My children have learned a lot this year. Stuff that isn’t even touched on in a regular school curriculum, such as, say:

How To Not Fall Out Of A Moving Bus While Standing In The Doorway.
How To Turn On The Gas For A Warm Shower.
How To Not Have A Clue and Not Show It. (They failed this one.)
How To Carry A Tub Of Cake On Your Head All The Way To Market And Then Sell It.
How To Tolerate Being Stared At, Patted, Pinched, And Admired.

With them in school and both my husband and I working, book larnin’ hasn’t been high on the list. After sitting in classes for seven hours, I think it’s more important for them to spend the last remaining daylight running around outdoors than sitting at the kitchen table drilling flash cards.

That said, the lack of ed-you-kate-in, as in reading, writing, and arithmetic, has worried my mind. Not too much, but enough that I thought I ought to do something about it.

In my latest newsletter, I wrote about my frustration with how I’m not being used at Bezaleel. There’s a great need, yes, but no one seems to have the wherewithal to transform My Amazing Potential into A Viable Resource. At the end of my whiny rant, I quipped, “If nothing else, I can pull my own children out of school and tutor them.”

Last week was exam week at Bezaleel. Since there were no normal classes, rather than hanging out in the teachers’ lounge wishing I had something to do, I made good my threat and pulled my kids out of school, one at a time, for some serious one-on-one tutoring time, ba-BAM.

My older son stayed home on Monday, and Wednesday and Friday, the girls had their turns (the youngest was spared my tyranny). For hours each day, I directed, instructed, corrected, and guided to my heart’s content. And the kids were receptive! In fact, after working hard for six hours, my son said, “Can’t I stay home from school every day? This is so much fun!”

(Clarifying note: this is not what our homeschooling schedule normally looks like. I hardly ever get hours of uninterrupted instruction time with one child anywhere, either here or there.)

On a couple different occasions, I’ve been asked, now that I’ve experienced firsthand the institutionalized educational system, if I’m going to send my children to school once we return home.

The answer: absolutely not.

Let me be clear. I am so glad that we chose to send our children to school this year. The school is wonderful, the teachers kind and professional, the setting safe and secure. But I can hardly wait to quit this school business and get back to homeschooling because I miss it something fierce.

I miss hanging out with my children, including them in household chores, reading together. I miss being involved in their learning. I miss the challenge of deciding what, how, and when to educate them. I miss our lunches of leftovers, all of us perched on stools around the kitchen table. I miss our lazy mornings by the fire, piles of library books strewn across the floor. I miss free afternoons and lingering rest times and late(er) evenings. I miss dappling in special projects, spontaneous outings, and friend swaps. I miss being with my kids.

There are, of course, so many things I don’t miss, like all the bickering and feeling like I’m going to climb out of my skin and the exhaustion of Following Through. Having thirty-five, glorious, kid-free hours each week—hours in which I am not mediating fights, watching my clean house disintegrate under muddy feet and tossed clothes, listening to silly babble, being irritated by rolled eyes and bobble-doll heads (my daughter has a gift—she belongs on a dashboard), enforcing chores, disciplining, chiding, prodding—is downright blissful. And yet…

And yet.

These eye-rolling, bickering children are mine. Call me crazy (stop shouting already! I can’t think!), but those problems we have—and do we ever have our share of problems!—are ours to work through. I miss the, the…privilege? opportunity? of giving them my full (albeit often resentful and pissed off) attention.

So while I thoroughly enjoy my calm, quiet mornings, I am oh-so-ready to scrap the go-to-school business and delve once again into the daily drudge (that will, no doubt, make me want to stick a pin in my eye in 0.0062014 seconds, ahhhh!) of spending our days learning, fighting, living at home, together. 

PS. If I call begging you to watch my children because I am Losing It, don’t smirk. Or at least not so I can see. ‘Kay? Thanks.

PPS. It’s not just me hankering after our educational independence and freerer schedule—the kids are, too.

Whoo-hoo! guess what! and alert the presses! I just discovered the best banana bread recipe ever!

Okay, so my discovery isn’t that original, considering I found the recipe in a popular food magazine under the heading “Best Banana Bread,” but that I actually agreed with the bold proclamation is, perhaps, the true great revelation.

After three batches, my children are a little bit weary of the bread. But not my husband! He’s madly in love. So much so that—get this—he’s been mumbling under his breath something about needing more bananas for more bread.

This is the same man who forgets that other people—such as his parents, his children, his wife!—even exist when they aren’t directly in his line of vision. So that he’s thinking of banana bread when there’s not a trace to be found is nothing short of astounding.

Unlike some people, I am not a banana bread freak. My repertoire of favorites is small (this and this and this), though much loved. However, after one bite, this banana bread zipped to the top of the list so fast I got whiplash. I might be a banana bread freak after all.

Here’s why I like it:
*It is dark and dewy. (I’d use the word “moist” but I know some of you would take issue.)
*The hot oven turns the edges and top almost caramelly.
*With its saggy middle, crunchy edges, and bubbly-hole-studded top, it’s charmingly rustic.
*It’s swoonily addictive. This is a good thing!
*No beaters; the batter is oil-based.
*Aside from a separate pan for mashing the bananas, it’s a one-bowl deal.

Best Banana Bread
Adapted (hardly) from the March 2013 issue of Bon Appétit.

The bread is supposed to be baked in loaf pans, but I used regular sheet cake pans. One recipe overflowed my 8×8-inch pan. A double recipe fit nicely in a 9×12 and a 8×8. In other words, use a pan that’s a little bigger than you think you’ll need.

I could detect a bit of a baking soda flavor in the first batch. In the following bakings, I dialed back the amount of soda and all was well.

1 3/4 cups flour
1 ½ scant teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 eggs
1½ cups sugar
1 cup mashed very ripe (almost rotten) bananas
3/4 cup flavorless oil, such as canola

Whisk together the eggs, sugar, oil, and bananas. Add the dry ingredients and combine well.

Divide the batter between several greased, small loaf pans (or one big loaf pan or a pan that’s a bit bigger than a standard 8×8 pan).

Bake at 350 degrees for 40-60 minutes, depending on the pan size, or until the bread is dark brown and an inserted toothpick comes out clean and the edges are pulling away from the sides. Cool, eat, and freak out. Join the club!