Wrapping up the year

Today was the last day of the Simple Machines class held at ROC, a homeschool community center in the basement of a church on the Upper East Side. I can't say we got a lot out of it, not because the class wasn't good but because we had missed so many after the car accident and getting sick and getting the New Paltz house ready. I think we ended up going to two or three. But we got to take the Lego educational kit home with us so we'll just do all the projects on our own, though Teacher Tom's talks on physics (for five-year-olds) will be missed.

There was one girl, about 8 or 9, who attached herself to L & me as we were doing our car-building project. I let her help because L didn't seem to mind, but found it incredibly annoying -- she wasn't signed up for the class, and was monopolizing what should have been L's project while her father sat about 6 feet away, totally ignoring what was going on. I had to jump in several times just to make sure L got a chance to put some pieces together herself. And she was wearing so much perfume that it made my eyes water to stand next to her! (meow) And all through my teeth-clenching, eye-rolling and barely restrained sighs of irritation, L let the girl build the car with her and complimented her on her pretty dress at the end. Now who is the child here?

I'm planning on starting 1st grade in June, and run a 12-month year so that we can get away with doing only 4 days a week and have wiggle room for slotting in other fun things. Like going to France this summer for 2 weeks and maybe London. Because we had to cancel our London trip due to the scarlet fever episode last month we still have those tickets that have to be used. That would be a hell of a field trip.

Nature study and curriculum decisions

We've been spending a lot of time up here in New Paltz. The house is so surrounded by trees and other plants that sometimes the green light sifting through makes me feel like I'm underwater.

We've started incorporating a lot more nature study into the day simply because it's such a large part of our lives here. Yesterday, L, T & I went for a walk to find a tree to "adopt". We found it on what L calls her island, a little bump in the course of the stream. I don't know what kind of tree it is yet, just that it's a bit bigger than a sapling, but not quite a mature tree, and L says it speaks to her. Through the year we'll research what species it is, look at how it appears in all the seasons, measure the trunk circumference and just generally visit it regularly and keep a record in our nature book.

The really good news of the week is that I think I'm settling into a curriculum, at least for this year. Charlotte Mason (CM) is one of the major types of homeschooling philosophies, not quite as strict and full-on as Classical Education but with more structure than unschooling. It's named for a British educator who created a philosophy around the education of children that incorporated a lot of nature study, short lessons, and learning through the reading of classic "living" books. I'm still educating myself on exactly what all this entails but what I see of it so far I'm really attracted to. (You can find out more about this philosophy here). What I like about it is that it is flexible, doesn't require us to follow a rigid schedule of courses, and incorporates much of what we already do--read classic children's literature, use narration for example.

So CM is going to be the driving philosophy behind my choices for what and how to study & teach. I'm still going to use Starfall for phonics, Singapore Math (though I'm really intrigued by this free math curriculum which I might incorporate), do nature study ála Tanglewood for science, and follow Ambleside Online's art & music schedule. For the history/geography core, I'm going to use this online curriculum, Mosaic Introduction to World History, which, on top of being free, uses Story of the World which L loves.

So now I just need to file my paperwork with the Board of Ed, figure out the bones of a schedule, and get started!

L's blog

>>Little Flower Journal<<

I know a lot of people would react to a five-year-old with her own blog in the same way I do to a five-year-old with a cell phone: hunh? How absolutely ridiculous and indulgent and really... ostentatious on the parent's part -- hey, look how cool we are. Our kid has a blog.

So I sort of cringed when I first saw an example of a kid's school blog at The Amazing Discoveries of Dash. But then the idea sort of grew on me. What a great way to create a portfolio of a child's work, and let him or her see it published. And it can be used as tool for all sorts of things, like doing narrations (which I was writing by hand in a notebook, which had the disadvantage of keeping her dictation slow enough for me to write down, and if you know L, you know the lightening speed at which her tongue runs), dictating a journal, teaching her the technology, and another use for the computer beyond games and watching dvds.

