Homeschooling 101... for Mom

We started homeschooling Ethan formally this year.  We are working with a curriculum from k12 through a public charter school called Utah Virtual Academy.  UTVA has progress guidelines to make sure that students are progressing through the material.  The goal is to complete the material before the end of the school year.  Thus the "public schooling at home" description.

Monday we found out that Ethan is very seriously behind in progress two of his k12 classes.  Its not necessarily  that he doesn't understand the material, its that we aren't doing enough school work to complete the lessons on their timetable. Part of the problem is that Ethan doesn't quite get the material, specifically in phonics.  The material isn't very much fun and we've been having a hard time getting him to focus.  It usually ends in frustration on everyone's part.  So we're behind and we've got to catch up. 

Here's our plan for the coming weeks for Ethan's schooling:

• Leap Frog Letter Factory Daily
• Play StarFall.com or Oobi's Letters on NickJr.com
• Power through 2 lessons per day of Phonics
• Up our nightly reading time to 30 minutes (from 15-20)