Home schooling in covid lock down!

The wife and I have taken on our little nice and nephews schooling needs due to several problems and boy are we out of touch with things! Both kids have school provided laptops that don't work very well, and our internet service provider has proven completely inept at solving our problems, to the point that I have contacted our county and state reps to get a fire lit under someone's ass to get this fixed! I don't know what the issues are, but it's effecting the kids connectivity to their school and teachers while my connection is ok except for the 5G which suckz! Outside of that, trying to get ahead of the kids lessons so we can help them with their studies, and I'm finding out how smart I'm not!
The big challenge is: the oldest ( 7 years old) is having all sorts of trouble, she isn't comprehending things, and gets really upset about it. She then has her brother who is 5 Interupting her, plus their dogs, and it's a total disaster in the making! We offered to have the kids come here each week and stay with us so we could deal with the distraction issues and focus each of us with one kid at a time, dealing with the school and the teacher hasn't been pleasant, but we're getting things sorted! For a state so far sideways, they sure have a bunch of stupid requirements that make absolutely no sense, but must be met, including having "Other" then parents taking responsibility for the kids and then being held accountable to the school! I had to make it very clear to all involved that I would ( with full authority from their mother and father) be handling things and serving in the kids best interests, and if I didn't like something or am unwilling to comply with certain things, then they are going to have to answer to me sam's as they would the kids parents! I have a call into the county office here, the state office, and several "leaders" and I am holding feet to fire expecting answers that make sense and put the kids needs first! God help me, I'm gonna make them earn their pay, and I'm gonna make them fear me and respect me, and God help them if they don't take this seriously! My own two sons have been out of school almost 14 years, and I never thought I would ever be doing this, but this god damn china virus scan has the whole system screwed up, and it's ether deal with the system as it is( and try to work with in) or we go full homeschool and take the state and the school's out of this! For elementary school, I see having an actual teacher as important, but later on, a full switch to home school is a smart choice!

 

I have made the executive decision ( with the parents permission and blessing) to pull the kids out of school at their home district and enrolling them here in My district. we will get new computers and the school here has the resources to better solve our connectivity issues! I have a teli conference tomorrow with the school admin folks and were going to get this party started Rikki Tic! I hate waiting on others to do, instead of getting things done, but I have to let the "System" work, if nothing else but to show just how bad things actually are!
We got the house all set up for this, we have a designated "School Area" with no distractions to deal with, and were going to set up and adhere to "Best Practices" of: Getting up at the same time every morning, getting showered and dressed as if we were going to school, we will eat a full breakfast of heathy wholesome foods ( Like it or not) and we will start start "School" at the exact same time each and every day! Breaks will be taken at the same time "Between Class's" and lunch will be taken at the same time each day followed by 1 hour of free time internet free, if it's not raining, it will be outside, and if it's raining, it will be a book! After, we get back to "Schooling" and we finish up at the same time every day! Basically, were going to act as If we were actually going to school, with out actually going to school, but the requirements will be the exact same, and like it or not, both kids will be held accountable to that! I will be holding every one accountable, kids, school, teachers, and any one else involved, and I will make this happen in the best interests of these kids! My Lovely Bride will be taking on quite a bit, and the Captain will be taking his watch on deck to ensure things are being done!

First thing we gotta figure out is why the 7 year old is having problems, and get that sorted out right quick and in a hurry like, there is absolutely no acceptable reason for her to be having any issues, especially at her young age and grade, so that's our #1 focus! Second, we got two "school areas" so that her little brother can get his kindercollage schoolin with out being a distraction to his big sister, Which seems to be a MAJOR issue with them, and finally NO DOGGIES in the room to distract the kids, which is going to get some wet noses bent some! We need to sort the issues between the school and teachers and our selves, and get that settled, and we need enough advance prep so that we can get ahead of the kids enough to know where they need to be at a given point and to know if/when there is an issue so that we can head that off before it becomes an issue!

