The kids technically started school on Aug. 13th but Easton was really the only one who actually started on that day. The other kids started a few days later because things weren't set up yet for Independent Study. I never took first day of school pictures since my kids weren't technically going to school in person. We got our family pictures taken by Jayli Boles so I'm using those as the kids' school pictures this year.
Easton is a FRESHMAN in highschool this year! How crazy is that! He also started seminary this year. With COVID everything is so different this year. Easton is doing distant learning and his school decided to only take 3 classes at a time but work twice as fast. They are basically doing quarters. He has finished one quarter so far and is about halfway through his second quarter and I'm not convinced that he has learned half a years worth of material...Seminary is for the most part all online. They "meet" once a week "in person". Most of the time it has been by Zoom but they had a couple weeks were they actually met in person at the church on Fridays. We recently got moved back to purple so they have gone back to Zoom once a week.
Blair started out the school year doing Independent Study 6th grade with Dyer and Blakely but about a week into it we decided to pull her from the program and do a homeschool program instead. We were already planning on homeschooling her this year but once COVID happened California capped the funding for homeschooling so we decided to give the Independent Study program a try. Eventually we found out that this was the first year for Independent Study for elementary and middle school which annoyed me that we didn't know this before hand. I realized that the Independent Study program was going to be a lot more time consuming than I realized and having three children in it seemed very daunting and pretty much impossible to do. We decided to bite the bullet and pay for Blair's homeschool program out of pocket. Looking back that was a good decision and sometimes I almost wish that we would have done the same with Dyer. Blair is doing an online program for three subjects and I do math with her. It seems to be going well for the most part for her.
One of the few projects Blair participated in with Independent Study.
Dyer is in 4th grade this year. Like I said above he is doing Independent Study. At the start of the year he was the only 4th grade student which made his weekly check ins interesting since he doesn't like to talk much with people he doesn't know very well. His teacher would ask him something and he would generally give a one word answer. About 4-6 weeks into the school year twin boys thankfully joined his class. Independent Study is similar to homeschooling in that I'm teaching the kids but we follow the school districts curriculum so in a way I'm teaching everything a public school teacher would teach but for two grades. This is why we pulled Blair from the program because there wasn't enough hours in the day for me to teach three grade levels. I already go crazy with just the two plus math with Blair.
Blakely is in 1st grade Independent Study. She has about 10 kids in her group and of course Blakely is a social butterfly. Definitely the opposite of Dyer. She looks forward to her weekly check ins. I decided to do Independent Study because I thought it would be crazy to have to worry about logging kids in everyday and probably multiple times a day. I wasn't a fan of what happened in spring and didn't want to repeat that if I could help it. Plus if/when the kids go back to school I didn't want a weird schedule of some days at school/some at home/half a day here/half a day there. I just wanted things to be as consistent as possible. If the kids go back to school full time Dyer and Blakely will probably go back. I know Blakely wants to go back and see all her friends as soon as possible.
Poor McKinley doesn't get much attention during school hours. It is a good thing that she plays really well by herself. I wish that I could find the time to teach and read to her more. I definitely feel like a failure with her this year. Luckily Blakely has some assignments that McKinley can participate with her but I definitely feel guilty that she hasn't gotten the same attention as the other kids did at her age. Hopefully COVID will go away by next school year so we can have more one on one time while the others are at school.
Eden is such a good baby! Thank goodness for that! She is usually super content just bouncing in her chair so long as she can see someone. If I'm not feeding her it's not uncommon for Eden to be Blair's study buddy! Either Blair's sitting right next to Eden or Eden is curled up in Blair's arms. Thankfully it doesn't seem to be too much of a distraction for Blair and she is able to get her work done.
