Decisions...

Well, I thought my entire week would be carefree and lazy, last week. It didn't quite end like that but HEY, a few days is better than NO days, right? I have been doing lots and lots of end research preparing for our first year of homeschooling so I haven't had much time to lay down a post in several days. In S.C., we have three options to h.s.: 1)School district approved prgm oversight by school district 2) Use an option two h.s. association approved by the state that requires testing of kids, very involved curriculum approval process' and VERY expensive membership dues 3) Option three....the only option that makes any sense if you are going to all this trouble...Join an Opt. 3 H.S. association, with no less than fifty members and follow their group rules, which are required by the state.

1. Keep a plan book or diary
2. Keep attendance, must be at least 180 days
3. Do a bi annual review/progress report
4. Attend a twice yearly check off where other group members review your records
5. Include reading, writing, math and science

This is a very brief explanation but of course, we chose to go with an option three group. We had three groups we were looking at. Two state wide groups and one local group, here in our county. Saturday we went to a check off meeting to meet the group in our county. They were all very nice and VERY helpful. The leader gave me lots of great ideas to work with Faith and another parent there showed me her plan books and how she prepared them. Great stuff! They were very accepting of Faith and told me that they had several special needs families in their group. They gave me tons of good field trip ideas for her for this year and made great suggestions of what I should work on with her. (Let me say, I know a LOT of this stuff in theory but how to do it and follow state law and requirements for the group was a little different story) They also gave me a phone number for a wonderful mom whose son has cerebral palsy and told me that she would be happy to talk to me. So I feel a LOT more confident and at peace with our decisions and very happy that we have a local group, to get advice and help in our first year and some families with kids like Faith. VERY RELIEVED! I started work on my plan book and after setting it up...I have 16 categories! I might need to pare this down a little...LOL!

BTW: I did call that mom and yesterday, we got together. She was so nice and her son was the most like Faith of any kid I ever met, even though he is much older than her. He still gets around his house walking on his knees or crawling like Faith does! You should have seen her face, watching another kid do that! She was right on his heels! He was incredibly smart and could tell me anything about the space program that I could ever imagine! They even gave Faith this cool piece of equipment called a wagon walker by Kaye products. It's this little push cart style walker for bigger kids and it has a wooden basket for toys on the front. You never saw a kid so happy! She has been pushing that thing around ever since! They had it waiting at the front door for her when we arrived! SO NICE! She showed me lots of stuff she did with her son when he was little and gave me a lot of confidence. We spent about 4 hours together and were instantly friends. She told me to call her anytime.

So all in all, our decisions are pretty much all made, I feel SO much better and we even made some new friends!

Horse stickers courtesy of Faith, she helped by choosing stickers and placement...