Any Cyber/Virtual School Families?

[magnolia_mama]

We are transitioning from traditional homeschool to virtual school in the fall. Our family is really excited about this new adventure! Anyone else planning to use a cyber in the fall?

[zacharysmom]

we are in our third year and LOVE it! we are a OHVA family. we have done 5th and 6 t h grades! we plan right now to finish with them we have attented both public and a charter school.

[eclipse]

We recently left a California Virtual Academy for a different style charter, but I know there are quite a few virtual school users on MDC.

[cbyrum]

We are starting CAVA in August. My 1st grader is very excited as he was super bored at school last year in K.

[Marcee]

We are starting WAVA for Kinder in August. We are still on the fence about pulling our 1st and 4th graders and my 7th grader is undecided. My oldest is starting 9th grade at the local Prep school.

[kittie313]

We are too! We're going to be starting our second year with OHVA here, grades 2 and 1. And my 4yo (and maybe my youngest as well, we'll see what happens) will be attending Head Start 4 mornings a week. We REALLY like OHVA and had a great year this school year for grades K and 1, and I can't wait to get started again. In fact, I got notification from UPS this afternoon that k12 has sent us our boxes with the materials and that they are *scheduled* to be here on Friday *gulp*. Guess its time to finish up reorganizing my school area and getting it ready for the new materials to show up!

[Marcee]

I am torn on my 7th grader. He is bored silly at school and could really do some fun stuff at WAVA. But I worry that the Prep school that I want him to attend for HS will not look fondly at online schooling. Guess I need to bite the bullet and call the school, huh? Then I wonder if I pull him should I pull the others? Could I do all 4 plus keep up with all my other stuff? My head is just spinning. For moms schooling more than one, How much time are you devoting to studies?

[mamasgirls]

We are thinking about trying COVA in the fall. My girls are going in to 3rd and 1st and have only been traditionally homeschooled. Just thinking of doing something different.

[mizmerricat]

DD will be doing GCA in the fall for Kindergarten. We just got our materials today! I guess I should start getting organized.

[kittie313]

LOL I had to contact k12 yesterday because I checked our shipment information in the OLS, and it said that they weren't shipping lang. arts 1 because we already had it. They got back to me this morning, and the materials have been ordered from the warehouse to be sent to me. Hopefully I don't need to request materials again like that (I shouldn't though, considering the reason for that mixup). I have to admit though, k12 is definitely on the ball with stuff, and our materials are scheduled to arrive tomorrow morning according to UPS tracking (so awesome). Now I just need to get last year's stuff dealt with so that I have space for this year's stuff, I am really bad about that................. lol I can't wait!

[elanorh]

WOW, Cat, I can't believe your materials are arriving already! Seems like I just boxed up last year's stuff, here! I hope ours come early too, that would allow us to get started early -- Great-grandma is coming for a two week visit right when school is 'supposed' to start this fall, so if I could do school for a couple weeks and then take a break while she's here, that would be awesome.

We do indeed have several virtual academy parents here -- we had a support thread for it last year, and I expect we'll get it started up again this August.

We have liked our virtual academy time ... thought initially that we'd be switching to standard homeschooling this year, but we liked the k12 program enough we are just keeping on.

[kittie313]

I know, I was stunned when I heard that our stuff was going to arrive today (it did, this morning while I was still in bed, then the kids pounced on me and wouldn't leave me alone so I'm running on about 3 hours of sleep because I was up WAY too late, good thing my H is home today LOL). But I did get all our stuff from last year pulled out and sorted so that I can stick it into boxes and send back. I'll deal with that part tonight or in the morning, we'll see how I feel as the day progresses.

