Agora / Pacyber Back to School Kick off Week

Thought I would just take a moment and share some of our pictures of this week for our Back to School Kick off. Since we are with two different cybers we had double the fun.
Our first Back to School Kick off was with Agora cyberschool, which is our K12 school and the other was with Pacyber , they use Calvert and their own curriculum( we started with these guys before Agora came into existence.
Well with further adue here are some great shots I got of the girls having lots of fun.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Getting the hang of it all

Well this is day 10 and I believe we are starting to get somewhat of a groove. I'll admit that school is taking a bit longer to do then I'd like. But we are just going with the flow and it doesn't seem to be bothering the girls at all.

Hannah amazed me today by doing ALOT of school work. I've been noticing that I'm getting less of the " Oh no mom I don't want to do that." And she is becoming more cooperative with it. I can say that the K12 kindergarden has lots of coloring in it. Thank goodness my girls love to color. They could color all day and it wouldn't bother them. Hannah was able to do her math ( and she did two math lessons today) and she did her phonice lesson and her language arts which was making a Blue Color Book. Then on top of it all she finished her monthly homework assignments that are going to go to her teacher. The neat part is that Hannah will be getting to meet her Kindergarden teacher tomorrow at Barnes and Nobel. She will be taking a quick test called the Aimsweb test. I'm not sure other the its to help them personalize their curriculum for them. I think Hannah will do just fine. Then after that we'll go out to lunch and then go to Presque Isle for our Agora Back to School Kick Off. The girls will really enjoy that.
Thursday we are going to go to Asbury Woods for our Pacyber Back to School Kick Off Picnic. So we have a busy week ahead of us. That doesn't count in Girl Scouts this week and Awana on Wed. Phew! Just typing it all out makes me tired.
But the greatest thing is about it all is that we love it. I couldn't imagine life any other way.

Lots and lots of boxes !

Okay.When we signed up for K12 we didn't realize how many boxes we were going to get. All I can say is Wow! We have boxes for each subject.
K12 seems to be having shipping problems this year so we are getting tons of bigger boxes and our UPS guy I think thinks we're crazy.
Not to mention the boxes sent from Pacyber with books for Marilyn. We are just up to our eyeballs in boxes.

I will have to admit that I love the K12 curriculum. I've used lots of curriculum in the pass and they've either been so so , or they've been pretty great. But honestly you can't beat K12. You have everything you need right at your disposal. The online school is so nicely organized and I feel like I can confidently teach Hannah and teach her well. Its taken her some time to learn in this new way. But she really likes it.
I think their phonics program is excellent. Hannah is doing pretty well with it. I'm using the program as is so we'll see what the outcome will be. Of course I don't do everything verbatium. But we do the exercises in the teacher's manual. We've been schooling for two weeks now and I can see Hannah learning alot already. She loves her History and is learning her 7 continents. We have a really nice cloth map of the world that I have hung up in the living room. We turn on the Continents song and we sing and point to the contients. Maggie likes to dance to it! Silly girl. Hannah is doing well with Math. Though some concepts she knew not that long ago she has forgotten. Like her shapes . But she has learned left and right really quickly and top and bottom and before , between and after really quickly. Hannah likes science too because some of the lessons have cute little interactive games she can play that go along with the lesson. So she likes that alot too. She likes to sit and listen to the stories for language arts too and doing the activities.
I try hard not to do everything. I pick and chose but there is just so much neat stuff on there that's for sure. I think our least favorite is Music. The songs on the Let's Sing CD are a bit dorky at best. My girls begged me to shut it off. But they do like the Let's Listen CD because its classical music. I do like Art but I think its a bit over Hannah's head. I guess exposure is the key. So its really alright. I do like it though. All in all we're doing great with the Agora cyberschool. Hannah has gotten to talk to her teacher and this Tuesday she will get to meet her in Erie for some type of testing of some sort. Then we'll see her again at Presque Isle( the beach) for our Back to School fair.

Pacyber has been alright. We're having some bumps in the road right now and I'm hoping we can smooth them out. I've been smitten with the K12 curriculum so of course what we are using right now isn't comparable to that. I feel like I've jipped my girls out of an education. I can't tell you Calvert is no where near enjoyable as K12. I feel like I wished I had tried it out years ago. But that's in the past and this is the future.
Marilyn is taking online classes for Math , History and English and they are alright I guess. She isn't thrilled with it. We're doing science ourselves and its very confusing. So far I don't care for the Lincoln Interactive curriculum. I had read many rave reviews on it and I'm just not seeing what everyone else is seeing. But maybe I will the more I figure it out and the more I get into it.
Katie is Katie. She's the one who I feel I need to spend more time with , and I'm hoping to get a schedule better so I can be right there with her. I'm thinking of having her do her work in the morning and just working with Hannah in the afternoon. But then school will take all day and that isn't the goal I'm looking for either.

The one thing I need to know is that the first month of school is just going to be rough as we figure out everything. So all of those out there just starting school up with their own children. Take a deep breath with me and breath out! Phew.