On Our Way, Smartly

We started home schooling. Yesterday, September first. I wasn’t planning on being that depressingly unoriginal, but yesterday morning after I woke up I realized that there wasn’t anything going on for this week, or the next, or the next, or even the next. My kids have been draggy and bickery (my spell checker says that isn’t a word, but I like it—the word, not the action—so I beg to differ with my spell checker on this one), and I decided that maybe they needed some more stimulation. Some more one-on-one attention. Maybe they’re feeling left out, now that I have another baby.

So we started school.

I hate saying that. It goes against my grain. It grates on my nerves. It messes with my philosophy of life and learning. And because I’m vocal about what I think, saying “we started school” makes me eat crow. I don’t like the taste of crow.

I think life is learning. Life is education. Education is life. So come September why do I have to start anything special?

And what, pray tell, does it mean to say we started school? School is something my children are not in. Intentionally. So why would I say we’re starting school?

There’s gotta be a way out of this quandary…I know! I’ll simply say we’re starting our studies. I like that phrase. It’s so, so…. intelligent. Can’t you see us now, poring over books, scribbling frantically on pads of paper, umming and a-humming, wearing horn-rimmed glasses (okay, scratch that last one, since neither the kids nor I wear glasses)? Yes, that is what I will say: we’re starting Home Study.

Okay, I feel better now.

So, back to the main point…what was it? Ah, yes, what does it mean that we started our Home Studies? The answer is really quite dull, sorry to say. I ordered Grade Two Saxon math for Miss Becca Boo and Yo-Yo Boy. They have never officially done math, and since math is not my strongest point, I wanted a step-by-step curriculum that would walk me through it. We have now completed Lesson One and Lesson Two and I’m happy to report that all is going well.

Yo-Yo Boy started a new reader and workbook (a couple years ago I ordered a whole set of Amish readers, from pre-school level up to grade 8, because that’s all the higher up they go—they are Amish readers, after all). Miss Becca Boo needs to finish up her …100 Easy Lessons book before she can start on a reader—makes her mad, but I’m remaining firm.

There will be handwriting at some point, and grammar. Yo-Yo Boy will start reading out loud to me on a daily-ish basis. I ordered another Story of the World (Volume 2: The Middle Ages) book that we’ll read before rest time. Stuff like that.

What about the littles? Well, Sweetsie is aching to study. I have her copying circles with a brand new pack of colored pencils. I think we have about one more day before that activity loses it’s charm. The Baby Nickel is a real problem. Yesterday I had to strap him into his car seat (remember, the one that I brought into the house exactly for the purpose of restraining him?) in the downstairs bedroom (that is not a bedroom) and close the door until he agreed to sit quietly on a stool at the table and not disturb us. Today he climbed up on the fort and got stranded and that worked really well.

We’re well on the way to reaching intellectual nirvana, don’t you think?