Fourth Grade

Third grade was an awkward beginning to our homeschool adventure, but it provided many opportunities to understand homeschooling and gain confidence in both Reo's ability to learn and my ability to teach. The blogging became too absorbed in how ridiculous the curriculum from Christian Liberty Academy Satellite School [CLASS] was that, naturally, when we went into "just get through it" mode, I stopped blogging. CLASS' fundamental christian and anti-science curriculum did push me into going off-textbook a lot to make sure my son was learning Science and would continue to be above grade level.

Hey, you can't use omnipotent deities to cheat!

I have said time and time again that our local school district rocks. If it weren't for the budget cuts that massacred the wonderful programs that enriched children's lives in elementary school, I would have kept Reo in public school. The teachers and administration at his former school are still awesome. The homeschool office at the district has been fantastic and cooperative with me as I struggled with the difficult CLASS administration to get documents I needed - the "convenience" of those documents was why I chose CLASS in the first place, ironically - for Reo's annual evaluation. Now, Reo is ready to begin on September 1.

Fourth grade is exciting for both of us. We are venturing into unschooling territory, which will allow us to explore the world without sitting for hours pouring over workbooks. I will be blogging more about this year, from start to finish, as well as getting to maintain my first homeschool portfolio. The next post will be Reo's academic goals for his fourth grade year, my academic goals for his fourth grade year, and what our first week's lesson plans look like.

Spoiler Alert: It's all Adventure Class now

Our school year begins on Labor Day, which is a holiday and no school day for the public and private school kids in America. Over thirty years ago, I was younger than Reo, and I asked my father what the point of Labor Day was. He explained that Labor Day is the day we honor the people who made sacrifices to establish unions to protect American workers. He went into age-appropriate detail about the tragedies that happened at the expense of workers whose companies didn't care about their lives and the unfairness of pay for the work that people did. That day, I learned why we celebrate Labor Day and that my workaholic father was very smart and I could learn a lot from him. For both of those reasons, and the added fact that unschooling is a continuous, neverending experience, Labor Day is a perfect day to begin.