The Books are Here!

Our books have arrived! Well, almost all of them are here. I’m still waiting on one backordered item. But what a relief it is to be done.

I’m usually really excited whenever books arrive, but as the kids get older, I just get more anxious. More books mean more clutter, and very often, more work for me. I think the one item that’s been inducing more than a little of this anxiety is this bad boy right here…

I’m consoling myself with reminders that Korean is said to be one of the easiest Asian languages to learn. I hope that’s true! E’s enthusiasm over all things Korean has kind of spread on to her siblings, so now they’re all clamoring for it. I searched and searched, and this program seemed to have gotten the best reviews. Fingers crossed that it’s a good fit for us! While E is certainly old enough and motivated enough to wade through it on her own, I’m not so sure the younger two are, so it looks like I’m in on this one as well. Yikes!

Here are some other shots of our book booty.

We’ve got Euclid’s Elements. Under that somewhere is the Art of Argument, and some other goodies.

Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, a book with tips on how to improve study habits…

Lots and lots of stuff. I could really use a few extra bookshelves!

Weakness Leaving the Body

Yep, that's me. That photo was actually taken several months ago, shortly after having earned our orange sashes. And now just last weekend, we all earned our blue sashes. It feels like it's all going by so quickly.

The benefits have been many. For starters, I've lost twenty pounds! I was kind of disappointed for a while there, as I seemed to plateau with the weight loss, but I know that I'm also building muscle, so I'm trying not to get too discouraged.

Some other benefits...

My breathing. I think the tai chi especially has helped with that. I feel that the deep, steady breathing has increased my lung capacity. Obviously, I can't say for certain that this is the case, only that it certainly feels as if it is.

My strength. I just generally feel stronger. You know that heaviness you feel when you're getting out of a pool? Well, I used to experience something similar to that just going up steps and getting out of bed in the morning. I can't remember the last time I've felt that.

My back. For about a year or two before starting Kung Fu, I experienced mild, intermittent lower back pain. This kind of freaked me out, because back problems seem to run in my family. Up until I started feeling the aches myself, I thought I had been spared. When I started Kung Fu, the pain just gradually dissipated. It got to the point that I had completely forgotten I had ever had it, that is until I got sick and missed an entire month of training. It's alarming how quickly one can fall out of shape. When the aches came back, I realized just how much I had improved with the Kung Fu, and it kind of renewed my resolve to stick with it.

My stamina. It hadn't occurred to me how this had changed until I spoke to someone else, who expressed disbelief over my having taken several back-to-back classes. It was a Saturday, and we had all taken a record five classes, four of which were taken in a row. We're usually at the school all day on Saturdays, so it just makes sense to take advantage of all of the available classes while there. It didn't register with me at the time however, that just one short year ago, I had trouble making it through just a third of a single class. Progress!

And last but not least, I can't articulate how fun it is to be involved in all of this with my family. Really, I never even fathomed our finding one common activity we would all enjoy this much, especially now that the kids are getting older, and that their interests and hobbies have become so varied. We always have willing practice partners, so that's just an added bonus. Because we're able to practice so much, I really feel we're all getting the most of this experience. And while our tiny apartment is over-run with sparring gear and practice weapons (five of everything!), it's been more than worth it.