 

Noticeable difference when our school district went to remote learning. Internet speed became very slow and unreliable.

 

Its the biggiest joke up here ,, kids are stuip and getting fucked over , plus im paying for it ,, teachers/ leachers of squat are the BS union problem TIME TO FIRE ALL !!

 

I learned that most parents don't give a damn about their kids education. Half of kids were never enrolled in on line schooling here.

 

And that right there was the best advice I have gotten on this, all of it! Thank you for that, it really means a lot!
I'm committed to getting this right, as if these two were my own two, and as such, I demand they have the very best ( because I'm paying for it in more ways then one) and They deserve the best, the best chance to succeed in life, the best education we can provide for them, and the work ethic to succeed on their own, because they see the value in it! I do not want them to fall behind the curve or fall between the cracks, and having been one who fell between the cracks and was passed over, or simply forgotten, or wished would just go away, I know the fight ahead, and I will not let what happened to me and my brother happen to his children, especially now that i'm in charge of things! LOL And, we got the Captain to oversee things and make things happen on his end, and while he is getting up there, he is still a fearsome man who commands respect, so, between the three of us, watch out!
I'm going to go into this with an open mind and i'm going to try and work within the system and figure out what I can and cannot do, and then figure out how to over come any obstacles and make this a success for all!

 

Find out how best they learn and taylor your teaching methods to that. theres 3 basic types
Audio (learns best by hearing/listing)
Visual (learns best by seeing/watching)
Kinaesthetic (learns by doing/hands on)

As someone who was homeschooled (never been to a public school) and is visual/kinaesthetic I can attest to the fact that Verbal teaching for me was an exercise in frustration (my mom will tell you the same as she was the one Pulling her hair out till she figured this out and changed tactic) You know the saying “in one ear and out the other” yeah well that is literally what happens when you dont register on the audio spectrum.....

There are test that can be run to figure this out & at this point you could probably find a decent one online.
I believe this is at least part of why so many children struggle in school nowadays. Because the schools have a 1 size fits all approach and thats not going to work well for 2/3 of the kids.

 

As to the 7 year old, I may have had a like experience.

Having adopted siblings we found the oldest was so busy trying to take care of the younger that he missed a lot of basic instructions. As such we dropped all the way back to pre K and settled in for the long haul. In some ways we used comprehension of things around the ranch. In this basic cause and effect was used with the animals if not taken care of and then on to basic physics.

Physics is the base for a lot of forced decision to make the mind understand how the world works and what the human must understand for problem solving.

Once the child understands how physical things affect their life, gear trains, clocks time and what happens if common things in their life are ignored then they begin to grasp other parts of their life and how to make decisions.

It could also be that she was "helped:" too much by teachers and needs to understand that answers are not always provided by others etc.

 

This^^^^ Public school never considers that a child many need a different learning style. Once it is figured out and addressed, it makes learning easier for the child.

 

We are experiencing similar issue with the technology but we are working through it. I have cut and patched our DSL line several times while working on the new part of the house which hasn't helped. The kids are learning but it is work, our son plows through his work and is finished before lunch but our daughter will do everything but her work, we have to interrupt whatever she is doing and get her back on task more times than I care to count throughout the day and it usually drags on until 3 or 4 in the afternoon. The only exception is if we tell our daughter a friend can come over when she finishes her work, she will be done by 10 or 11.

 

This might help with working out their learning styles

The Learning Style Quiz

 

I try to make my kids show some personal responsibility. I told them to get it in gear or they will have to redo the school year.
There are so many people at home and many kids on the web that I think the system is overloaded. Service providers play a game also about paying more for faster speed.

