It's been far too long

The only real thing that's new in our neck of the woods, now that we're into the new year... is SCHOOL!

January 13 was our first "official" homeschool day.  LP has been asking to be taught to read for a while now, and dangit, I'm not going to tell him no, he can't learn to read, so we started regular reading lessons.  Every "weekday" (I'm defining weekday as each day Skeeve works) we're doing half an hour of reading - except for Tuesdays, when LP has preschool and then he has a friend come over to play.  He's doing exceptionally well, and has plowed through the first 35 lessons of The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading, and has read the first four books in the Bob Books level 1 books.  He doesn't care for OPGTR, and I can understand why - it's very much direct instruction, and not at all fun.  If I have the option, I'm going to invest in significantly more sets of Bob Books, and use OPGTR for skill introduction and concepts, but the Bob Books for his actual practice and the bulk of his lesson time.

Once we get a tax return filed and refund received, we'll pick up the curricula he'll need for the remainder of this year, plus next year.  We're looking at picking up materials for math, science, history, and language arts - all things that would be covered in public.  Seems like a lot, but at his age, it's really only about 2.5h in a day, which is pretty nice.

This evening, as I'm browsing Facebook (as one is wont to do when lazing around for a change), one of my friends is registering her littlest for kindy.  As he's only a year older than LP, it occurs to me that it'd be about that time here, too.  So I go look it up.  Sure enough, if we were registering him for JK instead of doing JK at home, he would be registering this week.  So I went to look up the school, see which he would be going to.  He would, apparently, be heading to Arthur Stringer PS in the fall.  Then I looked closer.  He'd be headed to full day junior kindergarten in the fall.  This fall.  My son, who has a hard enough time keeping it together for his two and a half hours twice a week preschool class, would be expected to enroll in six and a half hour per day, five days per week kindergarten.  Excuse me?  Not so much in this house, thanks.  Especially when their statement on accommodating parents who do not want their child in full-day school reads as "well, this is our program now, so get with it."  Never have I been happier to have a plan in place for LP's education.  Putting him into full day kindergarten six months from now would be a debacle.  I don't think I've seen this boy sit still for more than half an hour EVER - including if the TV is on - nor have I seen him go more than 20m without screaming or yelling.  He'd spend a month in JK and his teacher would call me in to discuss how to medicate my "obviously ADHD" child.  Except that he's not ADHD.  He's a little boy.  So what if he's not developmentally ready to sit in a chair for a couple hours at a clip?  HE ISN'T SUPPOSED TO BE.  I saw all these things about our school district, and where LP would be attending, the programs, the hours (9-3:30, M-F!), the lack of flexibility in or even retention of a half-day program...  And was just shocked.  And... not relieved, exactly, but close.  I was relieved I don't have to send him into this mess.  I was relieved that not only do I have a plan for him, but I have a support group of homeschooling parents to call on, and I will soon have the ability to take LP to homeschooler play-days at the museum.  He will not only have his existing friends, but he will make new friends, and when he does, he won't have to worry about all the other kids going to school and him not, because more and more of his friends WON'T be going to school.  He'll have friends and social times, he'll have solid education that is flexible to accommodate his needs, and neither of us will have to try to navigate the world of the public school, which would take a boy like my LP and try to drug him into fitting into a box quietly.

So, all in all, this update says "we've started our homeschool adventure.  I'm ever so glad we decided to go this route."