“Give Me an Occupation, Miss Dashwood!” or Chasing That Sense of Purpose

I know I've written before about how unstructured days can be very productive, particularly from a homeschooling standpoint. I still believe this to be true, and it’s one of the things I really love and appreciate about home education. But I am the product of traditional schooling, and a post-school nine-to-five mentality. I still struggle with scheduling and find that too many unstructured days, at least for me, can be deleterious to my emotional health. Yes, it's true. Note that I'm speaking for myself here. I'm not attempting to make a broad statement that I find relevant for everyone. I get depressed and even moody when I have loads of open time laid out before me. But I don’t mean to suggest that over-scheduling is the answer either. It requires more of a shift in paradigm—a redefining of purpose. At times it’s almost as if I’m waiting for someone more knowledgeable than myself to come in and give me a task to fulfill. This reminds me of that line from the film adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, when Colonel Brandon implores, “Give me an occupation, Miss Dashwood, or I shall run mad.” Yeah, that’s not too far off from the truth. I sometimes think it’s a remnant side effect of having been traditionally schooled my whole life. At school, I was given an assignment, and my task was to complete it. There was nothing to puzzle out for myself there. My purpose was clear. It was to impress my teacher and please my parents. And I did it consistently all school year long, every year for fifteen years. I kept busy, then came the first day of summer vacation, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I went from super structured days, to nothing. It became an annual withdrawal ritual. These periods were almost always followed by intensive bouts of depressive frustration.

I think that as a child, I experienced this sort of thing more often than my own children ever have. Going from periods of highly structured time to highly unstructured time was the norm for me. My parents couldn't afford summer camps, so they were unable to recreate the same level of structure and activity I'd get accustomed to every year at school. There were no activities, or family vacations (other than two vacations to Florida when I was in my teens). The beginning of every summer was met with this seasonal bout of frustration. And by the time I had gotten past the frustration, and had regained a sense of purpose, one I had come up with all on my own, without the framework of school to guide me, it was already time to return to school in the fall. Then another period of re-assimilation would ensue, also often met with the same sort of infernal depressive frustration, but in reverse. As weird as it sounds, I think that after so many years, I've been inexorably programmed to still go through these phases every year. I find myself in the same predicament at the start of every summer, and then again at the start of every fall. Weird indeed, and I've tried to explain this phenomenon year after year, and this is all I can come up with. Only now, it’s more like a phantom frustration, as there’s really no “structure” from which to detox, or re-assimilate. Our levels of structure don’t fluctuate so greatly as to warrant any of it, so it’s all especially odd. Some people get seasonal depression. I get end-of-school-year and back-to-school depressive episodes. Again, it doesn’t make sense. I’ve been out of school for eighteen years! But old habits die hard.

I have noticed that a lot of parents face this "how-to-keep-the-kids-busy" dilemma at the beginning of every summer. Camp is still an option for those who can afford it, but if not, as was the case with me, the kids will be left to their own devices, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. I think we’re just programmed to believe that we must stay super busy and super scheduled to be happy, and we've carried this over to our children. Some of us even mistake “busy-ness” with purpose. But they are not one and the same. There are studies showing that many people die shortly after reaching retirement age. Perhaps to several of these people, a job, or any such externally structured lifestyle that keeps them busy, is synonymous with purpose. Lose your job, and lose your purpose. How awful is that? I don’t want that for myself, or for my children. So what if you're bored for a little while. It's good practice to wade through these down times. Eventually, it will act as the impetus to try new things, and you may discover new interests that were drowned out by all of the noise of the busy-ness around you.

Come to think of it, I do believe it all comes down to noise. We're seduced by it. And there’s a lot of it out there. Lots of bells and whistles. And when the silence of down time hits, it makes us feel uncomfortable. We don’t know what to do with ourselves. My catechist, years ago, told me that when silence rears its ugly head, it’s God telling us to spend that time prayerfully contemplating our purpose in life. She didn’t suggest running out of the house, looking for external things to do to keep me busy. Those things are just band-aids. And while I'm sure she was speaking of purpose in a spiritual sense, I think what she said applies to many areas in life. But yes, ultimately, it is all spiritual. What keeps us engaged and happy often adds to our spiritual well-being, so I'm of the belief that if you can address your spiritual needs first, all else will follow. And the ability to sit in silence with yourself, is no easy task. There's sort of an ascetic quality to it, I find. It's easy for our minds to wander, and the chatter continues, only this time it's inside our heads. I know that my mind immediately goes into listing things I either need to do, or should do. It's seldom just open to the silence. Trappist monks observe long periods of silence, foregoing all idle chatter. They surely do speak, but all their speech is purposeful. Can you imagine that? Oh, to have that level of spiritual refinement. To be at peace in silence. Now that's something I'd welcome right about now.

Sick of It

It was pretty late last night when we got out of our Kung Fu classes, and we had just missed going to Trader Joe’s by a few minutes. We LOVE Trader Joe’s, and decided a while ago that it was to be our regular go-to spot for nearly all of our food shopping. We still head out to Whole Foods from time to time, to pick up some of their bulk grains and legumes, and the occasional bottle of kombucha, but aside from those few items, we still prefer Trader Joe’s for everything else. It’s much more reasonable, especially compared to Whole Foods. It does my heart good to read their labels and not see a laundry list of ingredients we can’t pronounce—primarily icky dyes, additives, and preservatives.

But TJ’s was closed last night, and I needed to go food shopping. I had only a few ingredients on-hand, but not everything necessary to prepare a complete meal. “Not a problem,” I thought, “we’ll just go to the regular supermarket.” Oh, but what a nightmare experience that turned out to be! Not only was there no organic produce, the regular produce was exorbitantly priced. The two aisles devoted to healthy alternatives were just awful, too. I mean, their products were just fine, but they were marked up so much, it was ridiculous. One gluten free cereal we usually purchase at TJ’s was a whole $2 more expensive there. I figured we’d try our luck elsewhere in the store. By then I had already given up on purchasing anything aside from what I had been craving all day—potato salad. Generally, I would prefer to make it myself, but with the lack of organic options available at the store, I was dangerously close to just caving and buying a little container of the premade stuff, just to tide me over. Frankly, I don’t know what I was thinking. I don’t tend to think clearly when I’m craving something as intensely as I was then. So yeah, I was dangerously close to succumbing, but only until I took one look at the ingredient label, listing items such as high fructose corn syrup and sodium benzoate. And those were only the couple I recognized and remember at this writing.

And frankly, those ingredients were bad enough, with HFCS increasing risks of obesity, diabetes, and liver damage, and the Sodium Benzoate being a potential carcinogen, causing an increase in free radicals all on its own, and a proven carcinogen when combined with ascorbic acid (Vitamin C). Considering this, it’s ridiculous that Sodium Benzoate is added as a preservative to many fruit juices, jams, and jellies—foods more apt to contain ascorbic acid, and products often marketed to children. Also on its own, Sodium Benzoate has been shown to contribute to mitochondrial damage, causing neuro-degenerative diseases—Parkinson’s is one. It’s also been implicated in ADHD.

This kind of stuff pisses me off so much. Actually, I’m holding back here. It more than pisses me off. This is the stuff that keeps me up at night. I keep thinking of children developing ADHD or any other condition, and then having some doctor diagnose them, and insist on their taking medications that can lead to other health problems. It’s such a HUGE freaking domino effect of awfulness. And we’re doing this to them. And the FDA allows it. It’s absolutely disgusting, and a social justice issue that needs addressing BIG time.

Indecision Tango

Now that freshman year is nearly past us (well, yeah, just nearly…we’re still schooling throughout the summer months…finishing up labs, and attempting to complete our Algebra text), what to do for a career, or specifically, what to major in, has become the near-constant topic of discussion with my young teen. She went from just taking all school related things lightly, and only really “worrying” over trivial things like what to wear, or how to keep her hair pin-straight, to getting incredibly serious and kind of wound up over this one issue. Her inner voice seems to be shouting, “Just make a decision already!” It doesn’t help that her younger sister and brother seem to know exactly, or somewhat exactly, what they want to do with their lives—all subject to change of course. S wants to be an artist and she seems to have always just known this. She sometimes switches her focus, from computer animation to general illustration, but it’s all about art with her. F on the other hand, just wants to be rich. He’s set on becoming some kind of business mogul and spends most of his free time accounting for every penny he owns. He regularly contemplates how he can make his money grow—not to mention, he keeps close tabs on what everyone owes him. S tops his list of debtors, owing him a whopping $26.75! But poor E has no idea. I can’t remember E ever knowing, or being sure of what she wanted to be, other than maybe a fairy princess when she was two. I guess all other options paled in comparison for her. Actually, now that I think of it, there was a time when she showed a bit of an interest in fashion design, largely due to our watching a season of Project Runway (the season in which the oh so “fierce” Christian Siriano won). I totally ran with it. My Mom, at my prompting, bought her a fashion design game, and I bought her a fashion illustration how-to book. Soon afterwards came the purchase of a sewing machine and few how-to-sew guides for her to wade through. All remained largely unused. Obviously, it was just a passing fancy. Not a problem. We all go through it. Now, while this indecision is not uncommon at her age, as I’ve assured her countless times, it really seems to be bugging her greatly right now. So far my advice to her has been to just relax.

