Week 5, Monday

Well, it looks as though my homeschooling experience may come to an end after only 5 weeks.   On Friday I was feeling pretty optimistic about Ciara doing homeschool part-time and regular school part-time.  This afternoon I got an e-mail from the school director letting me know that the lawyers for the school said that it was against the law and Ciara would have to be at school full-time.

So today was kind of a hectic day.  Ciara did her best to complete all of her studies.  I feel so bad for what she has had to go through: homeschooling, no homeschooling, part-time schooling, full-time schooling, all the uncertainty, me constantly making phone calls, writing e-mails and going to meetings.   I wanted to homeschool, to give Ciara a sense of security.  I wanted her to feel comfortable and at ease while she was learning.  Unfortunately I wasn't able to provide such an environment during these past 4 weeks.

Still, I am happy that we tried, and I am happy with what Ciara has accomplished and especially how she has become a little kinder, a little friendlier, a little happier :)

We will see what the future holds...

Week 4, Tuesday

It was another rainy day.  We don't get many rainy days in Spain.  We do get some terrific thunder storms though.  I don't know why, but the thunder seems way louder here than it was in Canada.  Sometimes it sounds like a bomb is exploding right on top of you.

There was rain today, but no thunder storm.  All day I was anticipating my meeting with the director and elementary school principle to discuss what Ciara's new schedule will look like.  The meeting was at 3pm and so all day Ciara was a little on edge.  We had to move around our schedule, so she was having a hard time focusing during her Discovery session this afternoon.

I thought the meeting went well, they proposed a good schedule that would have Ciara attending classes after lunch every day with the 5th grade class.   There were a few classes that probably wouldn't make much sense for her to attend on Monday and Tuesday, so I proposed that she come to school Wednesday through Friday afternoons.  The Director wasn't sure if this was enough to qualify as attending school at ASB.   He is going to check with the school lawyers and will get back to us on Friday.

So it's more waiting and wondering.  4 weeks of researching, inquiring, pleading, negotiating and stressing, just to get a document that says Ciara is registered in school, so that we can renew our residency cards.  Bob's company is pressuring us to get the documents  ready to be submitted as it could take months to complete the process.

I am just going to try to do the best I can until we know for sure what Ciara will be doing for the rest of the school year.  I hate having this unsettling feeling: the fact that we can't comply with the law and we can't not comply with the law.

Week 3, Tuesday

This morning, at 9am we had a meeting with the director of the American School of Barcelona to talk about how we could get Ciara registered in school and still homeschool at the same time.  The meeting went pretty well.  The director is supportive, but will not sign a document saying that Ciara is attending school this year, when she really isn't.  So he came up with a compromise:  we register Ciara and she attends school part-time and then I homeschool part-time.  We agreed that this could work for us.  How exactly it will work, we won't know until the director meets with the elementary principle.  Since grade 6 is pretty full, she might have to work with the grade 5s.

In any case, I am kind of relieved that we at least have a solution in the works that will allow me to continue homeschooling while also allowing us to comply with Spanish laws.  Ciara may benefit from attending school part-time as well.  It will mean that I will have to redo our awesome homeschool schedule, but at least I wrote it all in pencil.

Today we continued to work on improper fractions, this time the questions were word problems.  Word problems are a difficult for all of my kids.  Nathan, who works so hard in math, just can't seem to figure them out.  When Rylan and Ciara encounter a word problem they just look like deer caught in the headlights.  The word problems we did today, were pretty difficult.  Ciara has the skills to solve them, she just has a hard time determining which equations to use.  We did all of our math work on the chalkboard so that we could draw pictures and break down the problem into small steps.

For social studies, we are still looking at Greek mythology.  Ciara is fascinated with the stories about the Greek Gods.  Today she learned about Pandora's box.  Ciara was so excited about Pandora, that she had to recount the whole story to Verina when they began their Skype session.

Tonight, I took Ciara to her judo class again.  She was a bit apprehensive as we entered the gym.  I think that she always feels a wave of anxiety whenever she enters a crowded place.  Since she liked her first class, we signed her up and bought her a judo-gi.  She felt good about wearing her new judo-gi and when I picked her up after class, she said that she had a good time.  I was so relieved.  Nathan also decided to try a judo class and he liked it too.  So we will probably have two kids in judo.  I also signed Cole and Rylan up for swimming lessons at the local rec. center.  I feel like we are really broadening our horizons.  This is the first time any of my kids have attended extra-curricular classes outside of the school.