Last week we had our first day of school for the 2012-2013 school year! Always so much fun trying to get the kids and moving at a reasonable time after a few weeks of just doing things whenever we wanted to!
Many of those who do school at home do try to have a schedule or a basic routine. We teach our kids about responsibility, cooperation, and working hard to accomplish our goals just like everyone else does! We want the very best for our kids, and we face many of the same struggles as Moms of
Like most kids, our “first day of school” came with its own set of glitches. Those things that you could not have foreseen or planned for no matter how prepared you think you are! In our case it comes in the form of missing materials, computer networks being overloaded and shutting down, of kids not wanting to cooperate, missed online class sessions, getting a new resource teacher at the last minute, our foreign language course not working at all, and the list goes on.
This is our second year using Oklahoma Virtual Charter Academy (which use to also include Oklahoma Virtual Academy –the two schools have combined under the charter school now) and as far as I can tell, the first day glitches are pretty common no matter what sort of school your child does. With brick and mortar schools, it can be overloaded classrooms, kids getting on the wrong bus or off at the wrong bus stop, and missing lunches or lunch money. With schooling at home, it can be cranky toddlers, late shipments of curriculum, missed phone conferences with co-op leaders, computers not cooperating, and a whole list of things that generally a brick and mortar school does not have to worry about.
My point is, first day of school glitches seem to be a universal problem. Doesn’t matter where you go to school or how you go to school. Homeschoolers are no different. Life just happens. We are definitely not immune to glitches!
My advice to everyone is take a deep breath and relax. It will work out okay! The goal is to educate our children in the best we know how, right? Whether it is you supporting your child and their teacher(s) in public/private school or you teaching your kids at home yourself. Whatever is best for your family and your children is what I hope you can do.
I want to send out my heart felt wish that everyone has an awesome year! Enjoy your children. Enjoy this time. They are only this age once. By the end of the school year, those “first day of school glitches” will be a thing of the past, barely worth remembering and summer will be here again. 178 days and counting!
