This is a huge change in your lives, both for yourself and your child. The change will be even greater if you’ve been a stay-at-home mother whose primary job has been caring for your children. Even though you might be nervous and upset, just know that you will get used to this change, you will get into a routine, and at the end of the school year you’ll wonder why you ever got upset or nervous.

We live in a really good school district and have had a wonderful elementary school experience so I’m probably spoiled. But I still remember 6 years ago, getting ready to put my oldest on the bus for the first time. I couldn’t imagine doing it, since she was so “shy and quiet” like I used to be as a child.

But this was one of the biggest changes in her life and SHE WAS EXCITED. That’s what made it better for me, knowing that SHE wanted to face this experience head on. That SHE wanted to make new friends and ride the bus. She’s still quiet and shy but she has enjoyed the whole school experience.

I remember the anxiety like it was yesterday and do my best to help some local friends make the adjustment. This year my oldest starts middle school and some of those same anxieties have risen in my chest, but once again, SHE is excited. SHE is ready for the transition.

How can I be upset that she’s excited about this adventure?

photo credit: TheTruthAboutMortgage.com

My kids have gotten into the bad habit of immediately turning the tv on when they walk in the door from school. They’ll both give me the abbreviated version of their day at school then it’s tv. Not proud of it, that’s just the pattern we seem to have established.

Today I plan on throwing them a curveball by printing out the Thinker Thursday puzzle and having them solve it instead of watching television. That ought to put them in a really good mood, especially since after homework we have to write overdue thank you cards for our Christmas gifts.

I can hear the groaning now!

I marvel at the parents who homeschool multiple kids. That seems like an awful lot of work to plan the lessons and I wonder if these parents are brilliant in their own right to teach about all these different subjects. I could probably handle the elementary work but how on earth do you plan and teach about advanced subjects?

Recently I found the website K-12 Free Homeschool which offers a ton of information about homeschooling and their new concept of offering a free core curriculum, complete with 180 days of lessons and activities. I’m all for saving money so the word *free* struck me right away and I also like the idea of having the lessons and activities planned.

Now, since the *free* aspect is part of this new program’s focus, I assume that homeschooling parents currently have to pay other people/companies/schools for curricula and lesson plans. That could become rather costly, especially if you have a limited income. Here’s how it can be tuition-free.

My biggest fear of becoming a homeschool parent was that I wouldn’t know enough about any one subject, especially advanced math and sciences. If I didn’t know the info, how could I possibly teach it well enough to my child? I am also a computer/internet junkie who can get lost surfing the internet so it would take me forever and a day to make just a couple of lesson plans.

If you would like to add some time to your busy homeschooling life while also saving some money, here is the K-12FreeHomeschool.org Course Catalog

*This is a sponsored review*

I’m not talking school supplies because I hit paydirt with some of the penny sales during the summer. These September expenses are the things that we seem to forget about: PTA dues, subscriptions to classroom magazines, school pictures , field trip money or deposits, and the multitude of fundraisers.

Being a fundraising mom in a public school, I fully understand that the money stays in the school and pays for specialized programs that benefit ALL the students. For that, I am proud to be involved. And I know that the PTA is not allowed to carry over vast amounts of funds from the previous year so in September we have to start raising money all over again. But it can be hard to manage the influx of paper and requests before getting the “your account is overdrawn” message from the bank.

Here are some quick and easy tips for supporting your school while not breaking your budget:

1. Pick and choose which fundraiser you want to support. Many schools have multiple fundraisers so don’t feel like you must contribute to each one.

2. Send in a cash donation. This way 100% of your contribution goes to the school and you don’t have miscellaneous items that you won’t use cluttering your home.

3. Determine the amount you want to give BEFORE browsing through any catalogs. Write out that check first or have the money in hand before you get sucked into spending more than you have in the bank.

4. Volunteer your time. This won’t cost you a dime out of pocket but will make you feel good that you’re helping your school community.

Here’s to a happy school year!

Apparently I was wrong.

For these last five years in elementary school, the classes have always been divided pretty evenly with students of different “levels”. They were not going to be accused of segregation by putting all the top level students in one class and have all the struggling students in a separate class. But apparently the middle school DOES divide the students in this manner so this annual standardized test has acquired all new importance.

I was stunned when the note came home from the school’s reading specialist suggesting that my daughter start working with a Reading Tutor. We were blindsided because this is the kid who was always in the top reading groups and who always received outstanding grades in reading on her report cards. After I gathered all of her past report cards and was ready to wreck havoc on this so-called specialist, I learned that her test score from 4th grade went down, thus prompting this teacher to test her skills and make this recommendation.

Come to find out from another friend, these test scores are looked at VERY closely by the middle school administrators when they meet in the spring to put these new students into “teams”, or different levels. The same thing will happen when my daughter enters high school. And since our district is so big, they won’t have time to analyze each student. They’ll just see on a computerized report what numerical level she achieved on the test and plop her onto a team. It won’t matter to them that if she had scored only two more points on last years test she’d be categorized in a higher level.

Since we want her placed with other driven and ambitious students in middle school, I’m going to search out a SCORE Learning Center for a Reading Tutor just in case our reading help at home doesn’t help her enough.

I hate to place such an emphasis on these tests but it sure seems like these state tests are almost as important as the SATs.

** This is a sponsored post. **