Every morning, B10 informs me how many days till summer vacation. He includes the weekends, so his count is different from B16's, who counts only the remaining school days.
Chicklet isn't as excited, because for math, she'll be plugging away for quite a few more weeks. It was her choice not to push harder; but she wisely decided to focus on a manageable daily amount rather than overwhelm herself with too much information at once. (For my homeschooling friends, we're using a self-paced online program called ALEKS which has been excellent.) I'm happy that she'll be keeping her math-brain active this summer. (But I do wish she could find her grammar and map-reading workbooks that we still need to finish!)
But it's been a good school year.
You may recall that B10 is finishing up fourth grade in public school. Previously, he was homeschooled, but when we moved, we decided to try him at the elementary school in our new neighborhood, since we had heard it praised so highly. I wasn't sure I had the energy to keep him busy enough at home; he has so much energy, I had a feeling he might be more engaged in a school setting. (Incidentally, it hit me just a few weeks ago that, although all of our kids are outgoing, B10 is our only other true extrovert besides Blondechick.)
And he's had a great year. He's getting good grades; he's well-liked by his teacher and his classmates; he's motivated to learn, to behave and to treat others well. There really hasn't been a single negative thing about his experience. We are so thankful! So he'll return in the fall for fifth grade, which will be his last year there. He sometimes speaks longingly of being homeschooled, but the main draw is being able to sleep in, I'm pretty certain. He does have a little stack of workbooks that he likes to do on non-attendance days, so he can feel homeschooled again. One time he told me he wished he could go to school every other day, and be homeschooled on the other days.
Chicklet12 and I have had a sweet sixth-grade year together. One of my goals was to get her reading longer books for longer periods of time, and we definitely achieved that. Yay!! I also wanted to get her "caught up" to where she should be in math, and when she's finished with ALEKS, she will be there. Another goal was to invest time in our relationship--with teenagerhood looming in September! So we went on the cruise together. We also went out to breakfast more than a few times; we've shopped together, cooked together, prayed together, and learned together. But it wasn't all one-on-one time; we also had our classical co-op once a week, plus theater classes and rehearsals, and homeschooled friends, church friends and theater friends to fit into her social calendar!
It's been bittersweet, since we knew that it was probably going to be her last year being homeschooled. And that's the plan for 7th grade--to go to the public middle school. By all accounts, it's not a great school, but it could be worse. So this year she went there for a few months for one period, for choir, which was long enough for her to make a few friends and imagine herself going there. I wish there was a better option, but I also trust that God is in it and He'll provide for her. I can always pull her out and homeschool her if I have to!
But God is doing something in my heart; it feels like He is gently closing the door on homeschooling, at least for a season, because He wants to direct my attention to other things. It seems crazy to send our lovely daughter to a rough school full of junior high boys--of all things!--and it seems many of the girls are just as bad. But we know other lovely girls who've done fine there, and Chicklet has an inner strength and self-possession that will serve her well and probably be strengthened in that setting.
Meanwhile, God is opening doors in my relationships with women who want prayer, who want to be discipled, and with people who want to know more about God. Many are neighbors or people we've only met since we moved, and we've never experienced this kind of openness and opportunity before. It continues to confirm to us that our move last summer was something God was orchestrating!
Finally, B16 is finishing his sophomore year at the local high school--also a place I wasn't eager to send our kids, but in B16 it has served to strengthen him in many ways. Ironically, he gets positive reinforcement from his peers for things like being polite, dressing in a classy way (like wearing Dad's wing-tips to school with jeans), appearing to have his act together, and having good relationships with his siblings. (All examples straight from the lips of his friends!) He's had amazing opportunities with Chorale, Madrigals, Jazz Choir, theater and Solo and Ensemble. He's finding more satisfaction with a job well-done academically too. He's also been selected to be on "Link Crew" next year, which pairs mature upperclassmen with groups of freshman students, an honor and a neat responsibility. Despite all the positives, he struggles with a certain level of depression, but he's getting better at making proactive choices that help lift him up (like not procrastinating on the big project), and I am as proud of that as I am of his other accomplishments.
And that's a wrap--for this blog post, at least. B16 and B10 still have four more days of school to get through before we can say the same about this school year. Or six. Depending how you count!
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