We've only been doing it for three days, and so far it's been great. She finds it thrilling to see her words appear on the computer screen; for her it's almost as good as appearing on tv, I think. She's a little more cooperative doing narrations since I can almost keep up with her thoughts, and best of all, she gets to ramble on about her webkinz for as long as my fingers can stand it.

I expect that the novelty will wear off soon, and then the real test of this as an educational tool will begin. I also confess that I'm a little hesitant about how much information will go out about her and her life. I had a photo of her up there at first, but then took it down, though since I have loads of photos of her on this blog, I'm not sure why I'm being so delicate about that, but there it is. Too many television shows about crazy pedophiles stalking the internet, I guess.

In any event, so far, so good. Pretty much all of it is.

Dead bird

With all this curriculum insanity going on in my head it seems hard to focus on what this is all about, which is teaching L. Luckily, the past few days the weather has been perfect: bright, blue blue skies, breezy with just enough edge of chill that it feels good to wear a snuggly sweater but nothing more on top. Good weather means we've been spending time outside where almost everything we do serves to teach us (at least me) something. For instance, yesterday while raking the remnants of winter leaves out of the flower beds --I'm city girl and had no idea that this was even necessary till the day before when a gardener came by and was shocked at the amount of leaf crap that was smothering all the baby green things to death, but I digress-- we found a dead robin that we suspect flew into one of our windows; its neck was bent at a disturbingly unnatural angle.

We decided to give it a funeral, so L dug a little hole next to China's grave (my brother's kitty who is buried in the front yard). I gingerly scooped the little corpse up with a rake (the empty eye sockets freaked me out too much to touch even with gloves) and deposited it in the ground. The whole family assembled, we all said a few words. I gave a short lecture on how the bird would be eaten by worms and bugs and decompose so that it would become earth again. D said, "Rest in peace, birdy." T yelled, "Get up birdy! The birdy not listening to me!". And L read a very zen poem she wrote:

On a bird's death
As we don't know if it is a boy or a girl

Then we covered it up with dirt, decorated the site with flowers, maple leaves and a rock to remember it by.

One dead little bird and we got to talk about death and decomposition, write and recite poetry, and do art. Not bad for a totally unprepared afternoon.

I'm going nuts

I'm driving myself crazy researching all the curricula that's available out there. There's just too many things that look cool. I'm going to start listing the more interesting ones on the side bar. The best thing I've stumbled across recently is The Handbook of Nature Study blog. This homeschooling mom is leading a nature study course online, with weekly assignments that involve getting your kids out in nature and looking at plants and animals and birds. I love it.

It's midnight. I've been surfing online for three hours with no end in sight. Got to just pick something and shut up already.

First Grade

We've finally decided that we're going to home school L next year, through 1st grade. Wow. It's taken me a while to admit to myself that this is what I want to do. Not that we had much choice; private school is still not an option financially (even if we could have found a spot in one, which is highly unlikely), the local alternative schools I was marginally happy with have no space in first grade, and there is some question as to whether L would be able to get back into the gifted-and-talented program due to changes in the board of Ed regulations which took the final decision out of the hands of the individual school (Previously, we were assured that if she wanted to come back she would be able to). We have basically worked ourselves into a corner as far as this district is concerned.

And who knows, maybe this is all sour grapes. I am just not impressed with the schools in this area and don't have the overwhelming feeling of panic other parents seem to experience, that if my child doesn't do what everyone else is doing that it's going to damage her. On the other hand, I don't think, like some homeschooling parents I've spoken to do, that sending my kid to school is going to damage her either. I'm just not that worried about all this.

Which worries me. Shouldn't I be worried?

In any event, now that the decision has been made (with the full blessing of the baby daddy, by the way), I am feeling some pressure to pick a curriculum for next year. This year I kept telling myself and everyone else who expressed concern, "Hell, it's just kindergarten. It's not even legally required!" We do school and, on days we have better things to do, we don't. Almost every day we do math and reading. The rest of it I figure comes up naturally through the course of our daily life -- we draw, we sing, we cook. Museums and books and movies bring up questions and answers that lead us to science and history with enough regularity that I don't feel that we're missing out if I don't sit her down and do structured activities with her every week.

