What a Life!

When people ask me why we homeschool, my answer is simple: I was homeschooled for my first year of school, and it was the most fun year of school I had until I got to college.

That’s not to say I had a bad education. Every single day of my education from grade school through college was spent in private school.(1) Good private schools. I got good grades. Scored well on achievement tests. Had lots of opportunities in things I did well – like music.

At the same time, there were lots of things I didn’t do, due to the constraints of a classroom. My grade school years were spent in multi-grade classrooms. My class was one of the more sparse years. I was either the only one in my grade or had one other person with me. [Other classes had a half dozen students or more.]

My teachers made out an assignment sheet every week, and every day I sat down and worked through my assigned work. No one ever explained any of my assignments to me because I was done with them before they ever had a chance. Many days I was done with my homework by 10:00, which meant that the rest of the day – except for recess – I had nothing to do. The rules were that I had to stay in my seat and be quiet. I read a lot of books. And I spent a lot of hours sitting in my seat being quiet.

Steve’s favorite part of grade school was recess. He went to public school for his grade school years, a private high school, and then a public university. In grade school, they tried to put him in an extra class for gifted students once. The only problem? It was during recess. He told his mom they wouldn’t let him go out to recess any more, and she got him released from the gifted class. His recollection of grade school is that he already knew what they taught him before they taught it to him, if you know what I mean.

It wasn’t until I was in the tenth grade and went away to boarding school that I had homework that I didn’t get completed during school. There were 92 students in my graduating class, so it was a much larger school that I had attended during my grade school years. We attended classes every day and then had study hall in the dorms at night. I took honors classes, even though the teachers didn’t think kids from little schools like mine should be in honors classes, and I did quite well. I had a B+/A- grade average when I graduated, which would have been higher had I applied myself a little more. But I was accustomed to sloughing off and didn’t see the need to work any harder than I had to. My sister, who went to the same schools I did, was a National Merit Scholar. I never took the PSAT (because the college I intended to go to only required the ACT) so perhaps I might have been one, too.

Now college was a whole new experience. Finally I could take classes that interested me rather than drumming through what everyone had to do. The college I went to had the most wonderful honors classes. They combined history with literature. Arts with science and religion. I hadn’t really cared for those subjects before, but when seen in light of each other, I found them fascinating. I took German, which I’d wanted to learn since I was a little kid. I was pre-med(2) so I took all the basic science classes. And I majored in Humanities, which was basically an interdisciplinary liberal arts major. I loved my classes, and I loved learning.

So now I’m a mom. Before Ben reached school age, somehow I learned about The Well Trained Mind and read it. I was hooked. My kids wouldn’t dally their days away at school sitting in their desk quietly waiting for everyone else to finish their homework. If they already knew something, they could move on and learn something else. We could go on field trips and learn things first hand (vs through a textbook). And when they were done with school, they could go out and play.

Steve wasn’t so enthused initially. But when I talked about teaching our children Latin in grade school, he started to get excited. His specialty is science, and learning all of those scientific names would have been so much easier if he had learned Latin. He took two years of Spanish in high school (just like everybody else) and he never uses it. And the thing about learning Latin – when you go on to learn another language later on, it’s like learning a band instrument after learning how to play the piano: you already know the basics so it’s much easier to learn.(3)

Now here we are. Last winter (2008) I gradually began homeschooling Ben to see if it was going to work for us like I had hoped. Last summer I submitted our paperwork and we became official homeschoolers. Now, with a year of homeschooling under my belt, I am loving it more than ever. We are doing so many fun things that I never got to do in school, things that I would have loved if someone had taken the time to do them with me. If Ben were enrolled in our local public schools (which get very high reviews by the people who live in our town), he would be home around 3:15 every day. As a homeschooled kid, his day is his own after 11:00 every morning. When you hear what we cover in school every day, it will be clear that he is being challenged academically.

In life, whenever we make a choice to do A, we are making a choice not to do B. With education, the choice may be between two public schools, between public school and private school, or between public or private school and homeschool. Yes, there are things that can be done in a group setting that cannot necessarily be done in a home setting, but there also things that can be done in a home setting that can never be done in a group setting. We have chosen an individualized education for our children, and for us, it is working very well.

Heidi over at Mt. Hope Chronicles was my inspiration as I was building our curriculum piece by piece last winter. She gives her reasons for homeschooling here: I couldn’t have said it better myself.

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1Well, save that one summer class – Organic Chemistry – that I took at a public university.

2Until that ill-fated Organic Chemistry class I took at the public university.

