I have been homeschooling my oldest child for a few years now & we've gotten to a point where something needs to change. As things currently stand, they aren't working. We either need to come up with a new homeschooling plan, try cyber school again, or find a school for her to attend outside of the home.
Yesterday morning, "Penguin" (that's what I'll name my oldest daughter for now) & I looked at schools for 6 hours! It was exhausting, but it needed to be done. We found a couple of schools there were absolutely a big fat NO and a few schools that I'd like to research more & possibly visit again.
We drove over to Edu-Prize. At first I didn't even want to consider this school because by the time I drive there & back & fight school-type traffic two times a day, I'm looking at about 2 hours out of my day just transporting Penguin to & from school. It sounds like they could have some options that would work very nicely for Penguin, BUT they won't let her start before July ... it's a "year-round" school & July is when the new school year starts.
Another school that was unexpectedly very nice and only about 7 minutes from home is Imagine Charter school. The school had a very warm, friendly atmosphere, but I need to talk to them more about how they are going to challenge Penguin in certain subjects.
American Leadership Academy is getting ready to build a whole new campus, but their current campus is a bit drab. Because of their cut-off date for entering Kindergarten, Penguin would fall into 2nd grade at their school instead of 1st grade. BUT they are wanting to do testing and possibly put her into 3rd grade, if we were to choose that school. I just don't know how I feel about that. As with everything there are pros & cons, but 3rd grade??? One thing that jumped out to me while visiting this school was that there seems to be a lot of really good kids attending school there.
San Tan Learning Center was also very nice and they have some aspects of a montessori school, but this school is very small and probably too small for me.
One school that we didn't look at that I've heard good things about is Bright Beginnings.
Anyone have any thoughts or opinions about any of these schools? Anyone looked into private or montessori schools & have thoughts on those? Please feel free to email me privately if that's better for you.
3 comments:
She should go to Edu-Prize but as you probably know I am a little biased towards Edu-Prize. If you want to learn more about the American Leadership Academy you should call Rachelle Rohner. Her twins went there. There is also a lady in my ward that teaches there.
I really loved Franklin for my kids. It is very structured and it taught them responsibility, discipline and good work skills plus it's main focus is the 3 R's. I wish I could find a school here like it.
Macey's school is an imagine school with an environmental focus. I have some mixed feelings about her school, but I really like the imagine parts of it. (My complaints are in regards to the newness of the school, overcrowding, longer school day, lots of homework...)They really stress parent involvement and open the doors to parents anytime. This can be wonderful and overwhelming all at once :) They work on different character traits every month and really reward good behavior. They start the day out with morning meeting and say the pledge, discuss their character trait, the kids take turns introducing themselves to practice public speaking, the classes take turns presenting things and leading the meetings..... They also seem to be good about making individualized education programs and reassessing regularly. I know the imagine schools have a conference every summer and recognize the best schools (ours tied for best new school.) You may be able to look up those stats and see where how your imagine school compares to others.
I would personally not want to do the big commute. As valuable as her education is, your time is also valuable (as well at penguin 2 and 3's time). If you cut out the commute she has more time to sleep in the morning, get homework done in the afternoon and still have time to relax and be a kid. You also have time to do the things you need to do. If you do end up commuting, I suggest books on tape.
Those are my two cents. Sorry for all the rambling information. I hope some of it was intelligible and useful.
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