This time though, even without the additional stress of the EMBA program, I didn’t want to take on the burden and cost of preparing a whole new curriculum for him and trying to track what he needed to really graduate, with 2.5 years of public school in the mix. So we are going to use Liberty Online Academy. This way they can administer placement tests and devise a schedule and also do the grading and tracking and provide a transcript at the end.

Connor’s dad, Rick, has started that process. He’ll coordinate the placement tests. We’ll provide the housing and fund most of the schooling and oversight, supplementing where we can. It all should move fast enough to be ready by January.

Lots of prayers surrounded this process last time, and surrounded Connor the past 2 and a half years, and that won’t change as we start on this new phase.

Connor played goalie for the first half and some of the 2nd half. Here are two shots, he didn’t actually get to rest much so the first shot was rare. I’m excited about the second shot – I got him in action.

This more like what we saw today – the other team was good and fast (and most of them were smaller).

The other team put 4 guys and a small girl on the field at first, then after the score got to something around 8 to 1 the guys figured it was a done deal so they rotated out and we played against 5 girls the rest of the time. They held their ground so even though our team got a few more goals, they stayed ahead of us.

Once Connor came out of the goal and played on the field, he was all over the field. The structure of two on offense and two on defense sort of stayed, but Connor and the others did some free wheeling change from offense to defense during the game and Connor assisted a goal that was a great play to watch.

He was exhausted (it was over 80 degrees out there today and there was no rest for any of them) but he enjoyed it. It should be cooler Wednesday at practice. Just two more weeks in the season.

Anyway – we paid good money for him to get a shirt and play on a field about half the size of a regular soccer field. Connor’s first remark when we went there was “wow, the field is so small.” About 20 minutes later Anthony finally found us and his first words were “wow, the field is so small.” What this means is that a group of Hispanic kids can wipe the field with our team even faster than usual. Connor’s team hasn’t won a game yet, but their opponents are great!

There are 11 people on the team, so they rotate in and out a lot. The game looks exhausting to me with all the running up and down the (small) field so I think the high rotation count is good. But it also means less play time, of course. Then we were gone for two weekends and Connor missed 2 games, plus a practice (Wednesday night – the ONLY night of the week we have other activities scheduled).

So, Connor and I get there today for his game (5:15 every single Saturday) and there are only 6 players, none of them goalies. Somehow Connor’s comment that he’d never played goalie before got him voted into the position. He did pretty well, although he obviously has a lot that he can learn to do better. The best part – he enjoyed it. He enjoyed the game and (while they did lose, again) he made some great saves.

And we found out he has a game tomorrow (probably a make-up game, due to all the rain we’ve gotten around here) so maybe he will get to be goalie again. Rick is already planning on getting him some good practice over the summer so he can go out for soccer next year at school.

The orange shirt was not his idea, but I like it on him.

Here is his sword and shield on the table

Here is out front yard after the neighboring kids tramped through it.

He is keeping up the grammar worksheets and doing very well. The new math curriculum arrived and we’re using the tests for the early chapters as review and grade boosters. He should finish the review and be familiar with the course format by end of this week so the new work will start next week.

He also began listening to lectures on The Histories by Herodotus. Not sure we’ll actually read it all, but he’ll be familiar with the work and read some of it. I need to get more writing out of him this week.

He went home to spend the weekend with his dad and brother. He’ll go back again this weekend since we have plans for Saturday. Last week he convinced his dad that he wanted to go to Early College. It’s a pretty neat arrangement with the local community college that provides high school and college courses so that over a 5 year period the student gets a high school diploma and an associate degree, with credits that will transfer to any collect or university in NC.

Research showed that the application period was last fall, they had something like 75 openings and
400 applications or something crazy. Rick then found out that they have something called Middle College which is only 4 years, gets the HS diploma and also a certification in IT, Construction Engineering, or Electrical Engineering. Connor decided that would be fine so we printed out the application and started the process. We got a few recommendations signed, sealed, and delivered. Then this weekend Connor and his dad worked on the rest of the application and it will get turned in today. Connor is pretty sure that even if he doesn’t get into MC, he wants to go home for high school.

I’m not entirely surprised by this, he misses living with his family (as well he should). And having Rick’s wife leave shortly after Connor came here means there is a bunker mentality and the 3 guys want to be there to protect and defend each other.

Anthony and I have talked to Connor about it, reminding him why he came here in the first place and pointing out that he hasn’t changed much since he got here, we’ve just found different ways to get the schoolwork from him. If he goes back to public school for high school, he’ll have to stay on their schedule, do the work, hand the work in, meet their requirements every step of the way. And this MC application was a good time to point out that if he expects recommendation letters for college, he has to actually have done something, shown an interest in something, and made an impact for someone to have anything to say about him.

