End "Regular school" / Transition to Homeschool

Last day of Fuerte before school picture.  Their last day was the Fun Run day--I was subbing at SCHS so I don't have any pictures but it was a fun way to finish off their last day on campus this year.

END OF "REGULAR SCHOOL" -- MARISSA -- Kindergarten

Ms. Plute has been a wonderful teacher for Marissa.  She made her students feel relevant and special, and helped them develop positive relationships with friends.  She gave kids opportunity to be the center of attention, like when the class wrote about the student of the day on the big poster paper.  Marissa loved being special student of the day and making "snow" from the spiral top of the big poster paper before bringing it home.  Marissa enjoyed Ms. Plute's class and is excited about leaning and deciphering new words in the world around her.  Marissa says her favorite thing is picture math because she likes figuring out what the picture is.  In our transition to homeschool, Ms. Plute went out of her way to share some resources for us, which was so helpful. 

END OF "REGULAR SCHOOL" -- PIPER  -- 4th Grade

Piper has been such an independent worker this year.  Ms. Pribyl and the 4th grade team created a balanced work load so students could learn to manage their time and assignments.  Piper enjoyed working on group projects in class and Ms. Pribyl reading to the class in the afternoons (she was sad when she would miss out while going to orchestra, and once we had to buy the book so she could stay current with the class).  And of course she loves Ms. Pribyl's "genius pills" (Skittles candy).  

Ms. Pribyl also went above and beyond going over the curriculum, helping us prepare for homeschool, and for accommodating Piper in getting her Safety Patrol application for next year.

END OF "REGULAR SCHOOL" -- ADDISYN -- 6th Grade

Addisyn is thriving in middle school.  She has a great combo of teachers who work together.  Ms. Torretto (advisory & math), Ms. Cordle (science), and Ms. Meade (English & history), keep the curriculum interesting and balance class time and homework well.  Either Addisyn gets her HW done in classtime or they don't assign much--hopefully it's a sign of Addisyn's work ethic, and was nice because Addisyn could enjoy after school activities and helping with family dinners.  Assignments Addisyn liked were solving a problem to color/fill in the blanks, or do hands on.  Her most memorable projects were the research paper and the Hinduism acrostic poem, as the hardest and best, respectively.  

Before leaving, Addisyn and I met with all her core class teachers and they went over what curriculum they did and plan to do wo we could transition to homeschool meaningfully.  Her teachers all clearly care about her.  She got all A's on her sign out report card and got an Honors recommendation for math next year.

APRIL HOMESCHOOL BEGINS

We started homeschool at home to make sure we know what we are doing before we leave.  It feels like busy work and took 2 weeks to get everyone all transferred and settled in the new routines.  Addisyn and Piper are so great about taking care of their own work without me telling them what to do, since I had to help Marissa with hers.  It was nice when big sisters were able to help with Marissa.  They even got to attend one of the enrichment classes on robotics at the homeschool classroom.

We had to convince homeschool to add *honors* for Addisyn and they had to get IT to help make that happen (apparently the homeschool program never had honors students before).  We adjusted Addisyn's math work load by selecting the more rigorous problems in her workbook.  Now to figure out how to motivate her to pick and read the novel(s) required for Honors English. I like helping A with her math (the only thing she's asked for help on so far).  

Piper wakes up early and starts working on school at 7am in her pajama's to get everything done before lunch.

I'm still trying to figure out the teacher expectations for kindergarten (although not too worried since Marissa seems to be doing pretty well anecdotally compared to her other homeschool students) -- we had to level her up in the homeschool reading program a couple times already.  I like seeing Marissa read books--amazes me!

We got storage boxes that fit behind the motorhome passenger seat to hold their supplies like paper, folders, chromebooks, textbooks, and my instructor's copies of the text books.