I know my response surprised E, as I’m not exactly the sort to relax about anything. I’m sure she’s thinking that I’m just disregarding her feelings on the matter, and making light of it all, but really, I’m not. While I do tend to stress over things way too much, often crediting my tendency for worry as my main motivator in life (Well, that and guilt. Guilt is a tremendous motivator, but it’s not exactly a healthy route to take anywhere), that’s the last thing I want for my daughter. The truth is that once upon a time, I never used to understand people who just didn’t know what they wanted to do with their lives…yes, even if they were as young as 15. I was a stickler like that. Considering this, my laid back answer to “relax” was frankly out-of-character for me, and E called me out on it. Yes, it was out-of-character for “old me.” That would be the “Me” of last week, or in all truthfulness, the “Me” of a few years ago when I was still apt to attempt doing all things “by-the-book.” Old Me (i.e. the flashcard parent I once was) would have panicked, and suggested immediate career testing, or several books on the topic as a prompt for ideas. I wouldn’t have known another way to respond. My own experience was so different. I had practically declared a major at the age of eight, after briefly entertaining, and later abandoning, the thought of becoming a veterinarian and/or zoologist at age seven. Being diagnosed with allergies to pet dander laid waste to those pipe dreams, but I quickly bounced back and settled on the dream of becoming a writer.

So it was, that from the age of eight, I was certain that I’d go to college and study English. I eventually did. And while I may not be a published author, I do still get lots of enjoyment out of writing whenever I have the time. It certainly hasn’t turned out to be a very lucrative choice for me, but I never really cared for anything else. That said, I think that I probably cared for it as much as I did because I felt I had an aptitude for language arts. It’s like a “What came first—the chicken, or the egg?” scenario. Are we drawn to certain careers or choices of major because we have an aptitude for them, or because we are just interested in the subject? Does a natural inclination for something automatically lead to our becoming interested? I know that I was also interested in topics and activities for which I had little skill, but I never would have considered those as feasible career options. The aptitude connection seemed to be it for me. But I’m sure it varies with people. I’ve met people who have shown great talent in different areas, and not care one whit about any of them. That kind of effortless talent, despite lack of interest is mind-boggling to me. I figure that if I were just disposed to be good at something, I’d just do it contentedly. But of course, that’s just me speculating. Besides, I just can’t imagine being super great at anything I feel just lukewarm about. I’d imagine that I’d be using only a small fraction of my potential, which is an amazing thing to ponder. I mean, if someone manages to be super talented even while disinterested, just imagine what they would be able to accomplish if they were able to channel all of their interest and potential into their particular area of aptitude?

So yeah, I told my daughter to relax. This whole homeschool experiment has taught me many things, including a lot about just letting go, allowing things to progress organically, and just plain RELAXING. It’s also taught me that I can be good at a number of things for which I previously thought I had no aptitude. I had a severe math-phobia when I was in school. Now that I’ve had the opportunity to teach and re-teach myself, I’ve discovered that I love it. It’s still challenging, but not in a horrible, “I’ll never get this!” kind of way. I feel I’ve become more logical, and more methodical in my thinking. I find myself doing extra math for fun, just to exercise my brain. So obviously, what you’re good at or interested in at 15, is not necessarily what you will be good at or interested in at 18 and first embarking on your journey through college, or at 38 and juggling the demands of family and adulthood. If I had to decide on a major today, I’m not so sure I’d be able to make up my mind. My interests have grown exponentially over the years, and this allows me to better identify, for the first time ever, with the legion of “undecideds” out there.

I tried to impress upon my daughter that we are constant works in progress, with evolving interests, and that it is not uncommon for several of us to succumb to long periods of indecision at various points in time. Tiger mothers all around the world would recoil at the thought, I’m sure. And then I remembered a story about one of my college roommates. I told E the story in an effort to illustrate how she’s not the first, nor the last, to face this kind of uncertainty. I may as well retell it here.

One day as our then current semester was winding up to a close, one of my college roommates approached me with a conundrum. She was just one semester shy of completing her senior year, and she had still not declared a major. This was the stuff of nightmares for Old Me. I guess she was feeling pressure from her parents and her guidance counselor to “just decide already,” so she was desperate to just pick something willy nilly. She had jotted down a list of the courses she had already taken and passed, and asked me to help her make sense of it all. We both pored over the undergraduate course handbook, and after a few hours of deliberation, I looked over at her and said, “You’re an English major.”

“I’m a what?”

Yeah, it was like a “Harry, you’re a wizard…” moment, if ever there was one. We were both surprised. For starters, I would never have pegged her for an English major. I kept thinking that she would probably be better suited for something like public relations, or communications. But the list of courses before us told a different story. She seemed to continuously gravitate towards English courses. She had counted them all as electives, and while some were not purely English courses, they still fit somewhat under the big English umbrella. After some more discussion, we found that she just needed about three more English classes to fulfill her major obligation. It was a big “a-ha” moment for the both of us. I’m embarrassed to say that for me, what I learned that day sort of cheapened my opinion of the way that English as a major was regarded at our college. I mean, some of the classes that qualified as English were just general, broad humanities courses. It occurred to me that you could have taken just a handful of literature and/or writing courses and still have met the English major requirements. While this wasn’t the case with my roommate, who had indeed taken more than a few literature courses, I wondered how many students managed to earn a B.A. in English, with barely any literature or writing courses under their belts. Now, despite the happy ending, I can’t say for certain that this was the best choice for her. I don’t even know what she’s doing now, or how declaring English as a major helped or hindered her along the way. What I do know, however, is that her interests, unbeknownst to her at the time, were clear by the choices she made.

After listening to my roommate’s story, E was still perplexed, asking questions along the lines of, “How does this apply to me?” Apparently, my former roommate’s late college career indecision and eventual epiphany moment didn’t inspire much serenity in my daughter after all. I vainly tried to assuage the situation by telling her that the way I interpreted the whole experience, had me believing that sometimes, what we are most drawn to is not always so obvious. The significance of my roommate’s propensity for choosing English-related courses time and time again went unnoticed for years. I took this as proof positive that this could be the way it is with many other people as well. We just don’t always see the big picture, or how all of our interests and aptitudes can be linked to create the perfect assortment of skills necessary to become a great librarian, lawyer, bookkeeper, healthcare worker, filmmaker, educator, etc. So for now I’m just suggesting that E look more closely at what activities and topics she finds herself regularly seeking out. The answer may be there somewhere, but it’s also entirely possible that it’s not there yet. Beyond this, I seem to be currently tapped out of ideas. I may just find myself consulting a few career books on my own to prepare for when this becomes the topic du jour again. And if pressed, I may even urge her to take a general aptitude test that lists career niches to consider. But those wouldn’t be my first options. As a mother, it is inevitable for me to see what I believe are her strengths. E is a nurturer. She really is. Everyone who has been in her presence for any significant length of time can plainly see this about her. She is incredibly empathetic and has such a beautiful spirit. I could possibly suggest careers in healthcare or social work, but that would be a bit like leading the witness. There’s a fine line, I think, between tossing out general suggestions, and full on prodding. So I’ll tread lightly. I really do favor more of an organic unfolding for this sort of thing. But I’m not sweating it for once, and I hope E learns not to either.