I have not had a chance to really discuss with Rick what he thinks is best for Connor. I suspect he will be fine with having him come back home and go to public school. I don’t think I’m doing a great job, but I do think he is getting a good education and could do better here with me doing some accommodation to his style and ability. But I do think he needs to learn to conform to some of the societal rules that he runs into at public school.

If we had pulled him out of ps due to religious convictions or because he’s too smart then I would fight harder to keep him in home school. And I do think he’s smart and gets bored in class. That is why I hesitate to just give in on this.

The reason he is here is because he was failing all 4 subjects because he didn’t try and didn’t hand in his work. Will that change if he returns to public school? Will he get an education (not that the school will fail, but that he won’t work with the system to get what they offer)? Will he have a high school diploma and transcript that can get him anywhere else he wants to go?

Since we talked about this last week, he has shown some improvement. He has gotten up easier, he has stuck to the schedule better, and he is doing his work with a good attitude.

If I let him go back to public school I don’t have to worry about failing him in home schooling. But I do have to worry about failing him on a grander scale if he leaves his teen years unprepared for what comes next and has to struggle to catch up.

Monday was a simple day – one page of grammar, the two test questions at the end of the math chapter we reviewed on Saturday, and a chapter in The Iliad. He managed to finish the short page of grammar and read The Iliad chapter. Math was a miss.
We sat down after dinner to look at it. Even with my assistance in suggesting what type of problem it appeared to be, he was really not able to do the work. We quit at 8pm.

Today the math didn’t get done again. He lost a trip to GameStop because of that. After dinner we sat down one more time. He actually showed an understanding of some of the concepts and we made it through all the problems. He says he hates factoring. And now he thinks it’s the curriculum. That means we’re going back to my original plan and get the Teaching Textbooks Algebra I course. (I showed him TT and VideoText and he did not like VT so we’re after TT.)

Grammar has gone well – he did very well indeed on the Noun Review today.

He is going to focus on reading The Iliad this week, while we take a break from math. Plus the library books we picked up last week.

We got a full week of school work done.

Connor came back Sunday afternoon. He had a fun time at home for the two weeks of Christmas break. Except for trying to supervise his youngest brother. Sounds like Ian (who is 5) was out to torture Connor and Duncan as much as he could for the week he was there. Connor and Duncan needed naps once in a while Ian ran them so ragged.

Now that he’s back here, he says it’s too quiet and there aren’t enough people to spend time with. I don’t think he wants us to add 5 year olds, though.

He’s made up for all the sleep he lost while at home. At least I think he should have, he has slept late every day this week. Although, I am assuming he’s getting to sleep at a decent time each night. At least the light is out.

As for school work:

In Math he has finished the exercises in the chapter started in December. We need a review to make sure he got the concepts. Splitting over the holiday and other factors mean this chapter isn’t solid yet.

He has done grammar each day. He covered possessive nouns, predicate nominatives, and appositives (don’t think I’ve heard of those before, but he knows what they are now).

He did another chapter in the Vocabulary book. As usual, when he reads the directions correctly he gets it right.

He has continued to read the myths in D’Aulaires. Last night we read Book 3 in The Iliad. We are going out tonight so we’ll read Book 4 tomorrow morning.

We have Big Fish (the youth group) here Sunday night so we also need to do some cleaning. (Christmas decorations did get packed up last night.)

Yesterday we went to the library (he checked out 3 books) and GameStop (he traded in 4 games and got MegaMan Battle Network 5 Double Team DS).

Wednesday night he cleaned his room. I walked in Thursday to wake him up and was pleasantly surprised (just don’t open the closet door).

Now we are heading over to the Gazzaway’s. Spencer got the StarWars Lego game for the Wii and he has been busting to show it to Connor.

Tonight over dinner we talked about what he knew already about the Trojan War. Then I introduced the characters on both sides and we talked about the Greek gods (who knows a lot of that already!). I then discussed the beginning of the Trojan War and pointed out that the wooden horse isn’t in The Iliad, that comes later.

I then gave a 15 minute overview of the entire 40 days that are covered by The Iliad. After that, I picked up the book and read Book 1. He walked around some, picked up the dinner plates, and then ended up sitting and reading over my shoulder, correcting me when I read a word wrong. Now he’s off on his own. We’ll still do some reading out loud, but he’ll read some of the chapters himself each day.

He is also reading D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths. Now that he’s started The Iliad, we’ll pick back up in the Kingfisher Encyclopedia with that time period. I also plan to introduce some Greek plays. Then we’ll move into the philosophers. I wonder if I could get him to read The Odyssey over the summer?