Homeschool group

A short time back I wrote that I had asked another lady in my homeschool group to be a moderator. I was feeling low and useless and needed to have someone else take some of the pressure off of me. I'm really glad that I asked her when I did because we had a situation come up on the forum that if I had addressed the person posting it, I could have been accused of being biased. Instead, my moderator responded to this other person and dealt with the situation. She did let the person know that her type of post was not going to be tolerated.

The group is growing by leaps and bounds. We have an activity planned for every Friday of the month. We found out that our teens aren't too old for park day afterall! lol! They hang out with their friends and just enjoy being together. It also gives us mom's a chance to talk and socialize. Our movie and game days are well attended. We had about 34 teens come to the first one. Not everyone can make every activity but usually there is a core group of us that goes to all the events (or as many as we can). I haven't met everyone in the group and some don't participate at all. But that's okay. They know that this group is there for them in case they do want to get involved. Maybe it's harder for them to do stuff with us right now. Come summer, I expect that a lot of these people will be able to do things with us.

More and more people are joining my group. There are so few teens groups out there and some are very exclusive. Even though this group is mostly for people living in the Ft. Worth area, we do have some that are from as far away as Plano. If someone wants to join the group, I always ask them where they are located and if it's not in the area, I let them know where we are so that they can decide on their own if they want to join. They are the ones who will be doing most of the driving.

In addition to park, movie and game days, we also go to the roller skating activity even though my son doesn't roller skate. He hangs out with his friends and has a fun time. We also have some major upcoming events planned such as a dance and a camp-out. Some of us are going to Scarborough Faire. I look forward to all the activities we can do during the summer when most of us are taking a break from schooling. We plan on having lots of pool parties at our house. Lots of fun things to look forward to, and lots of great people to do them with.

I'm posting some of the pictures of my son and I at the various activities we've had so far. You can tell by the big smile on his face that he's a happy teenager!

SOS and more

It's been about 3 weeks now since my son started doing the SOS English and History programs. It's going well for the most part. I've been checking over his work either before I go to bed or when I get up in the morning. He's doing well in all his subjects. His problem seems to be the projects and essays. I did not set up a term so there are no due dates on any of the lessons. He has skipped over the essays in English and some of the Projects/Experiments in Chemistry. I told him he is to have the essays done by the end of this coming week, or I will go back in and set up a term. Then he WILL have due dates. He's been doing two or more lessons/quizzes a day which is good. So I'm happy about that. I just wish he'd do the essays/projects/experiments a little faster.

He is suppose to be doing Wordly Wise too. I get frustrated with him because he doesn't tell me he's completed something and then give me the paperwork. He says he puts it on the cabinet, but how am I suppose to know unless he tells me? I guess I'm going to have to redo my assignment calendar so that he will do the other work that I want him to do. I still want him to do some of the worksheets I printed out for History. We are watching a video on English grammar from Standard Deviants that I hope will help him to understand grammar better. We have other videos to watch also.

I've thought about finding a tutor to work with him on his writing/composition. Maybe that's why he's been putting off the essays in English? He has some problems with writing complete sentences that actually make sense. I think he writes the way he talks sometimes. I should have made him write more when he was younger. That's mostly my fault. My own reading disability caused me to shy away from having to try and understand what he had written. I should have had someone else (like my husband) do that for me. So now we have to buckle down and work extra hard on that.

I am concerned about my son's social life or rather lack of it. He is more interested in playing his online video games than anything else. If he didn't have bowling, judo and now teen court to do, he'd never go anywhere. He likes being around other kids his age and always has a great time whenever there is some sort of activity going on. Unfortunately, there aren't that many kids his age to hang out with, and the ones there are, don't live close by. Everyone else is so busy, that I can't even get the teen group I started to do anything. I've tried to plan a couple of events but only got a couple of responses so ended up canceling the event. I'm getting real discouraged and have thought about doing away with the teen group. I could always keep in touch with those people in the group if I wanted to have a get-together.

