We are American, and currently live in the Middle East, my husband switched jobs in June of this year (actually he was made redundant from his job in North Africa). He found another job in a different country in the Middle East, however due to residency visa delays, my daughter (starting 6th grade) and son (starting 3rd grade) will miss the first quarter and part of the second quarter of school (or over half of the first semester). By the time they start school in November there will only be about 6 weeks left in the second quarter. My question is, has anyone else been through something like this? Were your children able to get up to speed? Did they have to do a lot of make up work? Was there anything special you did to help them catch up? We did not enroll them somewhere temporarily, because his new company kept telling us his visa would be ready next week etc, etc. However, I have been homeschooling them to the best of my ability. Because we have moved so much, both of my children are quick learners and speak 5 different languages fluently or near fluently. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Have you tried public online schools like connectionsacademy.com and k12.com? They are all online and consider to be public schools in the US.
If you are homeschooling your children then they are not missing school. And I wouldn't enroll them with the idea that they have missed this huge amount of school. I would enroll them as if you have been homeschooling them and then decided to not homeschool them anymore.
Your children are going to be fine. The first 6 weeks is usually a lot of review anyway. Take this time to do really fun educational things that you usually don't have time for...build models. Visit museums. Study culture. Cook together. Let them experiment in the kitchen. Grow an avocado seed and have them chart the cycles of the moon. Read books together (out loud) and have them do a book journal. Call it all school because they are learning. And don't sweat the missing "real" school part... enjoy this sweet time together. You may not have it again.
VickiS
check with the school district that your kids will be in when they get home about a cyeber school that they will accept credit from and that closesly matches their curriculum. Our district lets you cyber school and then even graduate with your class at the HS.
If you don't want to do this you should still talk with the school and get the curriculum so that you know what to teach them. They can even send you the books I bet.
If you do expect to put them in a public school I would not "homeschool" them without guidance from your district. I wouldn't worry so much about your third grader...mine is in third and so much has been recap so far. Work on his times tables with him-that seems to be the emphasis. Make him do Spellingcity online every day for spelling words. Make him read in his spare time. Your 6th grader is probably missing much more.
You just answered your own question. School is not a building and a classroom. Your kids will be so far ahead with life that catching up to what? Relax study the culture. The RRR will be easy. Get on the internet find some work pages and explore the culture you are in. They are learning everyday. When they get in school they will have a lot to share.
Contact the school they will be attending and find out where you can read up on the curriculum. Many countries and states have their curriculum standards online. You can look them up and get to work!
Will your children be out of school entirely for those months or just somewhere else? I would not suggest having them out entirely. Early elementary is all about developing literacy and basic numeration skills. Focus on that (sight word recognition, comprehension, basic sentence and paragraph structures, counting, money and time) and they will be ready to "catch-up" when they get there!
If you are homeschooling and have grade appropriate curriculum, your children will probably be ahead of their public school peers. I wouldn't worry about it. You may find it's far better for your children. So much time is wasted in regular schools that doesn't pertain to actual study.
.
WOW!!! I say you are doing a great job. Keep up the homeschooling. I bet the 3rd grader will find it easier to catch up or actually he may be ahead by the time he does get into the school. The 6th grader may have missed some of the projects that they do.
Some subjects ar easier to catch up in than others.
Math is a building block subject, you can't learn to do complex Algebraic functions without first knowing things like square roots.
I would contact the school you think they might be going to and ask what the math is that 6th graders do. He is probably doing Pre-Algebra now or something very similar.
English Grammar is taught over every year, the teachers just go much faster over nouns and verbs in 6th grade than they did in 3rd.
Have the children read read read. Go to the library and get books, fiction and non fiction.
If they read lots of historical fiction books then that will help them when tehy get to the Social Studies classes.
I have an actual science program for my 4th grader that is set up very logical. We didn't do any science per se at all last year and they are not behind. I do homeschool mine, 6th and 4th.
Yes, it can be done. It happened to me during my senior year of high school. Try contacting the school to find out what type of work the children there are doing now to make sure that they will be caught up with what has been taught. Ask if you can have advance copies of the text books. I did have lots of make-up work to do - not so much test and quizzes, but lots of reading and projects. For me it happened in the late winter and I had a tutor over the 3 week spring break to help me get everything done. Talk to the school administrators now to see if they can complete any unfinished 2nd semester assignments over the break.
Good luck.
C.
