2014-2015 School Updates

So I haven't been here in forever.  I thought I would post an update on how everyone is doing.

My oldest is going through the growing pains of increasing young adult responsibility.  I'm not involved in her community college classes.  She handles her assignments and her professors' expectations.  I do still read her papers and offer suggestions but I notice she wants to hear from the peer reviewer before taking my edit suggestions into consideration.  Imagine my shock face.  I know this is a necessary part of growing up, I'm trying not to take it personally.  She had one mishap waiting until the last minute to upload an assignment to her instructor.  Let's just say the assignment didn't make it ... and unlike high school there are no excuses or time extensions.  That was a hard lesson to learn, but again a necessary part of growing up.  She is also balancing a part-time job and recognizing the difficulty of working with a unreasonable/difficult boss and immature co-workers.  I love it when all the lessons you try to teach your kids early on become REAL.  I always said if you learn how to get along with siblings at home, you learn the skills necessary to get along with co-workers and others later in life.  When she leaves to go away to college she should be well prepared.

First day of school

The younger two are enjoying public school.  At the time of this post they are getting straight As in all of their classes.  Proud mama moment right there.  I love hearing their stories when they get home from school.  All those IEW writing lessons and making the kids write paragraphs, summaries, and papers are truly paying off.  I didn't do a great job of keeping pace in my homeschool so as a consequence my kids are in classes that I know are well below their academic potential.  However, its a good transition year for them and I know their instructors recognize at this point that they should be in higher level classes.  My 10th grader has Honors English because of her Stanford scores.  She is reading some books she's already read but this class has been a good fit.  She says its her goal to be in all Honors classes next year.
    

First day of school

Even with all As my 8th grader I know isn't adequately challenged and her peers are delegating writing/presenting duties to her in class projects because they recognize she is an expressive writer.  I'm not surprised that she is excelling.  I always knew she thrived on competition and strives to be the best at everything she undertakes in the classroom.  She didn't realize the seriousness of the Stanford test when she took it last year (even though I told them), so her scores were below her potential.  As a consequence, her classes don't match her capabilities. Math is the only exception, she is on grade level there.  I suspect after this academic year, she will enter high school at Honors and AP levels.  Again this is a transition year so they are getting used to all the changes.  Princess says some days she looks around the classroom and thinks, "I'm really in public school."  A classmate who was previously homeschooled, shares the moment with her.  She also shared with me that in years past she could listen to 3-4 episodes of Adventures in Odyssey before falling asleep. Now she barely hears all of one episode before she's asleep.  A full day's work can do that to you.