The first day of school is August 17th.
I told the kids this morning and it was met with groans and sighs.
And more groans. Some of them mine.
So on August 17th we’ll wake up and the kids will actually get out of bed before 9 am and they’ll sit at the kitchen table.
And that’s it.
We’re homeschooling.
I won’t get into what I believe or don’t believe in as far as what’s going on in the world right now but I will say that I don’t see how going to school right now, trying to accommodate all these new, and constantly changing guidelines, is going to be a stable learning environment.
We’ve talked about it for the past few months. Waited for the school to officially decide how things were going to work, and to see how things were going to go as far as The Cororna, but let’s face it. Shit don’t look good.
While a bit impromptu and scattered, homeschool seemed to work better than “normal” school for my daughter so I’m hoping that I can easily add another kid into the mix. Of course I’m more than a little stressed already and I’m just in the planning phase.
(*teachers are laughing at me and they can. Trying to plan for just two kids has taught me I couldn’t plan for 30. Salute teachers!)
The boy learned nothing from his NTI days through the schools. Nothing. As I’ve written before, I’m not blaming teachers.
He did his work and he did it well, but it was just worksheets that kept him busy and seemed to be mind numbing more than mind opening.
The boy has an outrageously active mind that has to be constantly fed new information and ideas. He needs more than worksheets. He needs a more interactive education and the only way that I feel that I can do that right now in this “whole new world” is with homeschool.
I am lining up the books we’ll be reading for at least the first few months. I’ve found some things online that will assist us in a reading group as well as reading journals. The books will also tie into some of the historical events that the kids area actually wanting to learn about.
As far as math goes we’re going to be learning Real Life Math. At least for a little while. I’m in the process of creating my own workbook that will include budgeting and other basic forms of money math. Science is going to be tied in with the other lessons in some form or fashion. I’m hoping we’ll get to do a lot of the experiments that the kids have been wanting to try. We’ll also be doing gardening.
(*they aren’t super excited but I told the boy he could call it herbology if it made things better, it did a bit.)
The most important thing, I think, that I’m going to have the kids do is to keep a journal that they will write in every morning. I plan on having writing prompts every day but I think that keeping something to document this time in history is important. it is through things such as that, journals written by regular people, that real history is learned.
To be honest, I don’t have a lot of expectations. I have a lot of ideas and a lot of things that I hope to try, but I’m not going to say that I have full faith that it will all work out.
If COVID-19 has taught the world anything it should be that things don’t always work out the way you plan, and you just have to try and go with the flow of life.
I hope that eventually things begin to open back up and the kids and I can do field trips to local places as well as join some of the local groups that I’ve heard of that cater to homeschool kids. For now I’ve lined up a pen pal program for the kids to try so that they can have some sort of contact outside of each other and the parental units.
The important thing to remember right now is that the world is scary. It’s scary for adults and it’s extra scary for kids who have to see their parents struggling to deal with it all.
As always I don’t pretend to have all the answers I’m just a woman trying to keep her kids safe in a world that is at best uncertain.
A Hermitess 
Education is a daily experience, and in the best of times (I grew up while America was still #1 in the world.), challenging. As a teacher for over two decades, I loved teaching, but I also saw the writing on the walls. Times were changing. The days of creative teachers, those thinking outside the box, using supplemental lessons and creative projects, file cabinets filled to the brim with fun and educational creative lessons (One teacher had three file cabinets and they were busting at the seams.) were slowly evaporating. So much was changing, year after year, and what teachers grew up understanding, some having a plethora of other work experiences and hobbies, would have to stand outside. So, after these years, I realized having seen friends and amazing teachers leave the profession, that times would have to change in other ways. Home schooling is a fantastic idea. I probably taught more like a home school teacher, certainly where I could. Story writing with character and scene panels, teams reading theirs. Play writing with acting. Commercials and songs and a host of other fun and creative stuff that also addressed standards, but like learning checkbooks, map making, and small businesses, some starting their own, all of this was disappearing into an envelope of “learning targets.” I can only say, for those who are taking on the loving effort at home, I think very good things will come about, and certainly the children will see the opportunities within the framework of home and loving parents, perhaps groups coming to the home, parents trading days. All the best.
LikeLike