OUR FIRST POST

I wanted to introduce ourselves in our first post.


I'm Tara, the mom.  Some say that I have a "full plate".  I am a SAHM (Stay At Home Mom) to two great children, a full-time college student (majoring in Legal Studies), a wife to a wonderful man with a dangerous job, and a caretaker to a child on kidney dialysis.  


My husband is Thomas.  He works a dangerous job (sorry, for security reasons I can't disclose his job) and helps me with the care of our two kids and will be helping us with this next step of homeschooling.


Our daughter, Eryn, will be 10 in July.  She has been in kidney failure since she was 15 months old (October 2001).  She started with a disease called Nephrotic Syndrome that progressed to a disease called FSGS (Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis).  She received a kidney transplant in October of 2007.  Unfortunately, the FSGS reoccurred in her transplanted kidney within 24 hours of transplantation.  She was doing well until March of 2010, when she had complications of a kidney biopsy and ended up losing some function of her transplanted kidney.  She then began dialysis for the second time in her life.  Since she would be missing school, we decided to make the "jump" to homeschooling.  In our county, they think that 4 hours a week with a teacher is an adequate substitution for her week of regular school.  After going through two years of this in the past, we KNEW we had to take a stand and make decisions for ourselves.  


Our son, Riley, is 3 years old.  He is the child that drive me up a wall on a daily basis, says things that NO child should ever say, does things even AFTER you tell him NOT to, and is just an all around normal BOY.  It's been a very different experience raising a child that is healthy, let alone a BOY.  He's kept everyone on their toes and keeps us going every day.


We are using the K12 curriculum (information can be found at www.k12.com).  Eryn tested below grade level due to the two years of the hospital/homebound program through the county school district (she received 3 hours per week for Kindergarten and 4 hours per week for First Grade).  She is currently in Third Grade (going into Fourth).  When she took the county's assessment, she was placed in First Grade for Reading and Second Grade for Math.  When she took K12's assessment, she tested in Second Grade for Reading and Third Grade for Math.  K12's program is advanced... there are SO many things that Eryn hasn't even learned.  We are going to be working hard with their program and hope that we can get her caught up on her learning... and possibly push past it!


We are officially starting our homeschooling on May 1st (our first billing day), but we probably won't start our classes until May 3rd (Monday).  We will be using the K12 curriculum as follows:
Second Grade Reading
Second Grade Social Studies
Third Grade Math
Third Grade Science
Elementary Spanish I
Third Grade Handwriting Without Tears (Cursive Edition)


We can't wait to start and I'll be posting our progress as we go along!!


We'd love to hear from other homeschooling families out there...  If you would like to contact us, please email us at taramcooper@me.com.  We'd love some pen pals (both email and snail mail)!!  And please feel free to link us to your blog... we'd love to hear some stories from others as well and see your experiences!!


WELCOME TO HOMESCHOOLING!