Homeschooling? Huh?

So it's official. I'll be homeschooling my 13 year old daughter next school year. What on earth am I thinking?! She is so distracted in school by all the Junior High garbage that goes on, is struggling academically, and is starting to act out. That's the trifecta for us, so now mom gets her hands on her! Christina is a smart, capable, fun-loving, inspiration girl who thrives on her independence, stubbornness, and freedom--3 things that will make homeschooling her a challenge! We really want her to have a strong school year before she heads into High School--here they do HS in 9th grade. We will be using the k12 curriculum, because homeschooling for us is about academics. But, I'll supplement with "my own" curriculum...I'll do home ec with her (cooking, sewing, budgeting, etc), computer literacy (she'll blog, photoshop, type), as well as enrich other subjects. She's really excited to write her own book of short stories and poems, illustrate it, and publish it.

For outside activities, she is on the high school prep softball team, she is learning golf at the golf course a couple of blocks from our house, we'll do a teen book group at B&N, and in the winter, we'll let her take snowboarding lessons.

I'm pretty excited about it? Her? Not so much! She is worried about missing her friends and being isolated. We keep telling her that right now, she's as isolated as she can get (she's always grounded for grades and homework) Both of those become non-issues with the homeschooling, so she'll actually end up with more freedom than she has now. Sometimes, it's hard to see the forest for the trees though, so she is a hard sell.

One thing she is looking forward to is helping me teach my refugee English classes and signing up to volunteer at the zoo when she turns 14 in October. And with homeschooling, she'll have that flexibility to be able to do them!

This is a layout I did of my sweet daughter last year. I love this layout because it just shows her personality so well! I used my Fall into School kit to make the layout.

Of course, this one also fits her personality to a tee as well, so I think we can look forward to an interesting year!

I used Dana Frantz' kit "Amazing Spirit" for this layout. You must check out Dana at Scrapbookgraphics--she's got some awesome designs!

Ok, now I need to get off! I've got to clean the house today, prepare a lesson for church tomorrow, and jump on the blog train at DST!

THanks for hanging out with me today! Be sure to scroll down to my last post for a freebie!