For a few hours this week, it seemed as though we might start our year as a one-student homeschool. Poppy had expressed an interest in trying out public schooling for her sixth-grade year, so last year we put in applications at a couple of local charter schools. She was wait-listed for both of them, and she was OK with it. And then early last week one of the schools emailed me to say “We have a spot open for Poppy! We need to know if she wants it ASAP!”

She basically had 24 hours to make a decision. We went over to the school for a quick tour and to meet some of the teachers. They were all nice, but the school was in school-starts-next-week chaos so for a kid who has never been to school before I’d imagine it was a little hard to envision what it would look like on a day when there weren’t boxes piled up everywhere.

I was conflicted about the whole situation. If she decided to go, we’d lose our flexible schedule and our ability to cater her curriculum to her needs. But she’d also get to have a new experience and make new friends, and I was excited about that part of it for her. As I tucked her into bed that night, I realized that I emphatically did not want her to go. As much as we butt heads over schoolwork sometimes, I love spending my days with her. I would’ve missed her tremendously.

Had we gotten the email a week or even a few days earlier, I think Poppy might have given it a shot. But having to make the decision in such a short amount of time overwhelmed her, I think, and she decided to stick to homeschool this year. I was relieved. She says she wants to apply again next year, which gives me a full year to prepare myself for her to get in and spend her days elsewhere.

We started our school year this week, and it’s gone alright. We’ve let the kids stay up late to watch the Olympics most nights, so we had a few grumpy beginnings. But we also finished school before noon every day and then watched the Olympics, played outside or played video games, which Poppy most certainly wouldn’t have been able to do had she chosen to enroll in the charter school.

Here’s a little of what Pete and Poppy worked on this week:

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Reading

Our history book is starting us out in Victorian England this year, so I picked a complementary read-aloud to kick things off. We’re reading “The Secret Garden,” which Poppy and I read way back in 2011. I’m having a hard time nailing that Yorkshire accent.

Vocabulary

The kids picked up where they left off last year with Wordly Wise 3000. They’re only scheduled to do it a couple days a week, but they both misread their assignment sheet this week and did extra lessons. I’m not complaining. (They did, though.)

Memorization

I thought we’d start the year by revisiting the list of US presidents, and Poppy recited them all without hesitation. Steel trap, just like her father. Pete had a bit more difficulty with it, but he nearly has it all down already.

Math

Both kids are still working through the same curriculum they were doing last year, because at some point we switched things up mid-year. They’ve been on a weird schedule with their math ever since. Poppy jumped right back into her curriculum, but Pete is doing some multiplication review to make sure he’s solid there before we start his math book again.

Science

Pete and I started Mr. Q’s Earth Science this week, and he loves it. I loaded the student text onto the Kindle app on the iPad, and he read it to me from there. Our experiment this week was dropping asteroids (marbles) onto the surface of a planet (a pan of flour and cocoa) from various heights and measuring the impact craters. Today we’re going to make a DIY planetarium using a cereal box, a big nail and some constellation templates.

History

We’ve reached Volume Four of “Story of the World,” which begins with Queen Victoria and her Crystal Palace and the East India Company’s involvement in India. Today we’ll be building our own Crystal Palace, but it’ll be made from paper rather than glass.

Extracurricular

Poppy’s soccer practice started a few weeks ago, and we’re finally getting back to our regular schedule with guitar, tae kwon do and piano.

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It’s felt like we aren’t doing quite as much as usual this week, but that’s because some of our outsourced classes haven’t started yet. It’ll be busy enough once those start up, so I’m trying to remind myself to enjoy our laid-back days while I can.

Have your kids gone back to school yet?

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