Time For School

Homeschool's the topic for today. Sue has come up with a scheme to make money, improve her composition skills, and document her dog-related activities. She is planning to write a book. And I am not about to discourage her. That is one of the things I love about homeschool, the student can come up with innovative ideas and really run with them. We will have to see how fully this plan comes to fruition.

Another school related thing that is happening around here these days is that Daddy is participating whether he likes it or not. He told us that he had to take a training seminar at work this week and on Tuesday evening he came home and had to study for a test. That set S's imagination aflame! So she started making her "curriculum tests" for her father to take. She is just now realizing that she may be learning some things that adults may not know or recall. Good old Dad did OK on his math test, but bombed the history test S made up for him. He did so so on spelling. The next day she made the art, geography, science, and health portions of her test for Dad. Poor C. I really appreciate him coming home from a seminar all day and then taking S's tricky tests. At this point, I think she has had enough compassion to give him a low B grade for his troubles. (I had to talk her up from a C).

The longer we do school at home, the less it resembles conventional public schooling. There are so many things they do that would be absolutely required if you were teaching a group that I can dispense with since I have only one student. It is such a luxury to be able to move ahead at our own pace, and not have to move to the next lesson before S masters the current one. I initially worried that this would make us lazy and keep her behind others of her age. Actual experience turned out the opposite. We had to do one and a half years of second grade to slow things down a bit. She had worked through all the second grade material and was starting on the third grade stuff and was only 6yo. So I made the decision to fill her time with a more second grade work and to stay closer to grade/age level.

I don't want a Doogie Howser type daughter. If we raced through school and she graduated two or three years early, how would that be a benefit? I certainly wouldn't let a 14yo go away to college. It will be easy to find lots of neat enrichment stuff to fill the extra time. She likes to earn her own money, so I expect lots of financial schemes to surface in the next 10 years. I am in no hurry to push her into adulthood. Right now she wants to grow up to be a dog/pet products designer. It used to be a toy designer before she got so into the dogs.

On a technical note, we can see the end of the math book from where we are now. Only about 5 lessons left. Other things will take a little longer to wind their way to an end. We will be done with our academic year probably by the end of April. I usually try to continue with weekly fun reading and a once-a-week math review throughout the summer. We work too hard all year learning things just to forget them over the summer!

So...gathering up that final head of steam to take us to the fininsh,

Lori