So, we've decided to try a web-based charter school to supplement our homeschooling. There are a few different reasons we wanted to try it. They will reimburse us for classes we take at Village Home. We can try Rosetta Stone software for foreign language learning for free. Isabel wanted to see what they had for math so we are trying that part also.
What's nice is that we can pick and choose which parts we want to use and what level we want to work at. Isabel is starting with the 4th grade math, but if it's too easy (or too hard) we can move her up or back to review. She also gets a laptop to use for the "school year". It's officially a public school, so they are still using the concept of "school days" and "school year", so she has to give the laptop back in June, but we can still use our PC with the Rosetta Stone I think over the summer.
Unfortunately, Ben missed the cutoff by couple months (you have to be five years old by Sept.) so he can't get the Kindergarten stuff. If we still like it and it's still around next fall maybe he can try the K or 1st grade stuff.
We do get a home (or another place of our choosing) visit by a "teacher" every couple weeks to see if we need anything and to check up on us I guess. She is nice but very young and is still figuring out the homeschooling vibe I think. Isabel seems to like her.
Since it's a public school really that means we also signed up for all the assessment testing that the Oregon public schools have to do. The day after we started we found out that Isabel has to do a writing test next month. Now, we are not wild about assessment testing. Isabel can probably count on one hand the number of tests she's taken in her life. You end up teaching for the test which is not where we want to go.
I'm not really impressed with their math lessons (Odysseyware). It's just learning some vocabulary words with some little computer games and taking a quiz and then practicing some skills and taking a quiz and then practicing some more and taking a quiz and then taking a test that reviews the past few lessons. I had forgotten that that's what elementary textbooks were like. Different from what we usually do around here which is focus on a topic and get several books from the library about it and looking it up online and reading about it and exploring avenues that interest us and going off on tangents and making up projects and even dropping the whole topic if it doesn't spark an interest.
Anyway, I told Isabel she could try it. We'll see if it adds a little structure that she needs or if her interest peters off.
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Update: I wrote this a month ago and forgot to post it. We've since dropped the math because of the reasons stated and Isabel wasn't too thrilled with it. We started the Rosetta Stone German and this is pretty nice.
We opted out of the assesment testing. We are okay with the every-couple-of-years testing, but don't feel it's necessary every few months and actually conterproductive for us.
We are still meeting with the "teacher" because Isabel likes her, though we need to talk to her about using candy as a reward system for correct answers. Like I said, she's young.
Oh and I am so not Thrilled with it!!
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