My very bright 6 yr old 1st grader and I are very frustrated by k-12

[425lisamarie]

I dont 'know what to do. My 6 year old is VERY bright. Gets concepts fast, loves reading, and probably does so on a 4th grade level.

Why do I hate this k-12? He was in tears today over math. I actually feel like the workload is quite a bit but there is a lot of .....*dumb* stuff for lack of a better word. I mean he does not want to color everything, repeat simple sentences over and over, etc. I think spelling is very important, and knowing good grammar, parts of speech etc. I can't put my finger on exactly what is drivin me nuts with this curriculum. I did k-12 because i don't want to miss anything, but after one week i'm very frustrated.

[zebrachick83]

Big hugs, mama! I had this same concern with K-12 and decided not to do it for that reason. Even with the complete curriculum workbook we picked up for first grade, we are skipping a lot of the work, because it's repetitive and mundane, especially for things that she already knows. I would suggest asking your program coordinator if there is any flexibility with the lesson planning and if not, you might want to look into doing it yourself. At this age, it's still pretty easy to put together your own curriculum. I hope you can get some answers that work for you!

[kittie313]

I have a kid like yours using k12. The thing that I found to be most important is to look at the objectives of the lesson. If your child can meet the objectives, then give the assessment (if there is one), mark the lesson done (insert assessment answers), and move on. If you hit an entire unit that your child already knows, skip to the unit assessment and do it then mark the entire unit done (I'm doing this now with my 1st grader in math, we're in a place value unit and I'm going to spend today's math going over it real quick and all the other goodies in the unit that she doesn't know, then I'm handing her the unit assessment and moving on, there's no need to repeat stuff she knows)

Also, don't do every activity in the lesson, trust me on that one. I started last school year with my two oldest in K and 1st grade and tried doing every single activity, then after a few days I realized that some of those activities are just not needed so we eliminated them. I cut different types of activities for each girl, my oldest we don't do anything involving the building of a model and she doesn't do the history record book, and my secod doesn't do coloring pages and similar things. This year, I added the modification of not doing the math using the program for my oldest girl, instead I look at objectives and teach her the lesson on the dry erase board (we don't use the activity book most of the time either) and then she does the assessment with me if there is one.

K12 has a lot of stuff in it, and you just have to flow. If your kid knows all the stuff in one unit, do the assessment and get on with it. Just because they "say" you need to spend an hour on math, that doesn't mean you need to spend it doing just one lesson or spend the entire hour if you decide on only one lesson. I had days last year with my K'er where we did an entire unit by doing a quick review and then testing out of it over the course of 10 minutes, 20 tops, and I still would log the full hour for math because she covered a LOT of material in that hour. I honetly don't see a need to spend my time dragging on lessons with material they know, or to force a kid to go on beyond what their natural attention span is (now yesterday's math is a different story, dd1 spent 2 hours straight working with me on a math concept because she was able to sit still and she needed that much time to get what I'm working on her with right now)

[425lisamarie]

Thanks for the support, I really needed that.

Why do I feel like I'm going to "get in trouble" or something LOL? Now that i'm schooling through WAVA because I couldnt' buy the k-12 on my own right now. The problem is I already purchased 1st grade math last year by "MAth Mammoth" and it looks like a great math program. We actually did a few pages and it is COMPLETELY different method than k-12. I seriously haven't even got my books, they will come friday, so I am printing EVERYTHING which is probably more frustrating since I don't have things in front of me. I think sometimes as helpful as it is to have computer skills, kids need to learn in front of them, on paper, with manipulatives etc.

So I guess i should figure out how to skim through maybe the phonics part too. If a child reads REALLY well, cutting out sentences/words and repeating things is very boring. I notice once he's bored or frustrated that is IT.

I think I felt like *I* was in control last year doing kinder, and with money tight not having thousands to spend WAVA gives me the whole cirric and now I feel like I dont' know what to do .

I mean also the trouble is say following the art class. Yeah it's great to know what is in the lessons, but at the end what if we don't want to waste our art supplies and time drawing an animal? What if they want to make a halloween craft instead? It doesn't qualify for the lesson?

[kittie313]

I'll tell you a little secret. I don't actually do the k12 art. lol I do art 2 days a week with my girls, and I look over the objectives for their art lessons to see what they think we need to do and incorporate a little of that into the art time, but mostly we draw or paint or sculpt or just simply look at artwork in books and online and discuss it. They won't let me drop both art AND music so I just kind of gloss over it, mark the lesson and insert what they want for the assessment, and mark my time spent. lol I know I'm not supposed to do that, but I did it all of last school year pretty much, and I'm doing it so far this year. But I'm in OHVA, I don't know how WAVA monitors things.

[cappuccinosmom]

If your child can meet the objectives, then give the assessment (if there is one), mark the lesson done (insert assessment answers), and move on. If you hit an entire unit that your child already knows, skip to the unit assessment and do it then mark the entire unit done (I'm doing this now with my 1st grader in math, we're in a place value unit and I'm going to spend today's math going over it real quick and all the other goodies in the unit that she doesn't know, then I'm handing her the unit assessment and moving on, there's no need to repeat stuff she knows)

Also, don't do every activity in the lesson, trust me on that one. I started last school year with my two oldest in K and 1st grade and tried doing every single activity, then after a few days I realized that some of those activities are just not needed so we eliminated them.

Excellent advice. One of the major, major positives of homeschooling for us is letting the kids learn at their own pace. We did the above with full support of our instructional supervisor. If they can't give him a full assessment now and move him up, they should be willing to let him advance at his own pace, even if that's very quickly. That's part of the point.

Same thing about activities as the others said. You don't have to do them all. And if you think about it, you probably already to many of those things as an organic part of your day (reading story books, baking, doing projects, observing plants, whatever it is).

[425lisamarie]

Originally Posted by cappuccinosmom

Same thing about activities as the others said. You don't have to do them all. And if you think about it, you probably already to many of those things as an organic part of your day (reading story books, baking, doing projects, observing plants, whatever it is).

Yes, well put thank you. I do so much with them on this level, but now that I have to go and "check" the computer to make sure i did everything it's sucking the fun outa everything for all of us! And the reason I homeschool in the first place is so they do not get bored and tire of school

[eclipse]

We did k-12 for two years. You really need to pick and choose what you do, or you'll go crazy. Even k-12 themselves will tell you not to do everything. They usually include a lot of different paths in the same lesson to meet the objectives so that kids who learn different ways can find a way that works for them. I don't know what WAVA's requirements are, but CAVA only required us to turn in one work sample per subject per quarter. Everything else was up to us. There were plenty of lessons I marked complete because I read through them and knew that my kids already met the objectives. If your son is already reading well, skip all but the phonics assessments until you hit something he doesn't know. I'd probably do the same with math. If he can pass a lesson assessment without doing any workbook pages or playing with manipulatives, you can skip that stuff unless he finds it fun.

I also found that there was a lot of coloring in k and 1st, and dd hated coloring, so we just didn't do them. We also completely skipped music and a lot of the art projects. I don't think first graders really need art history, so we almost never actually did the lessons, even if we did the projects. DS was older and is a history buff, so he loved the art history part, but rarely wanted to do the projects, so we usually skipped them. You just have to customize it!