After a little over two weeks off for the holidays, we are officially back to school this week.
We finished up school in mid-December after Honeybun showed competence with the entire first grade curriculum. This left us ready to tackle second grade this week and Sugarplum is officially staring kindergarten, though she’s been doing kindergarten work for a few months, we are going to be getting more structured with school for her.
To many people it probably seems impossible that a 6 year old could finish an entire year of school in just 5 months and I’ve already come across my share of skeptics. The standard school system is so engrained in our culture that it’s hard for people to look at things when done differently.
Take a 6 hour school day and strip away the transitioning (moving from one place to the other), lunch time, recess, specials (which my child still gets but I don’t include in her “school” time) and I’m sure it comes out to about the same amount of time we spend on school each day: approximately 2 hours.
One of my biggest concerns throughout the fall was assessment. I wasn’t sure how I was going to make sure she was actually learning what I was trying to teach her. After perusing the textbook options at my local school supply store and looking through the options from my go-to online textbook company I was stumped. Until I came across the perfect solution by accident one day while running errands, a complete Common Core Math and English Language Arts workbook. It was exactly what I needed to see what she actually retained and make sure she was meeting the standards (this is not required for homeschoolers in my area, but I am trying to stay on track in case we return to the traditional school system in the future).
I had Honeybun complete the book on her own. I would help with the directions if she needed it and would give her a chance to revise her work once. Overall she answered 90% of the problems correctly and there weren’t any areas where she just didn’t get it.
All of this combined told me she was ready to move on. One of the reasons we made the switch to homeschooling was because she complained of being bored in kindergarten so it’s always been my goal at home to keep her challenged.
I definitely don’t expect to move through every grade as quickly as we did first. She came out of an advanced kindergarten and was already ahead in first grade which helped her breeze through but I also don’t think it hurts to kep her moving through the curriculum so long as she is demonstrating understanding and comprehension of the curriculum.
