Venturing into Virtual School

So I am in the process of filling out all the paperwork for 4 of my 5 kids to get a virtual school education. This just means I'm still doing everything at home, but lesson plans are done for me and all the materials I will need all year for each kid are boxed up and mailed to me for only $45 per year per kid.

Why? Because all 4 kids I will be homeschooling this year are entirely different and I want to be able to focus on them and  not on lesson planning and gathering materials and checking out benchmarks. I want to be teaching and helping and watching them learn. And getting a little help from a teacher who is checking and holding me accountable is going to be nice. As a free spirit, I have fought doing something like this but now I find I am looking forward to it. The kids are a little freaked but we will figure it out! It seems very flexible or I wouldn't be doing it. We can do school in the morning and then finish in the evening. We can rock it in 4 days or stretch it out over 7. It's our show!

Check out my post almost a year ago from when I said virtual school would not be for us! Ah, how times have changed!

Here is the link to Calvert's site, which I hear is one of the very best curriculums ... like the gold standard for homeschoolers if you can afford it. Well, $45 a year is affordable to me now, friends. Calvert runs Maize and Leavenworth virtual schools and I heard from a lot of friends who did Maize but only one who did Leavenworth. Sometimes I follow the crowd and sometimes I try my own way. We are going with Leavenworth Virtual School and I can't wait to write about it help other parents along in their journey. When I Googled "virtual school personal experiences" or "virtual school blogs" it was only a bunch of results for mostly Florida virtual schools that came up. I want to show people what virtual schooling is like ...

If I have any time to blog!

Here is a link that turned me off K12 entirely, written by a former teacher there. They are a huge business these days, it would seem and I want no part of that. It surprises me how many people just blindly sign up on line for their kids' education. I poked around all over the internet, read hundreds of comments and PMs on Facebook from friends who have done virtual school, spoke with some of the principals and more. This is a big decision to me to be asking for help and not doing my own thing since starting homeschooling in 2006.

I'll keep you posted and please ask me any questions in the comments section and I'll pop by to answer!