A Tisket, a Tasket, and an Enormous Transcript

I’m actually writing this post offline. We’ve had no Internet access since Sunday. The powers that be said something about our having a slow connection and an outdated modem. I swear it feels like a whole new dark age. I’ve determined that pre-Internet I had managed to be very constructive. I hadn’t really considered my prior output before. I was taking about 24 credits per college semester, and holding down two part time jobs, adding up to regular full-time hours. During this time, I also managed to make the Dean’s list and graduated a year before time. Now however, it almost feels, as my Mother so aptly puts it, that I’d as much as drown in a bucket full of water. I find that I overwhelm easily, and after no Internet for the past few days, I’m fairly convinced that the Internet, or rather, my propensity to surf the web for any reason, several times per day, is behind my general (as of late) lack of productivity. Not having Internet access therefore, has been a bit of boon. It has meant that I’ve begun to engage in more productive endeavors, some which I had been frankly dreading. One of these was starting to formally put together E’s high school transcript.

Of course, it would occur to me to put together my daughter’s transcript on a day when I wasn’t able to locate the transcript book I’ve kept on-hand for-like-ever. And as the Internet was down and I was unable to check transcript guidelines elsewhere, I resorted to the one small section on transcripts in The Well Trained Mind for some direction. Per TWTM, traditionally, 120 hours equals one credit, but this may vary by state or district. Not having access to our state’s or district’s guidelines at the time, the first thing I did was look over our records, and our previous schedule, to nail down the approximate time spent per subject. I made sure to keep track of time spent on independent work (for everything besides independent reading), as well as one-on-one tutorial-like times with me. What I ended up with looks something like this, based on a 36-week schedule (Note that Language Arts was the hairiest, and my projections for next year are hairier still):

Language Arts – 396 hours

This included time for spelling (2x/wk), writing (4x/wk), interdisciplinary writing (2 days/wk), grammar (2x/wk), rhetoric (2x/wk), and logic (2x/wk), and finally literature (2x/wk). Considering we were only able to fit five of the about eight books I wanted to have E read this year, I was thinking that more time should be dedicated to literature next year. And yet already, under the big language arts umbrella, we’ve managed to log in at least two classes’ worth of hours. And this doesn’t even include vocabulary, which we sort of dropped by the wayside.

Other subjects were pretty average in terms of time. E spent about 180 hours on Algebra I, and we still haven’t completed the book. I was thinking we could work on the remainder of the book this summer. I don’t recollect ever completing any of my texts in high school or college, and I do remember we did a lot of skimming and skipping around, yet I can’t get myself to do the same with E. She’s totally her mother’s daughter, as she’s shot down any ideas of skimming as well. So we’ll persevere a bit longer.

Science (Chemistry) came to about 144 hours, counting projected time for all labs, which we’re still in the process of completing.

History came to 108 hours, as did Latin.

I counted our time at Kung Fu, Tai chi, kickboxing, and weapons classes under Physical Education/Health. I added only the time for our regular classes, and not for any of the additional seminars and extra classes we take from time to time. Still, this all came to a whopping 216 hours.

We really dropped the ball on our elective classical language, i.e. Koine, having spent only about 36 hours on it all year long, with two brief sessions/wk, not nearly enough time to count for much credit at all.

In addition to the above, E took three homeschool art classes, about 2 hours each—again, not nearly enough to count for much credit.

She put in 42 hours volunteering as a CCD classroom aide, and then there was some time (not a significant number of hours at all), involved in a volunteer capacity at events and such at our Kung Fu school. I didn’t log in times for that, but I suppose I could have. She had scant involvement in our church’s youth group, so I didn’t add that in either.

