Mid-School year Review

As a SAHM, when the time came to put my oldest son in school, I found the decision of WHERE to send him quite overwhelming. There are so many option out there. First there is the traditional brick and motor public school. My husband and I decided for many reasons that we would not be sending our kids to public school. The large class sizes, disregard for religion and the prevalence of sexual education that was no where near appropriate in our minds are the most important reasons. Then there is private school. While this is a goal for us in the future it is not feasible at this time due to the cost-which I think a lot of families find themselves in the same position. So we were left with homeschooling. Of course within this category there are what feels like millions of options. There are many religious oriented programs, the most well known are Seton, Mother of Divine Grace and Kolbe Academy. Seton seemed to me the most cost effective since books, syllabi and grading were all included in the cost. The only issue I had with the price was that the fee for Kindergarten (along with the new family fee of $30) was due all at once. Now sure, the total was only $230.00 but it was a shame that they did not allow you to break that payment up over say 3 months. What I did not like about the program was that the materials seemed outdated and the religion course felt very heavy for 5-6 year olds. Mother of Divine Grace was pretty costly in my opinion. Looking around the site you learn that books are separate and with a new family fee of $100, and enrollment fee of $600-$690 (depending on which payment plan is chosen) it was the most expensive one I looked into. In my opinion if I am going to spend close to $800 just for the enrollment and fees plus pay for books I might as well spend a little extra and send my kid to the private school where I am not the teacher! Kolbe Academy was in the middle and ultimately still costly and while the texts felt more appropriate we still felt that it wasn't for us. That led us to the online public school arena. At this point in my journey I came across two different programs. K12 and Connections Academy. I tried to find info comparing the two directly but most of the reviews I found were old and in other states. So I took a chance and went with the K12 program offered through iNsight of Oregon. So far my experience has been great. My son has a teacher and he receives messages from her multiple times a week. The topics range from simple questions about an art piece or his favorite game and sometimes they contain links to stories that he is asked to comment on. In order for attendance to count you have to have communication with the teacher twice a week and the emials are a simple way to do that. As for the curriculum, so far I really like it. It seems a little simplistic in some ways-like the math began with shapes and colors which my son already knew-but I had to keep in mind that my son's birthday is in October so he is one of the oldest kids in his grade. Some of the vocabulary has also been pretty simple for him but it is nice to know that my son understands the meaning of these common words or phrases. THe online aspect of the program is so easy to use and a lot of the reading portions have audio so if you are busy (or have a sore throat like I did for a week) there are parts that you can play for your child. THey have fun games for helping with vocabulary, phonics and math. Science is more a parental controlled subject as there are not many games involved but they do give you a lot of cool optional lessons that include crafts, experiments and exploration of the natural world around you. So if you have a very curious child they can do a lot with the suggestions they offer. History has been interesting for my son and he enjoys hearing stories about other cultures and the maps are simple and not overwhelming. He really loves all the coloring he gets to do too! I feel sometimes that the Language Arts Lit Comprehension can be a bit tedious and repetitive as they have you introduce, review and explore each story/poem you read. Admittedly there are times I will re-read the story twice but usually a third time is not necessary. Thankfully these sections are easy to navigate thru and mark as complete. They have a really cool social studies course that explains difference between rights and responsibilities, wants versus needs and talks about our Country in a very positive way-even teaching the Pledge of Allegiance! I really like how easy it is to communicate with the teachers and to see my son's progress in each course. They even allow you to skip lessons and units if you pass the unit checkpoints. The best thing about it though: All of this, the help, the books the curriculum and syllabi are FREE. We even got a computer complete with mouse, keyboard, a headset with a microphone and a scanner/printer combo. Its been great having a computer just for him to use. I have truly enjoyed the first half of the school year and I will definitely be using this school next year for my son and for his younger brother!