Homeschooling Thoughts

I've been reading things on a few blogs about homeschooling.  We are homeschoolers too, though lately I don't think I have written much on that subject.  Dia over at Rancho Chico wrote of the achievements and changes she has noticed in their youngest, Milagro.  Shanti, over at Adoption is our nutshell (and I can't make a link work here but her blog is great!)  has just begun a homeschooling journey and is filled with excitement and perhaps equal parts trepidation.

I love homeschooling.  I remember the trepidation part, back when we first started with Chet so long ago.  I still feel it from time to time and find myself putting a mental yardstick against my kids and their traditionally schooled peers.  Are they learning enough?  Are their exposures wide and varied enough?  Yada yada.  I pride myself on not teaching to a test and not throwing out the arts for the sake of a grade, but I am still always self checking that knowledge meter.

The thing I love most about homeschooling though is the way it gives me a chance to know my kids more deeply and to be with them in a different way.  It has allowed learning to be a joyful experience for 3 of the 4 kids.  I have one who would prefer never to have to learn, never to have to risk.  But even he has moments when he doesn't just shine, but enjoys the process. 

This winter Elisabeth decided that she too was ready to homeschool.  That is something else I love.  That learning just is a natural, life long process.  You don't have to be a certain age, you just do it.  My mother got Lissa these really cool work books for her birthday.  Or maybe Yule.  The holidays are a blur folks!  Anyway, they are put out by the Kunan company and i adore this company.  I use them for KC's math and he has essentially been able to work independently on his math because of the learning system they employ. But I digress.  One of Lissa's books deals with cutting skills, another with stickers, another with folding and there is another one that escapes me at the moment.  We have begun with the sticker one.  In the picture of the little guy above, he had none of the stickers for his clothing on.  Her job was to peel them off and put them on appropriately.  Great fine motor work. Great for simple analytic thinking.  Great for talking about colors.  Great for her to do while I do geometry with Rob.  LOL  She does on average 3 to 4 pages a day. 
In some areas, I think she seems very advanced for 3.  She has a great crayon control (must have been all that practice on the living room wall when she was 2!) and can color in the lines of a simple drawing with amazing precision.  I never really did much coloring in the lines with KC till he was about 4 or so.  But that was because he always had a picture he wanted to draw on his own.  A craft that he thought up that he wanted to create.

Which leads me to my other homeschool joy.  Both types of children are equally smart and talented.  However the one who likes to color in the lines and is a bit less spontaneous?  That is (at least in my experience) the public school teachers dream!  (smile)  Not that I want to deprive any wonderful teachers out there of the joy of my daughter but my goal is to do for her the opposite.  I am glad she has great motor skills, but now we work on making up a story and illustrating it.  Thinking up something silly (a dog with wings) and trying to draw it.  Life isn't always in the lines and I want her to have the creativity and confidence to deal with that.  Just like I want to have KC to have the ability to rein  in his creative impulses when the need arises.

Rob totally made me proud this week when we were discussing that icky book Lord of the Flies.   It is a well written book.  I read it in school.  Chet read it in school.  Sigh.  So did Rob.  I can't help it.  I have never liked it.  But we had a great discussion on how literature could be great and not likeable.  We talked about allegories and the fact that the main characters were symbols of things that William Golding was trying to say about humanity.  And Rob in his quiet way, had insights.  I was beyond thrilled.

I got an email tonight that a local wildlife sanctuary that we frequent is trying to organize a homeschool trip to take a whale watch.  If they get enough signups I'll take the day off and take the kids.  All of them.  Alone, as K gets sea sick. Goddess help me!  But it will be fun.  And things like that too, are gifts to us as a family, gifts of knowledge and time shared together that I would not have were we not homeschoolers.