I too wasn't planning on sticking with k12 but well, it just worked so well last year for us. And when I tried to picture what this upcoming school year is going to look like for us with me in college FT, I broke out into a cold sweat at the thought of having to create lessons and all that on top of it all so I hit the panic button and re-enrolled for fall at the last minute LOL I flat could NOT see a way to pull off hsing while I finish my degree, but k12 I htink will keep me accountable to schooling them while my h and a really great friend kick my butt to keep me accountable with college (trust me, if I don't finish my degree, my friend said he'll never speak to me again and honestly I refuse to lose him as a friend, he's too amazing to lose)

[cappuccinosmom]

We are, in PA. So far loving it.

Up till now, we've done strictly hard copy textbooks for the main portion of school work. Online stuff has been only supplemental. This year we're going to try my oldest with the actual virtual classroom for 3rd grade.

[surrogate]

What is the cost of the k12 stuff and if you don't like it can you withdraw your child, or are you stuck? I have been looking at it, but I am kinda torn

[Love_My_Babies]

Yes! I just received an email letting us know that they have called up our number on the WIVA list. There is a virtual learning enrollment cap in Wisconsin, and we were lucky enough to make it. We already went through the registration process. We had a choice between a few different curriculums including Calvert, Little Lincoln and K12. We chose K12 for our 5 yo. We are trying out virtual learning this year before we hit the compulsary school age. We will see how it goes. We found an awesome student desk and chair for my 5 yo to store his things on/in, and he is so excited to start this fall.

[kittie313]

Originally Posted by surrogate

What is the cost of the k12 stuff and if you don't like it can you withdraw your child, or are you stuck? I have been looking at it, but I am kinda torn

For my family the cost of k12 is $0 because we use a public virtual academy (public school at home essentially). State funds pay for materials for all kids enrolled in OHVA, and we have to follow state PS rules for hours, standardized testing, and such. But honestly its worth it for us, we couldn't afford the astronomical cost of the materials ourselves (and we'd buy at least the phonics and lang arts if we were independently schooling). You can buy the materials yourself, go through a private charter, or do a free public option if your state has one. For the public option, if it isn't the right fit you can just withdraw like you do from PS and send back the materials without much issue (depending on the state and the charter school, I've heard from several moms in my group who withdrew from our k12 school mid-year and they had NO issues getting it done, they filed notification with their home ps district and got their return labels quickly, only one mom in my hs group had a hard time with getting it done). I'm actually really glad I chose the k12 school over all the other ones available in our state, after looking into other options for charters k12 really does appear to be the most flexible from what I've seen.

[surrogate]

Kittie, thank you so much, and after reading your siggy, i realized I remember you from the BBC carseat board lol....i was there looooong ago

My oldest is 4 and should be in Pre-k this fall...but I kept him out, and have been working with him at home. He is very smart, but is Pdd-Nos, and has a hard time keeping up and following directions. The options here are public school and home school. There are no private or charter schools. With georgia budget cuts, I just don't trust that he would get the help that he needs in the public school system, the class sizes are just huge and the teachers are stretched to the max! It is horrible...

[kittie313]

Originally Posted by surrogate

Kittie, thank you so much, and after reading your siggy, i realized I remember you from the BBC carseat board lol....i was there looooong ago

My oldest is 4 and should be in Pre-k this fall...but I kept him out, and have been working with him at home. He is very smart, but is Pdd-Nos, and has a hard time keeping up and following directions. The options here are public school and home school. There are no private or charter schools. With georgia budget cuts, I just don't trust that he would get the help that he needs in the public school system, the class sizes are just huge and the teachers are stretched to the max! It is horrible...

I'm going to come back to this later today, I think you may want to hear about how k12 is working with my oldest girl (we are getting ready to start testing, they think she's on the spectrum based on the particular combo of learning challenges she has). Subbing so I don't forget...............

[kittie313]

ok sorry it took so long, I'm recovering from a head injury so I'm having issues with thinking clearly and such. Anyway, about my oldest dd..............