But next year is the real deal. That's when we need to start keeping records and have paper work to file and the potential of truant officer home visits looming over our heads. I've invested in a home school record keeping software program to help me with the paper work. I'm trawling all the user groups online to figure out what curriculum would fit us best, whether we keep going on in our unstructured, meandering way or go for structure. I think I want more direction than I had this year, but not so much structure that I'll chafe under it. I'm not the best at following directions and she definitely takes after me in that respect.

There are so many choices that I'm sort of in paralysis. The two that I'm wavering between is K12, which a friend uses and loves, and Sonlight, which looks great as well. K12 is very very structured, basically a school out of a box. They send you everything you need, text books and equipment. There's a course schedule, lessons done on computer, online tracking and assessments. It's heavily influenced by the Core Knowledge Foundation, the folks behind the What Your X Grader Needs to Know series and the idea of Cultural Literacy, so it gives a pretty solid education. It is also quite expensive, running over $500 a month if you take the full plate of six classes (There are several different pricing options, but it's definitely on the pricier end of the curriculum spectrum). I also think we'd find it too scripted and have a hard time keeping on task. I also happen to prefer the math we're doing (Singapore Math), having originally tried the math textbook they offer.

Sonlight leans more toward the Classical Education and Charlotte Mason philosophies (which deserves posting of their own). The focus is on learning via "living books", by which it means reading and using classic stories and books, such as The House at Pooh Corner and Little House on the Prairie, as well as The Odyssey and The Iliad, rather than workbooks and abridged versions. It also focuses on history as the backbone of the program, so that all the literature you read is connected to a period on time that the child is studying (for example, reading greek myths and The Odyssey while studying the Greco-Roman period.) The program comes with all the books you need, plus instructor guides and a schedule. It's less structured than K12, I like the idea of reading good books with L, and the list of material covered is impressive. The con? It's a Christian curriculum. Granted, you can leave out the Bible study portion, but many of the books seem to have a God-is-good slant, tales of pure-hearted missionaries who save souls around the world. I don't actually mind reading Bible stories to L, since it has had an enormous influence on our literature and society. Not to be familiar with the Bible shows a certain type of cultural illiteracy, but I don't want to have to be forever putting Christian theology into a cultural context for L all the time so that she understands that this is not what all people believe, just what some do. She's already praying to Osiris and Anubis after the Egyptian gods lessons. Lord knows what she'll do after a year of Jesus study.

I don't know. Maybe I'll have to keep looking.

On to Ancient India and thoughts on 1st Grade

I'm so excited! In Story of The World, we've left Mesopotamia and have headed off to Ancient India. Cool-o. L and I read about Mohenjo-daro, the abandoned city of the Indus Valley and I found a great BBC site that is perfect for exploring this mystery. L really enjoyed doing that. I also ordered a bunch of story books & fables about ancient India from the New York Public Library system (this is such a great online resource). We've talked about making a cardboard model of Mohenjo-daro, so tomorrow we'll sit down and draw up a list of all the items we'll need to build it, stuff like cardboard, clay, paint, etc.

This new phase of "unstructuring" the learning is really going well. She still does math and phonics and reading every day, as I said last time. But I've stopped obsessively writing down what we're working on (which isn't good, actually, since if we do this next year I'll have to get back into the habit of keeping track as it will actually be officially required, as opposed to this year which doesn't count, as far as the Board of Ed is concerned). I've also started blowing off stuff when we are running too late or are tired or just bored. More isn't necessarily better, I'm learning. No shit, Sherlock, as I would have said in the 6th grade. Hey, it takes me a while, okay?

