Monday, November 16, 2009

Drop outs


I am offended that my eldest does not hate school as much as I do.  In fact, she loves it. I am always trying to get her to want to stay home(until she actually wants to and then I insist she be ready in five minutes to head out the door.)  It is so hard for me to see Mymy hunched over his drawing and have to pull him from it to go to school. It is always this time of year that I want us all to get in the car and go somewhere for a month and learn from that greatest of classrooms, The Real World (as seen from the window of a mini van). The seeds of  my first foray into homeschool germinated in November(and then withered on the vine by July).  

There are many reasons why I think homeschool is  the optimal educational model but I really think the big draw for me is that you don't have to be on time to homeschool. Heck, you don't even really have to do it every day. I enjoy most things that do not require consistently showing up. I also like things that don't make you leave your house. I also like being in control. I also don't like dealing with other people's rules. I also like it when we are all together. I also love watching the kids learn from The Professor. I also love choosing what is important for them to know. I also love feeling involved in their progress. 

 The trouble is I overwhelm easily.
 
I am like a Big Gulp. I look like I have a 32oz capacity but what you don't know is how much ice is in the cup. Just try getting even two ounces of liquid in and you will have a big sticky mess of soda pop all over your floor.  So this year I decided that rather than gauge my capacity by my best performance of the past I would look at the times when Coca-Cola spilled all over the place.  So I put a couple ideals aside and concluded that the bigs would always be in school. I also enrolled the littles in preschool.  They went for a month.  And then they dropped out. Those little dead beats.
 
I think I would rather clean up the mess and sometimes have as much pop as I really want out of life.

Here they are on their first(and almost last)day of preschool.


Ready to go!


The institution.


Here they are running from it.

Run away! Run away!


The bigs are still in school. Please do not send any truancy officers to our house if we disappear for the remainder of November.


5 comments:

  1. I love the idea of homeschool but I, too, feel like the practicality of it might not work for me. We'll see what happens down the road.

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  2. Maybe the key is to have professionally trained tutors to come to the house for a couple hours for each child each day. Then the private music lessons, then escaping for a month at a time to a different country to soak in the cultures of the world. (after you make your first mil) good idea, no? yes.

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  3. I do preschool at home. At first it was just because I'm too cheap to pay for it; soon after I realized how much I loved watching the kids learn. Like, I love it so much that I'm jealous of P's and L's teachers. Also, I loved letting them choose what they wanted to learn about. Airplanes today? Sure! Chemistry? Ok! Puppies? No prob.

    Not sure where the loved-to-see-them-learn Rach ended and the can't-wait-for-Kindergarten-to-start began. My bigs are in school. The littles, well, they're still too little, and I'll keep them here as long as I can.

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  4. I prefer to outsource any responsibility involving my children. That and dinner.

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  5. I completely agree with your first couple paragraphs re: why homeschooling seems so superior. I was gung ho when the kids were fewer / younger.

    But at this point of time and knowing myself and these kids as I presently do, my reality is pretty much what Molly said above.

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