She's 7yo and about to start 2nd grade with k12. We have diagnoses of adhd, apd, sid, and dyslexia. The doctors want to do testing because they think she's on the autism spectrum, but I'm still processing what we've gotten so far and don't feel I can take on more testing quite yet. Anyway, for her k12 has been a total godsend. The approach is very accomodating for all learning styles imo, and this is especially important for her as we have so many challenges to work with for her to learn successfully. The local ps teacher she had for K fudged her test scores so that she could pass to 1st grade, which now I'm happy she did because when we enrolled her in k12 I had no issues with having her go into 1st grade (I would have had to do some hoop jumping to get her enrolled in 1st if the local ps had retained her most likely). We don't get any services for dd1 at all, they treat her like a normal kid and have no interventions other than moving her to a lower level of phonics and lang. arts and the teacher being notified of her needs and giving us more opportunity to work longer on concepts. My h and I work 7 days a week with her year round on lessons, and don't take Christmas break or spring break for more than just a day or two, so she's stayed at grade level everywhere but in reading. We do frequent breaks, change activities within a lesson frequently, and don't push her on things because of how she learns. A lesson for her will involve ALL the activities that k12 includes for us to choose from, as well as at least 2 or 3 more that I can come up with on my own, and we could spend 3 or 4 days on one lesson when she's really struggling. Like with math, we will review what we've worked on so far in past lessons of the unit to start, then after a break I'll introduce the new concept (I'll tell about it while I demonstrate it as she copies what I'm doing in demonstration, I'll do at least 5 examples like that) for about 5-10min. Then we do hands-on working together while she practices, using manipulatives. Then she goes into explaining what the concept is, then does it on paper to show me how its done (if she can't do that yet we'll go back to the manipulatives a bit and use them along with doing it on paper). We go back and forth on different ways of teaching it, about 5-10 minutes at a time with a short regrouping between activities as needed, until she gets it with a limit of spending 60 minutes on a subject each day. Every subject is handled in a similar way because of her processing challenges, and we found it HIGHLY effective. But I noticed for us, k12 lessons give us activities that cover all the learning styles fairly well, with all different needs accounted for, so I haven't had to really add a lot to the materials from my own mind.

Now granted, we have a LOT of moments where she will hit overload and needs to go focus herself in a corner for a few minutes to get a handle and process, but from what her K teacher said to me the second half of the year and what I saw the first half of K, she is doing much better with the approach that k12 has enabled us to have. She's learning, thriving, and having FUN with it. She is a compulsive tapper when doing her schoolwork, so I have to help her remember frequently that it is best to tap her fingers on her leg, cheek, or her other hand/arm so that I don't get distracted myself during lessons work with her (I also have severe adhd, I chose to medicate mine and she's not medicated at this time but was at the start of 1st grade for several months). I also learned last school year that I had to tear out the pages for our lessons from the workbooks, otherwise the whole book together like that would overwhelm her and she'd just shut down and start rocking in her seat.

Our decision to stay with k12 for this year was partly because of how she thrived with the program. I could pull off managing to successfully hs independently with the kids and my college and my h working 2 jobs, but honestly I don't know that I would find an affordable program that would fit her needs as well as k12 does (and we can't afford k12 independently) and the virtual academy aspect gives us the structure that she NEEDS to have with the daily flow because it forces me to do lessons at least 5 days a week.

[pampered_mom]

Originally Posted by Love_My_Babies

Yes! I just received an email letting us know that they have called up our number on the WIVA list. There is a virtual learning enrollment cap in Wisconsin, and we were lucky enough to make it. We already went through the registration process. We had a choice between a few different curriculums including Calvert, Little Lincoln and K12. We chose K12 for our 5 yo. We are trying out virtual learning this year before we hit the compulsary school age. We will see how it goes. We found an awesome student desk and chair for my 5 yo to store his things on/in, and he is so excited to start this fall.

I'd be interested in hearing what you end up thinking of WIVA. We missed open enrollment...but I'm still intrigued for future years.