And First Grade. Yes, the problem of First Grade. I keep going back and forth, send her, don't send her. I recently had this surreal conversation with a parent rep at one of the local progressive schools that I had applied to as a back up for L, just in case we decided to send her back. This lady called me up about 2 months after I had sent in the form indicating my interest in applying to the school. She told me that the new Board of Ed-mandated application process was that, in August, I needed to go to the nearest Jobs Placement office and apply for a placement in a school in District 1. In August. Keep in mind that we're talking about going to school in September. And these are the same people who couldn't get acceptance letters in the mail by April for September placement last year. Forget even trying to figure out what the connection is between the Board of Ed and the Jobs Placement Office. I think this lady must be on crack. This just can't be right. There is no way in hell that could really be the new procedure, can it? Oh, and the kicker was when she told me not to put that school down a our first choice because there wasn't any room in 1st grade anyway.

I heard that b-s and it swung me back to keeping L home for another year. Why on earth would I want to put her into a system that is just so clearly broken? Especially when we're doing so well at home? But then.....but then...... As soon as I decide that, I just go back to thinking that maybe she's missing out on something. Late at night, when I'm obsessing about these things, I think: Surely it can't be good to just skip out on an experience that is so central to the lives of most of her fellow human beings? Would it rob her of some common vernacular that will doom L to forever being on the outside? and other melodramatic crap like that. And then what do I do about T, the little one? Can I handle two? It wouldn't be fair to keep L at home and send T to school. D is all for it. He thinks it's a great idea to keep them home. I wish I was as confident.

Jackson pollack day

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.

Code of The Family

As I was saying before, we've been studying Babylonia and the Sumerians. L found the Code of Hammurabi particularly interesting. So we sat down, and with L dictating & myself as the scribe, we came up with the following Code of The Family, or Life's Rules as L Sees it:

1. No shoes in the house.
2. You always have to try something before saying yuck.
3. If you have a Green Card, it’s means good, if you have a Yellow card it means warning, if you have an Orange Card it means time out, and if you have a Red Card it means no books.
4. No sticking fingers in birdy’s cage
5. Don’t touch computer screens
6. You have to go to bed at 8 o’clock.
7. You can only watch videos once in the morning and once at night.
8. You have to treat T nicely. And T has to treat me nicely.
9. No hitting allowed. If you hit, you get an Orange Card.
10. You have to respect people’s words. If you don’t, you’ll get a Yellow Card.
11. You have to listen to Mommy and Daddy.
12. If you make a big mess in the night, you have to clean it up in the morning or it will get thrown away. So beware.
13. You have to use your fork and spoon and you have to eat most of your food or you won’t get dessert.
14. After dinner you have to clear your place.
15. You always have to say thank you and please.
16. You always have to stay with a grown-up when you go outside.
17. You always have to ask before touching a doggy.
18. You always have to look both ways before crossing a street.
19. You always have to stop at the end of the sidewalk.
20. No drawing on the carpet or furniture.
21. You have to be nice to the webkinz and all of my other dolls.

Car Accident

I hadn't updated the blog in a while because we were busy for a couple of weeks and I kept thinking I'd get to it. But then we got into a terrible car crash last week that really derailed us. Luckily no one was seriously hurt, though our friend's minivan, which D was driving, was totalled and he broke his hand. I was in the front passenger seat and got my ribs badly bruised by the force of my body hitting the seat belt. The kids were scared silly but fine, and another friend who didn't believe in wearing seatbelts in the back seat, went flying but survived by some miracle with just a cut on the nose and some bruises.

The entire right front side of it (where I was sitting) was completely smashed in where we ran into an power line pole.

For the first week, we had daily help from our amazing babysitter. This week, I was on my own as we tried to get back into real life again. So far, every day it seems that another part of my body discovers a new hurt and instead of feeling better, it's just been getting worse. But I've been told that the first week is the worst part and it should start easing off soon. It better, because I'm well on the way to pill-popping junkie land.

Through this, we haven't gotten much work done, obviously. We were going through the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is fabulous. Gory, violent, full of passion. A real page turner.

