To Parent Partnership or NOT

Does your school district have a parent partnership program? Ours does, and so does a neighboring one. Despite all the controversy from adament homeschoolers, we decided to try these out. A few years ago we went to the local one and enjoyed some things about it. This year we decided to try the neighboring one because it's set up a little different. You can choose which classes you want to take, and you can take just 1 class or you can take as many as you want! Like a co-op only free and you don't have to teach it, which is a plus when you have an infant or younger siblings.

There are many advantages to this program: my kids can have social time in a small classroom setting, learning specialized material such as robotics, algebra, or American Girl History. They really love the material taught in the classes we've chosen. I like it that they have the opportunity to be taught by someone with a different style than me but not in an everyday classroom setting.

However, the disadvantages are creeping up on me again and I'm starting to feel the migraine....First of all, doing this with a baby in tow is a lot harder than I thought it would be. What happened to our quiet morning playtime? On parent partnership days we are rushed getting out the door, then feel stuck in a big noisy room with other parents that all seem to know eachother already. I hate being the newbie. There are administrative hoops that you have to go through of course, too. Not usually a problem, but again with baby and our other time commitments, it's a little bit of a hassle. The parking lot was a headache: not enough parking, one-way flow of traffic being disrupted by a backload of buses because it was an early release day for the public school next door.

I feel like such a whiner! I'm not trying to be. I've just really enjoyed what we're doing the other days of the week so I'm considering whether this program is actually worth the effort. You get a stipend for curriculum or tutoring (horse riding lessons??) so that could be a good thing, once I figure out how to access that....I'll wait for now and see how things look in a few weeks after trying to get a new routine established. It's only been a week.

In the meantime, today is an at-home day so I'm off to finish LLATL with Gracie. We're going to use our unit study time today to make mini blankies for baby! My friend made him the CUTEST flannel blankie, and I love it that it's big enough to snuggle with or keep on his bed when he's bigger. But he's so little right now that he can't really keep it with him in the carseat, so we're going to make mini versions of it in the same flannel. Just little 12 x 12 squares with satin binding around the edges. Grace will get to measure (I'll cut with the rotary blade) and sew. She's so excited! So....better get to it!! Baby's already waking up fussing so we'll have to do some problem solving if we want to do a big project like this today.