The Reluctant Homeschooler: Finally

About my family

JACOB is 20, the oldest of my three children. He finished homeschooling and is studying automotive technology in the local community college. We pulled him out of public school in the middle of 10th grade in January 2008 and he made it through his last two-and-a-half years of high school at home. Whew!
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ALEXANDRA, 18, finished 12th grade in 2011. She went through public schools through the end of 9th grade, then finished out high school at home. She didn't want to go to college, but chose to go on to an internship with a mission organization starting in October 2011. She spent part of the fall in Haiti; in spring 2012, she went on a mission trip to Albanit, Kosova, and Greece. The internship at Mission E4 is really stretching her!
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LARISSA, 16, is in 11th grade. She's my last remaining homeschooled high schooler. Larissa finished 7th grade in a public middle school, then we pulled her out. Larissa reads without stopping and loves to draw. In fact, she won first place at a recent regional art show. She is completely self-taught in the area of art with books and curriculum I selected. But the main thing is that God gifted her in this area, and you can't beat that.
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GEORGE, my husband, is self-employed, working as a general contractor and piano tuner. He is a gifted musician and a devoted Christian serving as a youth choir director and youth group leader in our church. George was born and raised in Ukraine (then the Soviet Union), and arrived in the States in 1990.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Finally - my IHIPs!

At last, two months after I started school, I finally completed the IHIPs (Individualized Home Instruction Plans) for all three of my kids.

It’s not that I didn’t know what I was going to teach them or was that late in writing them. I was just putting the finishing touches on them when I got news of my brother’s accident. Then his death. After that there was the funeral preparation. The dozens and dozens of calls each day. The funeral itself. The thank you notes afterward. The phone calls canceling his credit cards, magazine subscriptions, phone service... I’m still dealing with the ramifications of his death - his estate, his bills… So IHIPs fell off my radar screen - until the school district contacted me last Friday. Oops!

So here is Larissa's eighth grade IHIP, hot off the computer. As I revised this plan, I added books to her English curriculum because she read five of them before mid-October! I suspect I'll have her read even more literature, but I won't commit her to it yet. Perhaps this plan is more detailed than those submitted by others, but for me, it serves as a chart across the unknown territory of an eighth grader’s education. I consult it when I don’t know where I’m going next.

I hope I do Larissa justice, pushing her, but not overburdening her.