 

Ok, update. GOt the kiddos enrolled this morning, and had the first of several video chats with school staff which went well. Spent 2 hours back and forth with our cable/internet provider (Comcast) and they are not willing to do anything further, after going up the flag poll as far as they would let me, I got told that they have met the states requirements and will not be doing any more to help! I replied "That's Unfortunate" and basically ended the call with them! Got ahold of one of our Gov'ness's assistants assistant or some such and filed a complaint against the provider and shared my issues with her, she seemed concerned and has promised to get my concerns to the right people and will follow up with me in the next few days! I spoke to Gigi's teacher and she seems like a nice lady who takes things serious and we talked through some things in search of the issues she might have and how we might be able to address them, so that's good! I also spoke to the Vice Principle and he is very concerned about our connectivity issues, as the school is having those same issues and so are the teachers and parents, so it's one more to the growing list of folks having issues with Comcast and not getting any resolution!
We got our first partial school day finished and so far Gigi feels good about it, she likes her new teacher and she is happy with the set up we have here for her that keeps her little brother out of sight and out of hearing, but the doggies were NOT having any of it and the Mailnator pitched a fit about getting kicked out of the room, though he seemed to calm down once he learned he could still hang out in the rest of the house, but he isn't allowed to be with the kids while learning is taking place! All in all, things are looking a little better, and the kids seem to be adapting to this new arrangement, so were keeping fingers crossed that things continue this way!
We also have a list of things to test and look for with the kids to see if there are some learning issues, one of which I discovered already, a keyboard that is hard to read and use, so I gave her my old back lit gaming keyboard and mouse and hooked it up to her laptop, it's more then twice the size of the laptop keyboard and with the back lighting, she had a much easier time picking her way around the keys, which are also full size and easier for little fingers to find! Kind of a challenge for a 7 year old who is still learning to read and have to learn to use a keyboard, and make it all happen, which she is very focused on!
Were all feeling pretty good so far, as long as things continue to improve, and we can get the damn internet working better, I noticed around lunch time that we pretty much lost connectivity, and it was really lagging when we could get signal, funny thing is, my own laptop seems unaffected by this, though it does show the speeds lagging behind what i'm used to seeing, and streaming seems to be the most effected, but live video chat was perfect when using it! ID, but were gonna get to the bottom of all that and get the cable people off their ass's and get things fixed!

 

My mother taught me to read almost about the same time learned to speak. I read everything and have a passion for words, precise words that convey exact meaning. This caused me some problems with the early public educational system, as I was expected to See Bob run and I was more concerned with what he was running from.

 

In the beginning, public schools had one thing going for them, the parents were not educated.
People that strap on the responsibility of teaching their own kids will put to work those things they learned in school reinforcing that education. It is good for the kids and it's good for you.
A great deal of the problem is that the parents often did not learn anything in school but to horse around, consequently the kids have no discipline at home.
A home with good self discipline gets instilled in the children.
My grades in school were poor because the teachers often time were spread too thin and I was hyper active. I learn best by doing.
I knew how to make and build and repair things other kids my age had no interest. I knew well enough how to read but retention was difficult from the pages of a book.
Funny thing was I took to Bible study like a fish in water.
I pursued more interest in learning out of school than in it.
We homeschooled our kids and they passed the GED no sweat.
I suggest that you get a GED course and work it.

 

My paternal grandmother taught me to read beginning when I was 3 or 4. I remember I first learned to read upside down and backwards, a result of sitting at her knee and looking at the book in her lap. Once she realized I was doing that she moved me to sit next to her and then my love of reading began.

The downside was I entered kindergarten already reading on what public schooling considered a fourth grade level and was bored witless having to sit through the other kids learning their ABCs. By first grade I'd read the entire Little House on the Prairie series and was working on the Narnia books. Third grade saw me reading a book I'd found in my dad's library about some NYC street preacher who worked with junkies and hookers and I got into trouble telling the kids in school what a "shooting gallery" was, heh. I had no patience for public schooling but I read everything I could get my hands on and learned far more from the public library than I ever did in class.

I never really got along with that grandmother. She was old school society, white gloves and hats and cross your legs like a lady. I was wild and wanted to be like my big brothers. But I will always thank her for giving me the gift of reading at such a young age.