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[mommydama]

I've been working hard on curriculum for our next "school year". We will be finished with what we are doing now and ready for the next phase in August, I predict, so I really need to get this finished and get things ordered. It is stressing me out as I thought I had found the perfect (or as perfect as it gets) curriculum last year and it has now

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[altarflame]

It's so good to see you post :)

I am so, so SO up in the air about school :/ I've seriously considered putting Ananda and Aaron in the virtual school offered by Florida K-12, for some subjects (which ones?! How many?!) as well as just taking advantage of public school electives (band for their musical instruments? art for Ananda?). I'm looking at various different enrichment and Friday school programs, too, that all have different pros and cons. AND...Isaac, Jake and Elise got into the charter school down the street, this time. Do I put them in? Isaac, only? Isaac and Elise, who desperately wants to go to Kindergarten like all the other preschoolers are going to? All three of them? None of them?

I keep asking myself if how much less energy and motivation I have for homeschooling since I've been in college means maybe they should go to school, or means obviously I shouldn't be in school.Then I think, no, I'd lost my motivation and energy long before college...THEN I think well, they're all doing great and progressing regardless! Yet I just cannot become comfortable with true unschooling, regardless of how it would "free me up" :/

Compounding this sort of confusion: Ananda and Aaron are LOVING every minute of GMYS camp, which is held in a public high school and has hundreds of kids (most of whom are public schooled kids). I see Annie especially coming home glowing talking about everything she did that day. Then I see her just hanging around our house, spending every second I'll allow on a screen and whining about doing chores. I know she would have had some major problems in school years ago - but maybe that time is past. Maybe for the younger kids, the same challenges just aren't present. They're looking forward to their camp starting, and maybe it's a good thing, to be out in the world participating in life. <--That is a betrayal of so many personal convictions I've traditionally held, to even think that way as though homeschooling were not the real world or actual life!

*sigh*

The church camp thing is really exciting! I hope they all love it. And yeah, geez, it is a looong time.

Our extracurriculars are up in the air just like our school plans....it seems obvious that Ananda and Aaron will be at a higher level with their instruments after this camp, which is great..except that the "higher level" classes are up the road, not down here at this Homestead extension they've been going to :/ Likewise, we've got a second car now, and Tawanna, Aaron's old hip hop dance teacher, has offered by phone several times to fully scholarship him. He REALLY wants to do that. The car was the obstacle because Dance Empire is up the road. But it brings up all these questions - can Annie dance for free? I doubt it, and she also wants to dance :/ Are they gonna scholarship travel and lodging costs when Aaron skyrockets them into gold medals again? I doubt that as well. So I should just let it go...right? HOW CAN I JUST LET IT GO?? Isaac asks about soccer and I think it would be good for him, but I just don't know if I can commit the three long evenings a week to that. Logistically or in personal resources. I see everybody being in scouts.

And then I see that we may well be moving in the middle of the school year, so what does that mean for any of this? Argh. I don't know how you ever planned anything when you guys were moving so much!

[mommydama]

I do not have any idea how you make decisions like that. You meaning me and the rest of the world. Not YOU you. I have agonized over the decision of school or not all year long. I still am not sure I'm doing the right thing. But when Brad stated in writing that he would support homeschooling until high school age, I just let it go and plan to homeschool until it becomes untenable. Or someone is literally begging to go to school for some reason.

I know dance has been a very difficult decision for you. All I can compare it to is gymnastics for Zoe. The other girls have begged to do gymnastics numerous times and I have always said to them that if they do that, it has to be all they do just as it is for Zoe. That usually kills it for them. And maybe it is time for Annie to face the reality that Aaron is going to get the scholarship and she is not and that is how he gets to do it. Her path lies elsewhere. Doesn't mean she can't dance...money is a reality. It is either there or it isn't. I don't know, this probably doesn't make any sense. But I see the dilemma, believe me.

I feel like our activities are on a knife's edge. We can't REALLY afford all of them. But while the money is there, I'm pushing it through. When the money isn't there, we will face the trauma of pulling out, I guess. Dang, I dread that.

[mommydama]

I've been thinking about this a lot and I feel like I just have to say that I think it is so great that Aaron got offered a scholarship to dance and you guys have the means to get him there again and I hope he gets to do it. I really do. The thought of him not dancing with all that going for him makes me sad. Annie's thing will come and if dance is that important to her there will be a way someday.