3Unless, of course, you decide to learn a non-Latin based language like Chinese, and then you would be starting all over again.

Outside my window…the sun is shining and the wind is blowing softly. A robin is hunting for worms underneath the neighbor’s tree.

I am thinking…how wonderful it is to slow down for a week while we enjoy Spring Break.

I am thankful for…another year which my Creator has granted me.

From the learning rooms…we are reading Benjamin Franklin by Ingri and Edgar Parin D’Aulaire during our break.

From the kitchen…Cheese Enchiladas for supper last night. Secret ingredient? Colby Jack cheese. It melts perfectly. I’m picky about that with my cheese enchiladas. Even restaurants don’t always please me.

I am wearing…my Birks that I bought when Ben was a baby. I had them resoled recently, so I should be wearing them for another six years, right?

I am creating…a sweater for myself. Take 3 on this one, but I swear I’m going to finish it this time. Gauge and I finally have an understanding on this one.

I am going…to work on planning my garden today. This book is set to arrive in about an hour (via amazon.com), and later this week when we go to town, I want to buy seeds.

I am reading…How We Die by Sherwin B. Nuland. It goes back to the library tomorrow. I am almost done. Next on the list, Intensive Care: A Doctor’s Journal by John F. Murray, M.D. Just finished Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe: I read a lot of missionary stories about African tribes when I was a kid – very interesting to read a story from the perspective of the people rather than the missionary.

I am hoping…the weather will get warmer and warmer and warmer. We are so ready to spend time outdoors again.

I am hearing…the sound of my boys playing cheerfully downstairs and Caroline cooing as she wakes up.

Around the house…toys are strewn everywhere. Time for the boys to go outside.

One of my favorite things…my iPod. Public radio is campaigning this week, so I’ve been listening to some old favorites on my iPod instead.

A few plans for the rest of the week: to celebrate my birthday this week, I am making all of my favorite foods. In fact, this may continue on into next week before I get everything on my list made. For lunch today: Hot Spinach & Artichoke Dip. Mmmmm, my favorite!

Finally, a favorite picture:

Simple Woman’s Daybook inspired by http://thesimplewomansdaybook.blogspot.com/

Joey…

…and now Caroline.

Caroline is a bit younger, though. {Caroline is 6 months, and Joey was 7 months.} And Joey was actually crawling, though backwards only.

When the boys rolled over the first time, it was sort of a fluke – they did it once, and then they didn’t do it again for several months. Caroline did it once, and then did it over and over and over again.

It’s her main mode of transportation these days. I put her down on the living room floor, and she entertains herself quite well. She can do the army crawl backwards, she can do a 360, and she can roll. With that, she gets just about anywhere.

She’s still pretty random about it, probably because when she sees things, she can’t go forward and get them so she has to be happy with whatever she can reach. But she is certainly interested in a lot of things. It’s a whole new world down there.

She can do hands and knees, but doesn’t know what to do with it. She can sit just fine on someone’s lap, but she still eventually falls over in the grocery cart so I don’t think she’s quite ready for sitting on our hard wood floors yet.

People talk about babies who will sit on a blanket and play for hours. I never had one of those babies. The boys all sat and crawled almost simultaneously. And now Caroline’s on the go, too.

Today it is snowing, but yesterday it was beautiful. Sunny and 60 degrees.

On our walk, we got caught by the paparazzi at the park – our picture is expected to be in next week’s paper.

I opened up the windows, and the dust bunnies came out to play.

But today it is snowing. The ground is almost completely white again.

No pictures of that, though. I’m still living in the past.

I must confess, when I finish reading a book, it often feels like I’ve lost a good friend. I miss sitting down to read that book, and I worry that none will be able to replace it.

These days it takes me the full six weeks allowed by the library to get through a book. In part by choice, in part by circumstance.

I don’t have long periods of uninterrupted time to read. In fact, I’m lucky if I get through ten pages of the book on my nightstand before I get too tired and must turn out the light and go to sleep.

I’ve also discovered the pleasure of savoring a book over time. There is more time to ponder between readings, allowing for a more deliberate digestion of what I have read. If I read a book quickly, I never have to sit down and remember where I was, what just happened. That remembering locks the story in my mind and builds a place for the book in my heart. Ah, yes.