I remember when I was in high school. I had a core group of friends that I always hung around with. Unfortunately, I am no longer in touch with them. My daughter has a few people she knew in public school that she still talks to, and there are some from the youth organization she was involved in she still sees. Who will my son have to talk to from his childhood? That really makes me sad. When we left a couple of homeschool groups that just weren't fitting our needs anymore, the few teens that were in those groups have never gotten in touch with him. I have since found out that they are all buddy-buddy with each other. It makes me wonder then, what's wrong with my son? Did he do or say something to the other teens to make them mad? I don't think he did. I'd like to think it's one of those "out of sight, out of mind" type things. I guess I just worry so much about him. It took a long time for him to come out of his shell. I'd hate to see him go back into it. It would be nice if he found someone his own age to be his "best friend" rather than only want to hang around mom and dad (although it's nice he likes to be around us, but he needs more than us). I will continue to do what I can for him to see that he has other teens to be with. He should be out there just hanging out and talking on the phone or perhaps going on a date, doing something besides sitting at home all the time.

Thank goodness we homeschool!

I am so glad we homeschool otherwise I might be faced with my son missing many, many days of school. He had been sick last week from what I thought was a cold. But as the week went on, he started complaining of his throat being sore and extremely tired. I didn't think he had strep throat because he didn't have the telltale signs of it. I also didn't think it was the flu because he didn't have an upset stomach or any of the other symptoms of the flu. So I reached back in my memory of when my daughter had the same symptoms, and my first thought was mono. But I thought, no that couldn't be because he doesn't drink or eat after anyone and I KNEW that he hadn't kissed anyone either (or at least I didn't think he had). I decided though on Friday that I had to take him to the doctor just to ease my mind. Sure enough after blood was drawn and the doctor finished his exam, he concluded that my son did indeed have mono. Oh joy! At least it wasn't leukemia which was one of the diseases running through my head!

It will take several weeks for him to recuperate from this disease. He will just have to take things easy and not over do it. Good thing he doesn't play any contact sports. He does bowl on a Sat. morning league so that may have to be curtailed for now.

We have several events coming up that I'm a little concerned about. One is our local homeschool zoo day. I've already sent in my reservation along with my money. They do have a limited number of wheelchairs at the zoo, so I'm thinking I will get one. I'll have to take the paperwork the doctor gave me showing that he has mono just so the zoo staff won't think I'm trying to pull a quick one on them. He also has a Theater and Chorus class on Tues. in which they are working on a play they will perform at the end of the year. I told him I would talk to the instructors and explain the situation, but I felt that he could sit there and read his part or sing or whatever it is that they do. He can participate in the physical activities only if he feels like it. There is a homeschool dance coming up March 10th. I think he'll be okay to go to this. It's still a few weeks off. He can always not dance if he wants to.

I remember when my daughter had mono. She was home for about a week, then went back to school but was only there for a few days I think before coming home again. She missed a lot of school that semester. I remember when she did go back to her history class, there was a student teacher who was not very nice. I don't think she cared if my daughter was sick or not. She expected her to turn in the work that was assigned even though the student was allowed so many days to turn it in after being out sick. That probably contributed to the many reasons we decided to homeschool.

We will take our time with his school work. I'm not really on a schedule, but I would like for him to be finished with all his work by the end of May this year. Anyway, I won't push him to do several hours of school work at one time each day. I told him he can do a little bit, then rest for a little bit, then go back to his school work. He'll be fine and things will work out in the long run.

Some Unit Study Pictures

I thought I would post some pictures of the unit studies we have been working on. We finished up Australia and are now working on Volcanoes. Today we had to make a model of Mt. St. Helen's before the 1980 eruption using a topographic map. I made the mistake of having my son do it on a piece of red construction paper (what on earth was I thinking???). In the one picture you can't really see the different elevations but you can in the others. I also took a picture of the different displays I put up on our bulletin board. I'm going to let my son paste those pictures into his binder that he has for both units.

I think he had fun doing the play-doh thing. We did one last week and had so much fun doing it together. We were laughing so hard that my husband could hear us over the TV out in the living room! You'd have thought that my son and I had never played with play-doh before. Well, actually we've never played with homemade play-doh before. I had to make some play-doh for the volcanoe project. All we had was clay, and it was so gooey and soft, that it just wasn't going to work. I had to get on the internet and find a recipe for play-doh. It turned out pretty good if I say so myself. My son has had fun messing with it (I keep it in ziplock baggies on the desk). Our dogs try to eat it. And of course my son has to make a ball out of it and then tease the dogs with it. Shame on him! lol!

Anyway, check out the pics. Hope you enjoy them!

