Namine has been in a homeschool setting now for about a year and a half. We found out about this program from a friend we met at therapy. Her children are enrolled in the program. For Kindergarten and first grade Namine did the curriculum called “Little Lincoln.” It is a great program but a lot of worksheets and cutesy videos. I thought that Namine would enjoy this because of her artistic side. She loved it but we spent lots of hours coloring and drawing in those worksheets I mentioned above. Namine excelled in her classes, but it was really tedious after a while and even though we supplemented with other activities it was getting a little much for me.
So this past school year the school had a few families pilot with the curriculum called “BookShark.” I talked again to my friend to see how she liked it, and she loved it. She told me she thought Namine would love it as well. It wasn’t all worksheets it was literature based and you read stories to each other or Namine would read by herself. The school had a couple of days where they had an open blackboard, online, meeting so families could see if they thought Bookshark was a right fit for them. I attended the meeting and thought exactly what my friend thought, Namine would love this.
Well we finished first grade with flying colors and onto second grade. I felt we needed a break so I told Namine we couldn’t start second grade until her curriculum got to our house. Well it came today. She squealed and was super excited.
I was a little overwhelmed. Bookshark is not set up at all like Little Lincoln. I had no idea where to start and not ever teaching literature based curriculum before I was like what do I do? I took a couple of deep breathes and took everything out of the boxes. Once I sorted the literature from the teacher manuals then it was all down hill from there, in a good way.
Even though Namine would still like to start school tomorrow I would still like to wait for a couple of weeks. I am as equally excited about starting but we just finished school about a week ago. A couple more weeks of free time would be lovely. We are still working on some summer school classes but still just taking it easy.
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