This all came to, not including the art classes and volunteer work, approximately 1,188 hours for the entire year, including the 36 hours for Koine, which I’m considering just lumping in with Latin, under the “Classical Languages” header. This comes to approximately 6.6 hours/day, based on a 180-day schedule including the physical education, and 5.4 hours/day without the physical education hours added in. I thought that that was fairly standard. Oh, but I just realized now that I never considered the time she’s spent with her Dad on learning computer applications and typing. I’ll have to discuss times spent on those with him, but even so, I think that will only come up to enough hours to account for about a half credit in technology.
What left me a bit unsure was how to account for the extra hours logged in under language arts. The Well Trained Mind offers an example of what to do in such a case. The example is associated with the great books study recommended in the text. According to the example, 320 hours’ worth of study can translate into a full elective credit for literature, and one full credit for history (provided of course, you follow the guidelines in the book and your study involves historical documents and source readings). Go figure that the few books we “cut” due to lack of time, were the autobiographies that correlated to our history studies. But in our case, as we were covering U.S. History 1 anyway, it would have made more sense for those readings to be added onto the time spent separately on history. The individual parts to our language arts study, as mentioned above, were: spelling; writing; grammar; literature; rhetoric and logic. I figured that the most common sense way to sort these into groups was to lump spelling, grammar, and literature under the English 1 course title, and put writing, logic, and rhetoric into another group under the Speech 1 course title. The latter would count as an elective, and fit under “Speech” as rhetoric is classified in TWTM. It made sense to lump the logic and writing together along with the rhetoric, and I’m relieved to have that settled.

I’m still nowhere near done with this. I still have to check my state and district guidelines, find that dang transcript book (I swear I saw it just a few days ago, but where could it be now? It’s anyone’s guess.), and figure out how to put it all together and make it look as official as possible. In addition to preparing the transcript, I’ll be gathering materials for a portfolio of representative work. I’d like for it to include a cross-section of examples ranging from typical assignments, to quizzes, tests, lab and project photos, as well as reports and response papers.

If anyone is out there and has had experience with writing transcripts, I’m all ears, and open to some been-there-done-that advice!

Wish I Had a TARDIS to Transport Me Back

I'm feeling BIG feelings today. Just before this I visited a homeschooling board, and noticed a post by someone who was just starting out on her family's homeschooling journey. I was immediately reminded of a friend of mine who is only a few years in, and how everything is still so fresh and new and exciting for her. It has all made me think back on our days, once filled with learning letters, spelling words, playing math games, making crafts, playing dress-up, and cuddling on couches with storybooks. I remember their little voices begging me to re-read Tikki Tikki Tembo for the third time in a row. I'd feign a bit of reluctance, just to make my eventual succumbing under pressure all the more exciting for them. "Score! Mom caved!"

I remember when my three were just learning how to read, and how fun it was to see them getting all excited about everything. I know I'm choosing to remember only the good stuff right now, as I've previously written about some of our early reading struggles. But still, it was a simpler time. One I didn't fully appreciate as much at the time. I'd give anything to have a bit of that sweet simplicity back in my life.

And yet I really do love where we are right now. I remember feeling that I wasn't all that well-suited for "teaching" in the early years. I wasn't particularly crafty, and I felt that that worked against me at the time. I struggled to add in a bit of creativity of my own, when I felt I was better equipped at presenting a lecture instead. I'd find myself digressing a lot, going off on tangents on topics that were way over their heads. I remember how much I looked forward to their getting older so that we could finally get to discuss things thoroughly--serious, deeply meaningful things. And then before I knew it, that time came. They were old enough, and we started discussing to our hearts' content. And while it's been wonderful, now I'm finding myself getting all nostalgic. Funny how that happens.

I wonder if I can get the kids interested in making a macaroni necklace today. Or perhaps some finger painting? It's worth a shot.