go through all of our sons school work.  (He is in 7th grade so I do not check everything he does; he needs to learn to be responsible at this point.)  I started with his online grade book, boy was that an eye opener.  You see Connections Academy has some pretty nifty features for us parents one of them is whenever he takes a quiz or test; it times that activity so if they get poor score you can see how long they actually spent on it.  Well it is amazing but our son averaged just 2 minutes per quiz that first week of school.  As I begun to pull up these quizzes and quick checks and see the ones he missed I just started asking him the questions out loud, and amazing he knew all the answers, he just had not taken the time to get the work done.

So we started off the week with a schedule posted that told him what time each subject was to be started and when he had breaks and lunch.  This was to help him maintain a routine that is important for him to learn, routines help with organization.  Once again we thought this plan would work.

Yet each and every time I checked his status he was not on the subject that the schedule said he should be on, and he always had an excuse.  By about the middle of the week, I was so frustrated I informed him starting following the schedule or go back to a brick and mortar school.  Boy was that a mistake, he freaked out started crying, hollering, and telling me that if I enrolled him in a brick and mortar school he would run away.  As he is yelling at me, I yell back because I was so frustrated with him.  He tells me that he is a smart kid we will run away and get a job because he is the size of an adult (he hit the 5 foot mark) no one will know he is a kid.  Well let me tell you at this point it was hard not to laugh out loud, I mean really what planet was this kid from, who in the world would hire a kid with ADHD to the point without his meds he would forget to wear shoes in the snow…lol I held it together and said the dreaded phrase I never thought would come out of my mouth.  I told him to set down and do his work, I was not telling him again, he had the comeback of why should I and I replied

‘Because I am your Mother and I said so’

As soon as I said it I felt faint, I mean really, when had I became my mother who felt like she never had to explain anything to me.  I had to just walk out of the room; I could not even stay to make sure he stayed on task.

The decision to home school has become a journey for all of us; it is a daily test of patience.  Along with increased expenses to home school, we got lucky and found a public school, but just the cost of being home makes expenses more.  For one thing it is amazing how much food a kid will want to eat if he can see the kitchen from where he works on his school work. Not to mention that if you are home all day you heat and cool your house differently and lunch tends to be more involved than packing a sandwich for school.

I have faced the daily battle of having to be the ever present extra eyes in the room because given the chance our son will skip any assignment that he doesn’t want to do or doesn’t think is something he really wants to learn.  Connections Academy is really a wonderful tool for homeschooling, the child logs in and selects the subject then has a few screens of text and pictures telling them what they are going to be working on, along with an assignment then some type of assessment to measure if they learned it or not.  Really a wonderful tool, IF and this is a big IF you take the time to read the screens.  That seems to be what has been lacking in our household.  I have a child who reads at a college level, yet fails to read the simplest of directions that result in him failing a section.  And this is school, public school at that they do not have the chance for do over’s!  The biggest battle has been the time, he needs to have 30 hours of schooling a week, yet he wants to rush each day so he can be done in a just a few hours, for what who knows.  Until his grades improve he is not allowed to play video games, or watch TV so not very many things to look forward to.

Well we will just have to hope the third week is a better week.  This weekend we had a lot of people talk to our son about the importance of doing his school work correctly.  Hopefully someone finally got through to him.  I know that he had some people he really cares and respects tell him how important this is.