(This is one of his Art Projects... He decided to "sculpt" the "Flying Horse" as his choice)
Well this year I decided to home-school my eldest son who was entering the 2nd grade. We chose to go with http://www.k12.com/ and with them use Nevada Virtual Academy. I'm still very happy that we did this and I've seen a vast improvement with him in personality and knowledge. His self confidence has returned and he's vastly improved in his math and reading skills.
I can't say enough about this school and it's curriculum and I absolutely adore his teacher because she actually cares about each of her students and is helping me to improve and work on the things he's struggling with and turns any bad thing into a good so that he doesn't feel like he failed but that he's improving because my son has this issue of "it must be perfect and if I get one wrong I've failed".
I have to admit that a month into it I started doubting my decision to do this because of the intense curriculum and the amount of time it takes with each subject to give him the full understanding of each thing plus the Science and Art projects but I made a mental list of pros n cons and since the pros of staying with it out-weighed the cons by a massive percentage I stuck with it and seeing the grades and the improvement in my son within just one quarter I know I made the right choice for my child.
I'm pretty sure he'll never be an artist but I am glad he is getting the knowledge of the basics and he can tell you what a landscape vs. seascape is.. realistic vs. abstract and with certain paintings he can tell you who the artist is and a couple of things about that artist ( although I must say that I didn't think he was getting any of that into his brain but he's surprised me).
I'm pretty sure that he'll never be an archaeologist but he can tell you how the Roman Empire was started (according to legend), when the Western Roman Empire Fell and who the last of the Roman Emperors was... How the Byzantine Empire was started and which Barbarian tribes went where and how England got it's name.
I'm pretty sure he'll never be a musician but he is learning the different pitches and rhythms and beats and is able to find a lot of the repeating patterns within classical musical pieces.
I'm pretty sure he'll never be a Grammar Snob but hey.. he's doing better in grammar then I ever did and learning what a digraph, trigraph and blends are as well as spotting the different parts of a sentences and fixing them. He's also written three essays within the first quarter starting with the ideas or word web and going through the various drafts until reaching the final product.
I'm pretty sure I never did any of this in second grade and for him being able to do his essay's basically all on his own with little to no instruction from me is wonderful. The things he is learning in the other subjects I'm amazed with and he's learning wonderful lessons that he'll need to know when he's in High School and in College.