Here are some recent friends I have known and loved:

To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee) – Somehow I got through high school and four years of college (with a Bachelor of Arts degree, no less) without ever having to read this book. I listened to it when I went on my walks last summer, so when I think of it I see Ben riding his bicycle through the shady streets of our town while I tried to keep up with him, slow and pregnant as I was. The beginning of the book where it talked about their childhood play and the pranks they came up with seemed to have no point to it, so it took me a bit to get into it. Once they go to the trial, I was hooked. I still can’t believe, with all the books I’ve read, both for school and on my own, that I hadn’t read this one.

Under the Tuscan Sun (Frances Mayes) – Steve claims we’ve watched the movie based on this book, but somehow I don’t remember. [I’ve heard the book is far superior to the movie anyway.] I loved hearing how they renovated the abandoned villa they bought and all the treasures they discovered in the process. Her chapters on Italian cooking were a little dry at first, but now I’m all into making simple Italian food.

This book also inspired the new tradition at our house of taking a siesta after lunch. I am usually working in the evening after the children are in bed so it is hard to find time to read; but an hour spent with a few books after lunch really does make a difference in making my days delightful. When we go to the library, I get a stash of new books for Ben to read, and he gets a new book when it’s time for siesta. The boys even ask me now if we can have siesta – I never turn them down.

Black Boy (Richard Wright) – I found this book fascinating. It wasn’t about the typical black who thinks the white man has got him down. Rather, the author naively doesn’t understand why he should be treated any differently in situation after situation, and the fact that he is treated differently seems to catch him off guard time and time again. Everyone else [other black people, that is] seems to have simply resigned themselves to their fate, but he keeps trying to do things that are unthought of simply because he doesn’t think about whether or not they would be proper for him to do.

Many times I have wondered if race relations in this country would be different if there were a lot more “Black Boy’s” out there. I am not black, so I cannot say I’ve walked a mile in their shoes. But what would happen if the people who seem to have the chip on their shoulder instead put their focus on just going out and doing whatever they would do if they were “equal” with white people. I will never forget, after Obama was elected, hearing Whoopi Goldberg on The View saying that there was no longer an excuse for blacks not being able to do whatever they wanted, that young black boys need to ‘get off the couch, pull up their pants, and go out and do something!’

I realize that racism is real, and that people sometimes are held back just because of the color of their skin. But how much more would they be able to accomplish if they went out like Mr. Wright and tried to do things than if they just sat around complaining about how they’re being held back because of the color of their skin? How much racism is assumed and how much is real? If we could get rid of the assumed racism, how much racism would be left over?

True Compass (Edward Kennedy) – I am not a liberal, so I must confess that I am not a particular fan of Mr. Kennedy. I read his memoir, though, because I wanted to better understand where he came from, to better understand how “the other side” often sees things. Having grown up after John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, there were a lot of things I learned in this book about the Kennedy family. I did not realize the family was so large, that Ted Kennedy was the youngest of all the siblings. I enjoyed getting to know this family I have heard so much about.

It was interesting hearing the stories of how various people rose to power [and were subsequently replaced] in the Senate. I learned more about many people whose names I’ve heard of [Dulles Airport, Hoover Dam] but did not know why they were “name-worthy.” Though I still do not agree with Mr. Kennedy’s opinions on many issues, I did come away with a better understanding of why he was passionate about various legislative issues, such as health care and other entitlement programs. I wonder how many of my liberal friends might also find themselves similarly enlightened if they were to read Going Rogue by Sarah Palin.

The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner) – I listened to this while on our daily walks last summer, after I finished To Kill a Mockingbird. I can’t say I got much out of this book, but I’m really glad I listened to it rather than trying to read it. It’s one of those that you just kind of have to take for what it is. Listening to it while walking allowed me to follow the story wherever it went rather than trying to make some kind of sense out of it. I now can say I’ve ‘read’ Faulkner and am familiar with his ‘style.’ Very interesting, to say the least.

My Antonia and O Pioneers! (Willa Cather) – These, too, I listened to while on our daily walks. Very good reads, simple story lines yet very engaging. I enjoyed them both very much. I liked learning a bit more about Nebraska history and life on the plains during the pioneer days. How the various pioneers dealt with challenges the land brought them made life on the prairie seem so much more real – instead of being ‘pioneers’ they were individuals with weaknesses and strengths just like I see in people today. Both very good reads.

Finally, currently on my bookshelf…

Chewing the Cud (Dick King-Smith)

The Facts: A Novelist’s Autobiography (Philip Roth)

Keeping Faith: A Father and Son Story About Love and the United States Marine Corps (Frank and John Schaeffer)

Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe)

The Year of Magical Thinking (Joan Didion)

and on my iPod…

The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque)

Three Cups of Tea (Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin)