Feel Like A Kid In A Candy Store

Is it crazy that I am so excited as I pick out the kids curriculum for this year? Last year we did unit studies I printed off line and some on line stuff. This Year I am buying their stuff with lessons and lesson plans already put together. We just open and start learning. I am so happy that my son got his scholarship and I am finally able to use it. After tons of research and pouring over everything I have decided on the biggest parts of what we will be learning I think.

We are going to be using a set called Sonlight, it will cover History, Bible, Language Arts, Vocabulary, Reading and I am also getting Science from them. It just comes in it’s own pack you buy extra.

I was really excited when I seen what I clicked on for Science. I was just looking at the age range on them and trying to decide what age range I wanted to start with. I picked one that looked like it fit a good age range and grade range for the kids. When I open it to see what it covered I didn’t even have to look at any others, I knew it was what we would be using this year. We will be learning about Health, Medicine and Human Anatomy. I had been looking at unit studies and things to teach about the human body. But I wanted to go into more detael than what most cover. This covers everything I wanted to cover and breaks it down just about the way I was looking at breaking it down.

I like it to because it isn’t just giving them a text book and tell them to read a chapter and do questions at the end. It is about 65 different books between the two sets that they will be reading and doing their lessons from. I just hope it last them the year because of the way they read. I figure with having to stop and do the lessons it should slow them down at least a little I hope. It’s nice because both kids will use the same two sets for the year they are put together to work with age and grade ranges. With them only being 20 months apart makes it easy to school them together. I don’t think my big boy will have a problem doing the work or keeping up but if he dose he can always work at his pace and she can keep working at hers. If it takes him two years to do the set that is ok too.

They are excited as I am to get started. I can’t order for a couple of weeks. I am going to see if father of the year can order it and I can go ahead and get it on its way because we like to start the day after labor day. They will let you order and make payments if he is able to do that then I can pay it off in couple weeks when I get money. I would just let him pay for it since he isn’t doing anything else but if I do that and he messes it up and don’t pay for it or something I will have a mess. I want to be able to order from them again later.

I can’t wait for them to get it and start I know they can’t they have been asking. I think this year is going to be a good year.

Then I think wow this is what life has become, I am excited over ordering curriculum to teach my kids at home instead of sending them to school. When did this happen? Private school and home school were two things I was never going to do. Private schools just seem to shelter and coddle the kids to much and home school was even more sheltered than private school kids. We have now ran the course of all three and I don’t know if we will ever go back to either of the first two. God sure open my eyes up and showed me.

I almost forgot I bet you are all going where is the math don’t they need to learn math and maybe some spelling. Of course they do and they are going to be. We decided to go with life of Fred for math and all about spelling for spelling.

I can’t wait to decide what to use for my two little ones yet. That will come in the next day or two.

 

Know what you are doing before you start

You know I don’t understand the state sometimes. They tell all these people they are going to give them this scholarship to send their kids to private school or homeschool them. If they have one of the special needs that’s on their list and your are one of the first 1800 to get approved. This isn’t why we started homeschooling, we started before I ever found out about it. We did apply when we found out and got approved and was awarded the money. But you also could not be enrolled in a public school. So some people had to pull their kids out of school who wanted to get it. Keep in mind these kids are special needs kids. They have different therapies and things they are getting through the school that is hard to get other places and some insurances won’t pay for. And they are waiting on this money to buy curriculum for the year to teach them or the money to put them in a school.

Here we are a month into the second semester of school for our area and the money is sitting there pretty much unable to be used. Others are still waiting to hear if they got it and have their accounts funded. We got our letter November/December and our founds were put into our account the end of December.

But the way they are doing it right now is that you have to buy the stuff upfront out of pocket and then turn your receipts into them and wait to be reimbursed. Wouldn’t be to big of a problem except for the fact that a lot of the curriculum is close to $100 or more. Then they don’t reimburse you in a few weeks or a month it’s whenever they get to it. They can’t tell you when that might be. Some people have waited months and months to get money back. Some are still waiting and have been waiting forever already. The math and spelling I want to use with the kids is around $400. But it is the books the extra stuff to go with it and all. I ordered the set of everything because I plan to use it with both kids and I plan to use it for more than just a year. It is set up to be used for years. The math on the other hand I figure we will finish in a year or less but not sure. I ordered the first 13 books and they have 20 lessons each. I figure the first couple they may finish faster than the others because it will be review probably for them. I also pan to ad some lessons and things to it. Them I plan to keep and put up for my little ones once they get ready to start schooling.

