October

Labor day....was soo very long ago in VS but calendar only shows ~6 weeks? Our progress was short lived. A few bumps in the road, a PC bluescreen, followed by deep pit of paperwork - all due at nearly the same time from 3 different support services, and a couple of cannot miss field trips. All this has added up to difficulty finding a routine schedule. Virtual school for 2010 started with 5 days 6-7 hours per day with 2 multi-hour changes of venue during the week. But not working so well... a change is in order.

VS has struggled a bit with third grade workload and complexity. There are fewer portfolios (projects or demonstration of isolated skill) over all - but the content so far has been essay and inferences from the text. We spend extra time on LA portfolio- where a VS should spend 1-2 hours maybe, we spend 3-4 to get the foundation skill then the portfolio project. Same for Unit lessons - so I "coach" LA usually in one big chunk, with worksheets filing in the rest of the weeks reinforcement. We've covered a few varied topics such as 1800's Gold Rush, community difference around the world, 2 column multiplication, intro to division and laws of math (communicative property of ____) and life-cycles among plants and animals.

VSS in the other hand was working 3 weeks ahead. Struggling a bit with Math as this does not come as intuitively as say Language Arts. VSS is content to work solo. VSS has been reading about animals and habitats, plant lifecycle, school/home community and painting landscapes.

We have finished what we could and resolved the problems with better hardware or different supports. Learning Dragon is on our agenda as is likely changing our schedule back to 6-7 days with shorter hours per day. Possibly adding in Chess as a incentive, social opportunity for VS. VSS has enough outside activities learning Swedish, doing Swedish folk dancing and chimes at church.

So that's all for now on VS. I'll be adding pictures of Virutal school work soon, so stop by and ask questions~ LC