Back to School

Summer is coming to an end and everyone is going back to school! Including us! Let me tell you all about it!

Here is the list of senators to keep calling until August 18th, 2025

Tell them to vote no on AB84

Anna Caballero 916 651-4014

Christopher Cabaldon 916 651-4003

Tim Grayson 916 651-4009

Aisha Wahab 916 651-4410

Laura Richardson 916 651-4035

Mike McGuire 916 651-4002

Amazon link to Super Funny Writing Promp
Improve writing skills while having fun!

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

Back to School/Episode 23

         Welcome to Homeschool Horizons! I’m Yvette, your host. As summer is winding down, this past week I thought I would slowly begin working our way back to school. But before I do that, let me give you a little update on how our summer went. It went pretty good with my 10 yr old son and not so great with my teenager. My 10 yr old worked on his math pretty much every day and also produced some really great stories with the writing prompt book that he chose to work on. My teenager gave attitude every day that he had to do math. He was miserable. I tried having my husband take over and that didn’t change anything. He had an attitude with my husband as well. For writing, he had originally decided that he would write a novel and produce a paragraph daily throughout summer.  He did that for about 2 weeks, and then stopped completely. I gave up asking him to do his daily writing, because it was just so exhausting dealing with his bad attitude. 

         So because summer was so challenging, I decided to begin the new school year by trying a few different things to see if they would work for my teenage son. One of them was Denison Pre-Algebra, he offers a free sample trial week! So I felt that would be perfect for my son to see if he liked Mr. Denison and the format he provides. A few years back when we lived in South Dakota, I had purchased a lifetime membership for an online learning site called Miaacademy. At that time, both of my sons didn’t like it. They didn’t like watching the videos and taking the quizzes online. So we stopped using it. But, I wanted to try again since my son was older. I had him try language arts and social studies. For science, I had him try another online learning site called Generation Genius. 

         He scoffed and hated all of it! He had such an attitude on him that it made it beyond difficult to just get through 3 days of lessons. It was horrible. He didn’t want to do anything at all! But what I noticed more than anything was that even though I wasn’t actually teaching him, he still couldn’t even handle me telling him to go do his online schoolwork. Meanwhile, I had given my 10 yr old a super easy week, because he had actually done more work throughout the summer. All he had to do was his math, cursive, and write a paragraph in his fun writing book that he actually was loving this summer! But while I was dealing with the attitude of my teenager, my sweet 10 yr old decided to take an attitude as well, just because he had gotten some of his math problems wrong and I had asked him to please show all of the work that was presented in the book for him to do in order to help him understand where he went wrong. He was so upset about that. He stomped off and threw who knows what in his room and at that point I had had it. 

         Normally, on a day like today, I would actually just yell at them and threaten to send them to public school, but this time was different. I was so exhausted! We had had a particularly busy week with other engagements and I just didn’t have anything left in me to exert anymore energy other than to cry!

         I closed the door to my room, sat on my bed, and cried! Where has my sweet considerate son gone? Who is the 13 yr old boy with such a serious face. At that point I realized it wasn’t just the change in my son that was affecting me. It was so much more. I’ve been worried about AB84 and now I don’t know if any of you have heard, but there’s another bill that is flying under the radar called AB495. Both have to do with our children. AB84 wants to take away our charters and AB495 wants to allow any person to go to any public school and ask to pick up a child without identification or parental consent. All they have to do is fill out some form online and that’s it. No background check, nothing. I realized all of this has been weighing on me so heavily, that I felt completely depleted. 

         I’m sickened by this latest bill and even though it did cross my mind to just put my boys in public school, I realized I can’t. I can’t risk some pedophile or sex trafficker coming and kidnapping my sons! The bill hasn’t become law yet.  And in fact, many people are heading to Sacramento on August 19th to stand on the steps and let all of the legislatures know that we strongly oppose AB495! The goal is to get at least 5,000 people to stand there that day.  I’ll be praying that 5,000 people or more will show up on that day!

         Anyway, after the bad week that I had, I made the decision to enroll both of my sons in a learning center two days a week that offers core academics, because the last learning center I used last year only offered enrichment classes. My teenager will be taking a literature composition class, a pre-algebra class, and a physical science class with a lab. My 10 yr old will be in a 5th grade class that will cover all of the core subjects except math. I will continue to work with him on math here at home. I am also getting him extra math support in an online class offered by my charter twice a week. My teenager will still need to take a history class and my HST is working on finding one for him where I won’t be his teacher at all. My HST helped me so much this past week too. She was so encouraging! She told me that I wasn’t the problem. She said her son went through the exact same thing. She told me that my son is seeking his independence and that the best thing for us now is that I step away from being his teacher and simply be his mom. I can still help him, but I no longer will be assuming the role of academic teacher in his life. I’m so glad she told me that! We all really do need to be supported and uplifted from time to time on our homeschool journeys, and I needed it more than ever this past week. I needed to hear that it wasn’t my fault! We have had an amazing 8 years of homeschool and even though I won’t be their primary teacher this year, I am still their mom and I am the one that still works very hard to find what will work best for them and right now I truly believe this is it. I am so grateful for my HST. 

         I hope you all had a way better week than I had! But in case you didn’t, I am right there with you! Let’s lift each other up! Let’s encourage one another and pray for each other. Let’s continue to pray that AB84 doesn’t become law. I will post the names of the senators that you can now call until August 18th.  You will say the same thing we have been saying which is simply to tell them to please oppose AB84. Give them your name and city and that’s it. You can call every single day. Let’s all have a wonderful week! Thank you for listening and I will talk to all soon!