Scaling back the schooling

Three months into this experiment, I'm realizing how comfortable we've gotten doing this. I only get stressed out when I think about what we're going to do for 1st grade. But that's a topic for another evening.

What I want to write about tonight is how, when we started out, I was so nervous and unsure about what teaching L meant that I created an elaborate schedule with many different courses and a strict curriculum. I was terrified of leaving anything out. We were doing science and history and art and math and phonics and literature and handwriting and piano and soccer...oy.

The evolution of our homeschooling (which is still unfolding) has led us to a much less structured place. I still try to come up with plan of action every week, but instead of filling in every slot with the pages or activities we should get through, I've started writing up goals for the week. Then as we accomplish them, I keep track of what we actually did. Anything we didn't get to gets transfered to the following week's goal list. And we've stopped trying to do everything. Now, instead of busy schedules with different classes every day, we do a couple of pages of math & phonics every single week day. She reads to me every day. We memorize a poem every week. This is what I'm focusing on. Reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic.

As for the rest, it's really ad hoc. I carry around a volume of the Great Books Read-Aloud series so that if we get stuck on the subway or have some time to kill I have something to read to her. I'll offer to read some Story of The World to her, or do a science experiment if we're home, and if we do it that's great, but if we don't, I don't sweat it. We take various short term classes: she's going to be taking one on exploring physics through the building of simple machines, also an art class and one on designing doll dresses using geometric shapes. We try to go to piano and soccer classes each week. As often as we can we go to the Metropolitan Museum and take an audio tour (I convinced her to do the Near Eastern collection last week to check out the Babylonian stuff, but she wants to go back to the Egyptian wing this week. Drats!).

This leaves us with more time to arrange play dates and just play things by ear. I'm not chasing a syllabus any more. And it feels great.