Hammurabi and the Epic of Gilgamesh

I'm trying to distract L from the Egyptians by moving on to great old Hammurabi and the other Mesopotamians in The Story of The World. Sargon the Great of the Sumerians didn't do it. No shrivelled up dead bodies. The Ancient Jews didn't either. (Though she really loves the Children's Illustrated Jewish Bible -- all mention of smiting and "knowing" removed, which trims it down considerably) Hammurabi's Code, with its talk of cutting off hands and putting to death might just spark her rather gruesomely inclined interest, though.

So in this vein, I've been searching for some material on Babylonia, and the Epic of Gilgamesh. I found an interesting site on creation myths called the Big Myth. It has myths on the beginning of the world from various cultures around the world, narrated with some animation. Them Babylonians were a fierce bunch. They're all about wars and conflict and monsters. The Louvre website also has a pretty amazing display on the Code of Hammurabi.

Have I mentioned how great the New York Public Library system is? The website is incredible: I just requested five books on the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Babylonians. Should be enough blood and gore in that to keep L happy for a couple of weeks.

More Egypt at the Horus Cafe

Okay, I am now officially OVER Ancient Egypt already. But L's interest just isn't flagging. We spent a couple of hours in the library at Tompkins Square Park doing work, and I gave her some time at the end to pick out any books she wanted to borrow. Off she runs to the librarian, and after some whispered consultation, they disappear to some corner. A few minutes later, she's back with an arm full of more books on pyramids, mummies and pharoahs. I don't get it. They are all full of pretty much the same information -- dead kings, natron salt, canopic jars, drag the brain out through the nose and throw it away, yadda yadda yadda. She can't get enough! After the study session, we went to the Horus Cafe (get it? Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis?), and drank some mint tea and ate a grilled swiss cheese sandwich. Don't know how authentic that part of the experience was, but what the hell. She loved it.

The new Singapore Math is a huge improvement. She stills needs to be coerced and bribed to do math, but at least she's not rolling her eyes and heaving great sighs of disgust. We are now doing Number Bonds, which is the precursor to Addition.

Low expectations = poor results

The other day, I ordered some Singapore Math books because L was getting really bored by the math we were doing. We've been using Progress in Mathematics, a curriculum that's gotten some great reviews, but it just wasn't going anywhere. There was a lot of repetition, but there didn't seem to be any real progression in the way the facts were presented, in terms of facts building on other facts. There wasn't much depth, either. The stuff was really really dumb. Okay, okay. I know what you're thinking. It's KINDERGARTEN.

Yes, that's true. It's just kindergarten, and I'm not trying to push my child into being a prodigy or anything like that. But my philosophy is, if we have to spend any time on it at all, shouldn't it at least be teaching her something? And if she's not learning from it, shouldn't we be doing something else, like playing in the park? Or reading a book?

I went to the last pages of the book, where they have a cumulative review of what's been learnt through the year. I figured that that would give me the best view of what she should have been taught. First of all, they have a section on using a calculator. To do 2 + 2 + 2 = 6. That's just wrong. Kids just learning the concept of addition shouldn't be encouraged to get a machine to do the thinking for them. Secondly, this was what the cumulative questions were: A drawing of a steaming mug of coffee, and the choice of "hot" and "cold", the question being "Choose the temperature." Another item had 2 pictures, one of a woman cutting a watermelon and another of her cutting a banana. The question was "Which activity takes less time?". There was only one question that involved any calculating: 6 cents - 3 cents = ? cents (accompanied by a picture of six pennies with 3 crossed out.)

Turning to the Singapore Math books (which is the curriculum mandated by the Singapore goverment and gaining popularity over here), I flipped to the end of the books and saw that the kids were doing things like 3 + 4 = ? and simple fractions and word problems like"

I have $10.
I bought an ice-cream for $2.
I bought a chocolate bar for $2.
How much money do I have now?

In other words, real math.

I'm not advocating that we should be cramming our kids' brains with math, or claiming that knowing or not knowing fractions by the age of 5 is indicative of the way the rest of their lives are going to play out. Like I said before, I just feel that if we're going to be spending the time on any of this stuff, at least make it meaningful. Let them really learn something, rather than have the subject matter dumbed down to the level that no one can get an answer wrong and, heaven forbid, have their self-esteem hurt. We expect so little of our kids!

