If you followed our journey on our YouTube then you know that for the 2 years we were at the farm I home schooled Riley. He had been in school in Maricopa but when we moved to the farm there was only 1 options for a school and after a month of going there I decided I would rather give it a try to homeschool him to see if that served him better. I did that until we moved back to Maricopa in March 2017 and at that time I put Riley in the local school (his old school) to finish out 6th grade. He transitioned really well and actually did well, which gave me confidence for the time we had spent home schooling. He excelled on all but 1 of his major tests, language arts has always been a weakness of his, something I wish we had worked on more in our time together at home.
Now with Konnor home with us I got the boys all signed up and this year the city moved 6th grade to the Jr High so THANKFULLY the boys get to go to school together. Konnor is in 6th grade and Riley is in 7th. I managed to luckily get them both into the 20+1 program!!!
The 20+1 program is a blended learning environment where kids have a larger class size, 2 teachers instead of one and they work from laptops to do their assignments. They are given all of their weekly assignments on Monday morning and they have all week to get them done. So far their structure is basically 1 subject per day. So they do all of their Science work for the week over the course of one day.
This allows the kids to be independent learners and thinkers as well as teaching them to be accountable for their own work AND time management skills. One day a week the program focuses on group work and kids pair up into groups of 4 or 5 and work on a group project that has something to do with what they're learning for the quarter. This teaches them the skills of working with others and generally involves very hands on tasks, outdoor activities or creative arts projects.
On top of all these awesome features the kids still have regular electives like all the other kids. This year Riley signed up for Drama and PE. I urged him to do Drama because he is my quiet, kind soul and as he's almost 13 and already entering his teenage years in size and personality, I want him to get to be more comfortable talking to others, talking in front of groups and expressing his really cute quirky personality in front of people. So I'm hoping that the drama class will do just that and so far he's really enjoying it. Konnor's electives are PE and Computer Applications. So far he is a "peck and hunt" typists, lol, (aren't most kids) but I'm hoping at 11 years old he'll heed some of the lessons in the class because I first learned to type at 13 in a keyboarding class and knowing home row has brought me to where I am today, able to type 85 words per minute! So I hope he at least learns home row this year, haha!
Thankfully we live close enough to the school that the boys can ride their bikes to school! Riley got a new bike for Christmas last year (when I got one soon after so we could do family bike rides, which have been super awesome!) and we saved Riley's old bike for Konnor when we knew he was coming back to live with us because it is just his size and he always used it when he was here visiting last summer. The school is, I think, too far to walk. It is probably a mile and a half way from home but on a bike it doesn't take them more than 10 mins to ride to school. It only sucks a BIT this time of year because it is still 102-105 in the afternoons on their way home.
This photo is the last time my boys STARTED school together, in 2012. It was June of 2013 when Konnor moved to his dad's. My, they sure have grown!
xoxo,
Elizabeth
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