Organization

I received the student Earth Science book by McDougall/Littell the other day from the Amazon.com seller. I'm very excited about using this book except for one thing. I don't have the lab sheets I need that go with a few of the lab activities. I checked the website and I didn't see anything there, so I'm not too sure what these are. Maybe I'll find out more when I get the Teacher's Edition. I got an email from the person sending me the algebra book by Lial. They "found" it just sitting somewhere and realized that they had forgotten to mail it to me. So they are going to refund me my shipping cost. I was surprised. The website said it could take from 4 to 14 days, so I wasn't worried about it. I guess I'll have to write a note to the seller and thank them. That was nice of them to do. Guess if you want peoples business, you'll be nice to them and refund their S&H for forgetting to mail out their order even if that person didn't know it was late!

So, I've been working on some of my paper work for next year. I've got several forms that I've downloaded from the internet that helps with getting things ready for next year. I've used some of the goal charts, curriculum planners, and transcript planners. I don't know how useful these forms will be during the next year, but I feel like I'm doing something useful, so I figure why not. I will at least have a record of what we wanted to cover and what we actually covered when it comes time to fill in that transcript form. Plus when I get rid of the books we used for those years, I'll have a record of what books we used and what they covered. Not that I really need a record of what I teach. I'm in Texas, I don't have to show proof of my curriculum. Mostly I decided I needed a record of what my son is learning because of the problem I had when I made up my daughters transcript. She was trying to join the Air Force and they needed a copy of her transcript. Since she went to public school for 9th & 10th, I kind of figured out what she took those years by going to the schools website and scanning through the courses for the years she was there. I did manage to find some old report cards for those years too, which helped to straighten out some confusion on some of the classes we thought she had taken. When I went to get the records for her homeschooling classes that she took from School of Tomorrow, I could not find them. Luckily I still had the books she had been using and was able to record the subjects and grades from that. It wasn't until a few days ago that I found the actual report card/progress report for both kids stuck in the back of a folder in a filing cabinet. I was really relieved to find those reports. I knew I had them but just didn't know where. With all the moving around we did a few years back, I'm surprised I can find anything!

My son has fallen behind even more in his school work. I asked him why he hadn't done any work in some of his subjects. His answer was that he was stuck. I asked him what he should do when he is stuck, and his answer was "Ask you?" I couldn't believe it. I could understand not wanting to "raise your hand" in public school when you have a question, but at home? He got in trouble for that. I asked him if he wanted to be grounded from the computer? Of course I got a no from him. lol! We will be working on those subjects more intensely. There's no excuse for him to not do the work. I think he was just too lazy and was way more interested in playing his computer games (even though he's not allowed to do that until 4 p.m.).

I think I'll have to limit his online playing some more. He normally can't get on until 4 p.m. and has to quit at 10 p.m. I know that's a long time but you've got to understand that he doesn't have any "real" friends. The kids that are around us are either too young or too old. We have never met the family to the north of us. The one son that is close to my sons age is a real snot. He threw a diaper (whether it was soiled or not I don't know) at my son one time when he and another boy (who just happened to be a friend of this kid) came up their drive-way with their water guns. This kid told my son to get off his property. Nice neighbors huh? The boy who is friends with this kid (I guess he still is, I don't see them hanging out too much) is several years younger than my son. They really don't get along too well. When we first moved here, they played together but the boy doesn't "play" very well and broke some of my sons toys. My son is real particular about his toys and takes good care of them. They would play video games, but my son is better than this boy and he would get upset with my son because he beat him all the time. Needless to say, they don't hang out together. The kids across the street from us are a lot younger than my son. I've only talked to the parents a couple of times. We only have 7 families on our street and two of those only have adult children. Nobody associates with anyone. The one family (kid with the diaper) have a problem with one of the families across from us. I know the older boys would get into a shouting match every once in a while. The "diaper" family I don't think rides the school bus anymore. Maybe they were banned? Wouldn't surprised me. Their house is up for sale, so hopefully someone will buy it soon. It would be nice to actually get some people in that my son could hang out with. Kind of hard to make friends in the country with everyone spread out so much. I have tried to find other outlets where he can interact with other kids close to his age. He is on a bowling league throughout the school year. We did 4H but will probably quit that or find another club to join. Not real happy in the one we were in. We have been doing outtings with a Yahoo homeschool group. They are from the local area and try to have activities for the "tweens" to do. I'm thinking about getting a group going that maybe does his online game or even Anime. He likes that and I found out a lot of kids do too.