Another reason to homeschool

In one of the classes we've been taking, there is a little boy who makes me think, "Thank god this kid's being homeschooled." Because if he were in a regular classroom, he'd be the Bad Seed and put on drugs.

This boy, who is about L's age, I'd guess, couldn't sit still, blurted out answers to every question without raising his hand, made loud digressionary comments and jumped out of his chair every once in a while to run and look at something else. The teacher, to her credit, handled it really well, being firm but rewarding him when he did remember to raise his hand by recognizing his effort with a thank you.

I imagine that being taught at home gives him the focused attention he needs, allows the instruction to be tailored to work around whatever issues it is that he has, and saves him from the day-in-day-out wearing down of the spirit that would come with being treated as the class problem child. And frankly, having him all day in a classroom would probably be enormously draining for the teacher and incredibly distracting to the other kids. I don't know if this is why the mother chose to homeschool, but I applaud her decision. Christ, it must be hard, though.

Being frogs at Zoo School

This picture (again, terrible) is of the 2nd Central Park Zoo class. We almost didn't make it because it was such a crappy day and I was still under the weather with this stupid stomach bug I haven't been able to shake. But since it's only once a month, I felt obligated to go and managed to drag L out into the rain.

It was a great class. The zoo keeper had a large marine toad named Martha that she let the kids touch which was very exciting (it was huge!!! And it peed in her hand, which thrilled the kids even more). She talked about the concept of metamorphoses, going through the various stages of a frog's life to illustrate, and had the kids curled up and twitching as frog eggs, then wiggling on the carpet as tadpoles, and on up till they were hopping madly around the room. Very funny. Then they learned all about different kinds of habitats and what's necessary for life (food, water, shelter, space), and went to the penguin exhibit to look at their habitat. It was the first time I'd ever been in there where there wasn't anyone else but our small group. It was dark and quiet, and the children got to run back and forth in front of the long glass windows, chasing the penguins as they flashed through the water.

After the class, L wanted to take another walk through the rain forest exhibit. She remembered the names of more of the birds than I did (which isn't saying much since I can barely remember the names of my kids these days), and we happily followed the Victoria Crown Pigeon around for a while before heading home.

Bzzzz the hornet robot

This is a robot that L made in Robotics class today. It moves on six little buggy legs, has flashing red eyes and

Homeschool kids

Today was homeschool soccer day at Pier 40, over on the far west side. It's only our 2nd time there, but L barrelled in like she was born on astroturf. It helps that one of her favorite boys, Lu. from nursery school, is also there. They were tumbling around, dribbling soccer balls around, over, through the little traffic cones. As we were leaving, L said, very satisfied, "I like the soccer teacher. I don't know his name, but I like him." Coach Manny, for the record.

One thing I've noticed is that homeschool kids play differently than public-school kids. At least as far as I can tell from my limited experience. In the school playgrounds, there was always a big group of boys roughhousing, doing "boy" stuff and a big group of girls chasing each other and doing "girl" stuff. And these groups are further divided by ethnicity. And age. Very rarely do these groups interact.

The homeschool kids seem more fluid. Boys and girls. Black and white (I haven't met Asian homeschoolers yet, though I've heard rumours they exist). Age groups. The kids also seem much more at ease with adults. They actually initiate conversations! The boys are still rough and tumble, and the girls still play with dolls, but the groups seem to touch each other more frequently. It's kind of cool.

Robots and Mummies

Sorry, I've been offline for a few days as we move stuff into our new weekend place in New Paltz. Another point on the homeschooling side of the ledger: having the flexibility to leave the city as is convenient for us, rather than having to wait for the weekend or the school day is over, is really great.