They are supposed to have a plan in place where you can send them a list of things that you want and what site you want them from they will order and send it to you. Well they took that a way before we ever got our funding and most people have yet to see the things they have asked for. Some just a few days ago said that they looked and it says their stuff was bought but is now being shipped to the scholarship place. How are they going to figure all that out and what goes to who once it gets there? It was supposed to be shipped straight to them. Who is going to now pay the shipping to get it from there to the people it was supposed to go to to start with. Is that going to come out of the scholarship now too? It shouldn’t because a lot of places have free shipping if it is over so much and when it don’t the shipping isn’t cheap because most stuff isn’t light. Why should we have to pay shipping when it was free or already paid for once?

We have done some school and the kids are learning everyday doing different things. We just don’t have a curriculum we are following right now or written work we are doing right now. They are more researching different things that they want to learn about or know about. My son was asking me today about the different presidents and why they did different things or who did what. I told him that would be great to look up and read about. It just so happens that not long after our talk we stopped at a little used store and found 8 nice books about 8 of the different ones. I got them all for us to use. They have a lot of information in them they are from one of the local jr high schools.

I wasn’t counting on the scholarship to buy stuff because, I decided and started schooling before I even knew about it and I really figured that when I applied it would be to late he wouldn’t get it. But then when they said he had it I figured I would use it to buy us some different things than what we been doing. What we had been doing really wasn’t working for us. I was going to find something else to use but then we got it so I figured instead of finding something else to use then changing again once we order our stuff and switching again this year I would just wait and we would have stuff by the end of the month. Well they haven’t even gotten the thing set up where we can really use it yet an we are almost to the end of the month. I already counted on using the summer to make up for time we took off but now it looks like we are going to run into next year’s school time before we get to finish. I am thinking about just schooling until November once we get our stuff then taking off November and December. Then start our new school year January. Then do the same and just start our new year the first of the year every year and take that break at the end for holidays and things. But I just thought I don’t know how that will work because we are thinking of starting a new program and I am not sure how they run their year. I guess I will figure that out once we look into it and decide.

But what about all these kids who need the founds to get thereapy for their kids and to buy stuff to teach them who are waiting because they said that you couldn’t have your child enrolled in public school and still get it. What are they going to say when they don’t have a portfolio together at the end of the year or don’t do good on the test if they decide to go that route since they didn’t have the stuff they needed to do school.

I understand that this is the first year they have done this. But why didn’t they figure all this stuff out before they put it out there for everyone to apply for it? At least let people leave their kids in school until they got it approved. Then give them so many days to take them out or something. It isn’t a huge big deal for us because with all that is going on with my dad we are taking a little extra time off. But I would like to get the stuff ordered why we are taking a break so that we can get started on it when we are ready to start back.

Scholarship News

As you all know my oldest son is autistic. This year because of a lot of things that have went on we decided to homeschool. I found out that there is a scholarship I could get to help buy things for school for him. We signed up at the end of September and have been waiting for them to go through all their steps and get the founding. We got our award letter pretty quickly but hadn’t heard anything else from them in a while. We are half way through the school year here. I wrote to them the other month and asked about it and they said founds would go out end of November or beginning of December. They didn’t say if that would be for everyone or just some and if some who it would be for.

I log in a few times a week to check to see if there is any changes but there haven’t been. I decided to email them tonight and ask them about it and if we could find out where we are on the list and when they think the funding would be granted for him.

I guess I should have checked my email first because when I got done I logged in and found one from a few days ago they sent. It said that they finished approving everything and that his money should be granted with in the next month. It said that they are waiting on their founding to come in so they can grant it.

Now I have to decide what curriculum to use for him for the next year and what I am going to finish our year out with this year.

It made me realise that I haven’t even thought about his scholarship and what would happen if or when we move. It is a state scholarship so I don’t know if once it is granted and we move if we can still use it or not. I guess it is something I am going to have to find out. Figure out what to do once we find out. If I we can’t still use it I guess I will order his curriculum for the next few years and other things that we want to use and put it up until we are ready. I’m just happy we got it because right now it is a huge help in getting the things he needs.