Wednesday, April 23, 2008

school decisions

Life in the Molina household has been filled with discussions and debates and choices the last few weeks.

I have been a homeschool teacher since Kaleb was about 2 1/2 and asked me to teach him how to read. When he was 6 years old we found the curriculum that was a perfect fit for our family and have been using Sonlight Curriculum ever since.

Kaleb is going to be entering 9th grade this coming fall and life changes for a homeschool family when you have a highschooler, it seems to me. It suddenly became important that he had the right science class and that he finishes his mathbook on time. The letters "PSAT" have been tossed around lately and to be honest I am not exactly sure what exactly they mean for the future college student, but it must be important!!!

We live very close to an international, missionary school. Kaleb has been showing signs of wanting mroe of a challenge out of life and in my desparation to think of something I chose school as being a way he could become more independent. We looked into his attending ABC (the school I mentioned); even going as far as getting an application after talking to the headmaster on campus and checking out which vaccinations he would need.

I was just not feeling great about our choice. I mean, my stomach hurt when I thought about it but I thought that this might be normal for a mom who is disappointed that her direct part in the schooling of her son is finished. I was so disappointed at the idea of not choosing what classes he took along with him through highschool! I mean, it is almost like I put up with all the younger grades to finally get to highschool and then not be allowed to attend!!!

I didn't feel that this was a good enough reason to choose not to send Kaleb to ABC but after our meeting with the headmaster we realized that the three main reasons we were excited about the schol did not excist for him there. We were excited about him taking part in organized sports (nothing there), having music lessons or classes offered (nothing) and a math teacher that could actually answer questions (they don't teach anything past Algebra I and Kaleb took that this year).

So, this brings us up to the last few weeks of decisions and debates and choices. After all of this, we finally decided that the best thing for Kaleb is to stay home and study from Sonlight Curriculum again; studying the History of Christianity with his dad which will be a great challenge for him, I think. He will start taking Latin (unless he changes our minds before September; he wants Swahili) as well.

We occasionally attend an English service at a church on the ABC campus. They have a youth group and Kaleb is going to attend for the first time tonight. Friends of ours are starting a paintgun (I can't raelly remember what it is called) thing that Kaleb and Joel and maybe Andrew will take part in occasionally. We have heard about an ultimate frisbee game that takes place on Sunday afternoons. We are hoping for piano lessons in the future as well and Kaleb would love a way to continue with his guitar lessons.

So, that is where we are at right now!

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