As far as school goes, the past week has been sort of hit-and-miss. L had to take the New York City Gifted and Talented test on Monday. This was just in case we wanted to send her back to her school for first grade and also to maybe send her to one of the city G&T programs should she qualify (This is just to give us more options for next year). To do it, her school re-enrolled her for the day, which was really really great of them. Tuesday we made up for it by zooming through three times as many pages of math as normal, totally at L's own prompting. We also went to the library and read. Wednesday I went on a tour of the British International School, a new private school on the East River near the UN International School. I was very impressed, but don't think we'll be able to afford it.

After the tour, L and I went to the Met to see the Egyptian wing. Wow. It really was amazing to see how much L got out of the exhibits having spent the past 2 weeks reading about Egypt and mummies. We borrowed an audio guide and wandered around, looking at everything. She pointed things out: "Look, the white crown! The red crown! The double crown of Egypt!" She knew about the Upper and Lower Egypts, the pharoahs, King Narmer (who unified the two Egypts). We tried to decipher heiroglyphics. Seeing real sarcophaguses (sarcophagi?) and mummies made all the stuff we'd been reading about come to life. In fact, we spent so much time looking at the details that we didn't have time to finish and ended going back today and spending another 2 hours.

Today, L had her first basic robotics class. We unfortunately got stuck on a local bus for 1 hour and 20 minutes (!) going uptown and ended up being so late for it that we missed the robotics talk and only had 20 minutes to put the robot kit together. But it was still pretty cool. There were about 8 kids, ranging in age from 8 down to 5. The teacher provided the kits and screwdrivers and all she needed to do piece it together -- put the motor and circuit board into a shell, then connect all the wires the right way. The robot has a light sensor, which we talked about being like its eye, and when a light was shined on it, it beeped and moved. If you covered it or turned off the light, it stopped. So that was cool, but we'll try to make it on time next week. No more buses to 88th Street!

The Philosophies: Unschooling

There are a bunch of different philosophies regarding homeschooling. Obviously. Or as L has taken to saying (to my chagrin), "Duh." (A lovely little gift from a friend's school class.) I would describe what we're doing as eclectic, which really means in our case, "We haven't got the faintest idea." But really, the options are so varied, and in some cases so contradictory, that it's difficult to decide which direction to go in.

So I'm going to try writing about some of these different ideas, more for my own edification, really, over the next weeks. I'll start with one I've been reading a lot about recently.

Unschooling is a lovely idea. One of its major proponents, John Holt, was a school teacher-turned-educational-reformist who eventually decided that the educational system was unreformable. He decided that schooling as we define it was totally unnecessary, and that children could teach themselves and what parents should do is act as guides and facilitators, helping kids get the information they need to answer the questions they naturally have. Of course, it's a lot more complicated that and someone who is into unschooling would probably be horrified at my thumbnail, so check out the link above if you want more information on this. I totally am infatuated with this idea. I wish I could do it. But I just can't. I guess I don't have the faith that if, totally left to her own inititative, L is going to want to learn to read rather than have me read to her. Or that she's going to be interested in Algebra. Or want to learn to write in a way that's legible to other people. But maybe I just don't get it.

I've been reading this book, "And The Skylark Sings With Me", about a real life unschooling family where the daughters get obsessed with things like astronomy (and learn trigonometry) and wild life studies (and learn about genetics and probability theories), and opera, etc. etc. The kids sound amazing, yes they do, but so far away from my L & T, and me. Do I want to spend 2 hours in the supermarket giving a seminar on pesticides on produce and the different forms of credit available for payment and the meaning of the nutritional information on the packages? Because that's what this dad's been doing for his daughters, at the ages of something like 7 or 8. No wonder they're prodigies! I'm way too lazy to do that. And frankly, I think if I followed L's interests at the moment, we'd be spending a lot of time learning about what Dora does. Because this is what I don't get. What if your kid isn't interested in much? Not every kid is excited by classical music and the genetics of cross breeding corn snakes and telescopes, although I wish mine were.

Maybe I should do an experiment and just not do ANY schooling for the next month and just ask L every morning what she wants to do. I wonder what we'd end up doing? Maybe I'm underestimating my child. It's sort of like Communism, though. I suspect that the philosophy is much more appealing than the practice.