Things are going pretty awesomely right now. The trajectory is awesome, anyway. I'd been feeling iffy and a little fail-ish about homeschooling and now I'm not. It rules. We're busy but in precisely the way I envisioned us being as a homeschooling family: taking on a bunch of what would be extracurriculars if the kid was in school, but are the core of her "out there, in the world" life since she's here at home during the day. Girl Scouts, 4-H, classes, clubs, church. The ratio of adults to kids in her life is always between 1:2 and 1:5. That pleases me.
One aspect of homeschooling that I hadn't thought of or predicted, and that I am coming to hold near and dear to my heart, is that a pretty significant portion of our lives, which flows so completely as an education, with very few boundaries or demarcations, is spent in the development of personal character. We have chosen a number of activities that quite explicitly deal with being a good and kind-spirited human, and she takes them quite seriously.
We are so busy now. Every day there is something. She gets enough connection to other kids. She's happy. Energetic. She never asks about public school. She pesters me to get out her life science labs.
She was working on her math the other day and the little one, who's just turned three, demanded that I get out her math book. She doesn't have one. I told her I'd get her one and she got really excited. So I guess we need to do that now. Some kind of "math" for her to do.
The little one and I will read our way through this list, too. I had finished them all with her big sister by the time she was 2 1/2. Just as a fun thing to do. The little one is barely able to sit through one picture book before she snatches it from you and "reads" it to herself. Funny. Okay, I hope. I assume she's just walking her own path. I try hard to take them on their own terms.
I sometimes think about the long term, and what I want to give them. We've made this unconventional choice, taken on some different freedoms and responsibilities. Why? I feel clear on how I want our here and now to look and feel (slow, for starters) but what do I want them to walk out into the world with? And it seems that, really, if they're solid in their values-values that have been interrogated, put on, worn, and lived in,if they are able to think critically, and if they can express their ideas clearly? Yes. Yes. Yes.
Those are the stars we'll steer by.
