Quest for the right Education

We are constantly evaluating, praying, searching, waiting, resting, keeping our eyes open for the right education for our children. We have had a real peace about the older 2 kids and where they are going to school. We plan and feel it is the Lord's plan to keep them where they are. They are thriving, enjoying school, their friends and are content to stay where they are at.

Now the younger 2 kids are a different story. They are not settled yet and we are in the process of finding that right fit for them. Baby girl could stay where she is and that would be ok with me. However the logistics and financial end need to be evaluated based upon little mans move. We feel very confident he will be switching schools next year. His present school only goes up to 3rd grade so he would need to switch soon anyways. I am concerned he may not be working at grade level. He might be, I am just not sure.

The school is very intense and challenges kids. If you know my little man, he is not an intense, competive, push-push kind of kid. He is a lovey, cuddle bear, who is very much an experiencial learner. Let him experience it and he will remember every detail, tell him about it and it might go in one ear and out the other. Anyways if you are aware of the A Beka program, you know it can be very linear and dry, no thinking outside the box. No experiencing the material, just lots of memory work. Now we kept him at this school because they push and concentrate heavily on reading. My philosophy is reading is the gateway to all learning. If you can't read the science or math problem how can you do the problems. Little man struggled with reading and therefore I wanted him to have intense focus on reading. We can catch up later on math, science, social studies if we need to, but lets get down the basics, the foundation....reading. Maybe that was a wrong way to approach his education, but that was how I wanted to proceed. I was afraid he would try to keep up on everything and his reading would suffer and then get brushed over in a big class. His class size now is 8, so he can get more personalized attention when needed.

Why are we proposing to move him? Well, it seems to be too much on him emotionally. I do feel his reading has greatly improved this year and that was what we wanted. I certainly want him to have a love for learning and staying there I feel would impede that. AHHH!!!

So the quest for the right school for little man begins. This is the hard part for me. I know, no school is perfect, but which school is right for little man. Dear God lead and guide us to the right school.