It's that time again...

So, last week we got the shipment of school books to start preparing for school to start. I can't believe it! Where did the summer go??

I also noticed, after looking over my homeschool entries that I really didn't finish my assessment of UTVA and the K12 curriculum. So, I thought I would do that now.

K12 has an amazing curriculum. If you have a public online school program and you want to homeschool your children, it is a good way to go. Not all online public schools do the same thing though. Most of them use the K12 program, which you can read about at K12.com, and the K12 website even has a search menu that you can search for schools in your state.

In Utah, for example, there is a online charter school (UTVA-Utah Virtual Academy), but there are also school districts that have an online program using the K12 curriculum as well. Some of the school districts allow any student in the state to be a part of their program. (Alpine Online, Uintah Navigators, and Washington Online) Some of the school districts only allow students from that district to be a part of the program.

We decided to stick with UTVA for the time being, but it is tempting to switch to Washington Online. We'll see what happens. The reason it is tempting is the UTVA is very strict about hours spent on classwork, portfolios, testing, and other things. Washington Online has obtained a reputation for being more flexible, and you don't have to sign up for the whole course load, whereas with UTVA, if you sign up, you sign up for the WHOLE curriculum. Like I said...we'll see.

Since Harrison is in 3rd grade this year, it was kind of interesting to see the jump in size for the school books we received. In the younger grades most of the course work is online and the parent is sitting right there helping them navigate through it. Starting in 3rd grade, they really try to get almost all of the lessons to be mostly offline, so that will be a change.

One of the nicest things about using the K12 curriculum is the lessons are planned for you. YOU set up the schedule for your student, but the lesson outline, what parts to focus on, is all planned out, even art projects and science experiments. That is SUCH a relief for me. That was one of the hardest things about planning it all on my own was trying to make sure that Harrison was learning the things he needed to be learning at the level he needed to be learning them and staying up on all the coursework.

Looking at my little bookshelf gets a little overwhelming though, and I just have to pause, take a deep breath, and remind myself that I can do this, and it is a good thing.

Only a few more weeks and we will be starting!