School At Home

Education has always been important to me. 

I knew right away when I learned I was carrying my first child, that he was going to do school at home. 

I remember when I was a teenager, I was homeschooled for a series.  That was the best part of my secondary school years.  I promised myself that when I have children, I will dedicate my time into their education and not leave it up to the system.

Am I against the system?  Maybe.  For my own children I am.  But I don't criticize or have an opinion on those that choose to place their kids in brick and mortar schools.  That is your choice.  My choice has of no factor to what you choose to do.  We are not the same and everyone lives according to what works for them.  No issues there.

Luckily, times have changed since I was in school.  The world wide web and communication via the sources has greatly improved.

I started Diggy's education at birth.  I never did the "baby talk".  I spoke clear words and allowed him to see and hear me use my tongue and sounds to communicate.  He started practicing early with sounds of the tongue.  His coos would have a /g/ and /l/ sound.  He even had some vowel sounds, mainly short a.  He would make sounds like "laga" "I-gl" and said "us" often.  This is at 1-3 months.
He would always watch the mouth and tongue when he was spoken to.

As he developed, his learning got more advanced.  I played classical music often during play and lunch time.  It is said this aids in brain stimulation.  Our house was full of blocks.  I think this contributes to his love of math.  I read to him every night.  He had certain books that were his favorite and became familiar with them.  He would try certain sounds to words he would remember in the books as I read them, like "yum" "boom" "pow" for example.  This was at 5-9 months.  He was practicing two syllable words by his first birthday. 

Because of efforts on his development, I needed to keep going.  I couldn't stop being the main source of his academic achievements.  By 2.5 years old, we started ABCMouse.com.  At this point, he was pretty tech savvy already.  This is their generation, and holding him back from technology was not what his father and I thought we should do.  He did well in the program for a few years.




Severely sick with pregnancy hyperemesis but a mom gotta keep going.

We did try brick and mortar school for him.  We signed him up for preschool.
In our opinion, it was a fail.  He seem to not learn much to advance his education.  Everyday he said they played often, did a craft, and had a couple of stories read.  When he was home with me, I was teaching site words and sounds, practiced his pencil grip for straight lines and circles, introduction to math, and science about different plants, animals, and parts of the world.  We withdrew him and I went back to being his primary learning coach.

I don't blame anyone for what I believe was a lack at the preschool.  They have many students at different levels and but so many educators.  They do what they have to do to get kids along.  It just wasn't the placement we thought for Diggy.  He also was happy to be back home for learning. 

When time came for him to get started for Kindergarten, I didn't want to enroll at a brick and mortar but I was also on the fence of  'freelance' homeschooling.  Freelance homeschooling is when the parents freely decide what they teach for subjects at home.  I needed to have a more structured curriculum like ABCMouse. 

I knew about K12.  I was a learning coach for my nephew when my sister (who works like 70 hours a week at her job) signed him up in the previous year.  What we didn't like was that it was the same district teachers that were in the town's brick and mortar schools.  My nephew had advanced academic development as well and was placed in K12 to match his level.   Conflicts with these teachers caused him to be withdrawn from the school. 

Thankfully, I saw a commercial on TV about Connections Academy.  Oh boy was I excited and eager to learn more about this opportunity.  Connections Academy is a public charter school done at home.  I immediately told my sister in law, who had the same views about our public school system.  We both have been happily assisting our children's academic success through this school.  Our kids are happy, we are happy. 

To learn more on our journey and experiences, follow my TEC Connections Academy (TECCA)  entries or you can see some things we do on our YouTube channel, The KdotCarterHabit.

Until then,

Kdot Out!