Hello, again

Hey strangers…

Long time no see!

It’s been years. Almost six to be exact.

Six years of ups and downs. Six years of struggles and triumphs, of the mundane and the exhilarating, of growth and change. Six years of a life together that continues to show us how sweet it is.

A lot happens in six years. This girl just turned ten and she is more amazing than ever before. Over these past few years, she has lived a sweet little life. First she danced, and when that didn’t work out, she switched to gymnastics. She started preschool, and then public school. Never was there a prouder kindergartner, or a more heartbrokenly devastated mama. She excels at school, and after a few years of trying a few different things, we made a terrifying change that I had never, ever planned for.

We homeschooled.

Why you ask? A multitude of reasons but the most important one is that she asked. Begged, really. Despite an amazing 2nd grade teacher who worked so hard to help her be challenged, school was too easy for Little Bits. She knows too much, picks up new material too easily, and wants to be challenged. I took the advice of her first preschool teacher when she told me not to start Little Bits a year early, so we spent Kindergarten, first, and second grade pondering if that was the right decision. When we asked about skipping 3rd grade, the teachers very bluntly recommended against moving her up in her old elementary school because of the peers she would be in class with. Knowing my daughter, I realized that a.) it would be too much to switch schools AND skip a year at the same time and that b.) we were running out of time if we were going to advance her successfully. So, with Little Bits being the final decision maker, we decided that the easiest place to be challenged was at home. 

It was terrifying.

But guess what?! Together (and with a lot of help from friends and family), we made it through a whole school year. There were a few times where I threatened to put her back into public school, and even more times where one or both of us were in tears at some point during the school day, but day by day, lesson by lesson, we made it through. Late April, she took her state mandated standardized test as a 4th grader who skipped 3rd grade; a measure to see how she would compare to other 4th graders and how well her completely inexperienced mama did teaching her what 3rd and 4th graders should know.

Per the test results, she tested in the 98th percentile of all 4th graders and her grade level equivalent was somewhere in the 8th grade. (Taken with a grain of salt, as the state provided test results are a few years old.) Smarty pants. Pro: pretty confident that she’ll have the knowledge she needs when she returns to mainstream public school. Con: skipping forward a year in school didn’t help to make her NOT the smart one. We celebrated our success with a trip Up North.

It’s now well into a new school year, and we decided once again to homeschool. It didn’t make sense to put her into a new school for 5th grade, when she will have to transition to yet another school next year for middle school. And despite the extra stress and workload for this mama (and her helpers), it turns out that homeschooling is a little more enjoyable than we expected. Plus, it became part of a plan for us to achieve some sweet little dreams, but you’ll have to come back another day to find out how.

💕 always, KC