ChildWild » homeschooling

Being Nibbled By The Homeschooling Bug

Sierra — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 05:12:23 +0000

I keep starting blog posts and then not writing them because OMFG you would not believe how much writing I do all day. I mean, you would, because I post it all to the Internets and share it with you on the Twitter and like that. But it turns out that even I can become exhausted by the sound of my own voice and not want to write any more words down at the end of the day.

Here is the thing I keep starting blog posts about: my kids and how AWESOME they are. It has been so much fun to be their mom lately. So much fun that I want to quit sending them to school and embark on a crazed homeschooling mission with them.

Rio turned 7 and then finished first grade and poof, she has totally leveled up into this full-blown school age kid who is just her own person and not my baby at all anymore. And she’s a pretty terrific person. She reminds me of all the spunky child heroines I love from literature, like Anne of Green Gables and Lyra from His Dark Materials and Coraline. She’s just a bad ass little kid. Only her life is not all fucked up, so instead of starring in a book about herself and fighting monsters and bravely saving me from evil button-eyed witches, she mostly makes weird salads in the kitchen and plays card games and rides her bike and torments her little sister. But I know she would save me from evil spirits if she had to, because she’s just that kind of kid.

Serena, meanwhile, is milking every drop of cuteness out of her last month as a three-year-old. She’s sweet beyond belief. She does tricks. She plays games. She “helps” with the laundry and the cooking. She rides her hobby horse everywhere – to school, to bed, up and down the stairs. She’s adopted this hilarious way of saying, “What?” with one hand on her hip as if she were 3 going on 13.

All of which adds up to me wanting to be around them all the time. The kids, I mean. We’ve been having grand adventures, and I just don’t want to stop. I miss them when they go to school or summer camp. They disappear for playdates and I wish they’d come home and tell me jokes and make a mess in the kitchen.

This is sort of new. I’d gotten used to feeling pretty burned out on parenting, and treasuring my kid-free hours. Now I’m starting to feel hungry for more time with the kids again.

I’m not going to pull them out of school just so I can play with them or anything crazy like that. But Rio will graduate from her current school next year and then what? She’s said a couple times that she wants to start homeschooling then, and this week I’m feeling more and more inclined to let her. So what if I have a day job now? She can sit on the floor of my office and play Sleeping Queens while I type. It’ll be fine. Right? Right?

Of course we have a year to sort this all out. I’m just noticing happily that I’m feeling inspired to play and learn with my kids all the time now, in a way I’d lost touch with for most of a year. Whether I ever wind up homeschooling them or not, wanting to is a pretty awesome feeling.

Look, Mom! I Can Ride My Bike!

Sierra — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 18:48:56 +0000

Rio came home from school yesterday bubbling with spring fever. It was our first really warm spring day, and she couldn’t wait to get outside and plant things in the garden, ride her bike, visit her friends…you know, be a kid.

I could totally wait to do all those things, because I was sick, sick, sick. But after a few hours of listening to her Big Plans for the world, I dragged my feverish butt off the couch and took her downstairs to pull out the kids’ bikes.

“I want one of those wooden bikes with no training wheels and no pedals,” she said. “For my birthday when I turn 6.”

“You’re too big for those,” I said. “They’re for toddlers. But we could take the training wheels and pedals off your bike if you want.”

A fire caught in her eyes. She smiled a powerful, sneaky secret smile.

“What if you just took the training wheels off, and I tried to ride it with pedals?”

“I could do that too,” I said. I have been waiting for this for thousands of years, and was more than happy to oblige her.

Of course the bolts had rusted because her responsible adult parents left her bike sitting under a tarp all winter instead of putting it away in the basement. So we applied WD40 and spent two hours playing “bike shop” with my wrench set. This mainly involved washing both girls’ bikes with a cloth diaper and occasionally thumping one of the wheels with a wrench, but it kept them happy while the nuts loosened up.

Eventually, the moment came. As I put the wrench in place, Rio looked at me and said, “I’m ready, Mama. I’m so ready. I was asking inside my heart and yes! Now my whole body knows that I am really ready to ride my bike. I wasn’t sure, and my heart said yes, and then I just said, OK, It’s time to turn that readiness up! Now I am full of ready!”

Not everyone was ready, though. Here is Serena, very worriedly putting the training wheels back on.

“These wheels go on this bike, Mama! WAIT! You forgot a wheel!”

Um, ok kid. Actually, we took them off on purpose. Serena is still not over her concern about this, and keeps trying to put the training wheels back on every time she gets near them. Because of course I left them lying in a heap on the ground with my tools in the driveway in the midst of all the excitement.

It was exciting. Rio strapped on her princess bike helmet, got on her bike and I gently pushed her down the driveway, holding the back of her bicycle seat.

I vividly, vividly remember learning how to ride my bike. My mom first holding the handlebars and the seat, then gradually giving less and less support until she was running behind me down the bumpy dirt road. I remember that feeling of incredible freedom and power as I took off on my own steam for the first time. Its still one of the best feelings in my life, that smooth motion. Like dreams of flying, but real.

I also vividly remember how my first solo bike ride ended: with my braking too hard and going ass-over-handlebars into a jumping cholla cactus. I often feel sad about the things my kids are missing out on not growing up in the desert like I did, but this is one of those childhood memories I’m happy to let them miss out on.

So I pushed Rio along the sidewalk a little ways. Her dad came home from work on his bike and took a turn. Ten minutes later she was cruising down the street on her own. She did not crash into a cactus. Or anything else. She was like a fish in water. A very happy fish. With a bicycle.

Lions and Toddlers and Bears!

Sierra — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 13:12:25 +0000

So Martin took Serena to the Harvard Museum of Natural History the other day. Before she left, she told me Daddy had promised her they would see a lion.

“I think it will be a scary lion, Mama,” she said. “I think maybe that lion is going to eat us.”

“No, sweetie. The lion at the museum is a stuffed lion. It’s people eating days are over,” I said, because I am not the most reassuring mom ever.

“A stuffed lion,” said the little girl on my lap, thoughtfully. “Does that mean it is a nice lion? I think we are going to see a nice lion at the museum Mama.”

And when they came home, I asked her how the trip was.

“We saw a lion, Mama. It was a scary lion, ” she formed her little hands into claws, lowered her voice to a growl and murmured, “the scary lion was SCARY!”

Then she rolled off my lap laughing, only to look up a moment later and say, ‘There was a very scary bear. Four scary bears. And one scary lion.”

Apparently she still had fun at the museum though, and has been cheerfully impersonating scary animals ever since.

Princess Smackdown

Sierra — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:35:19 +0000

We have two guest stars at home today: Rio and another kid who both go to private schools that let out freakishly early for holiday break.

The kids are doing what they do every morning: eating their body weight in Cheerios, playing with the princess dolls in the dollhouse, and reading every book they can lay hands on.

The older girls being here leads to some more complex princess play than I’m used to. The two and three year old princess world is one in which princesses exist to be:

cute
dressed up in pretty matching gowns
clutched in one’s sweaty palms

The four and five year olds bring a new level of sophistication. Their princesses can talk.

Today, Princess Belle paid a visit to the dollhouse, where she lorded it over the other dollies.

“My boobs stick out and yours don’t,” she called in a singsong voice. “You don’t have boobs.”

The other dolls (and the small girls animating them) looked a little chagrined, but bravely went on changing their dresses.

Belle tried again. “I’m a princess,” she crowed. “You’re just a regular person.”

This was too much for Snow White, who shrieked, “ME TOO PRINCESS!” in a voice sounding suspiciously like my own toddlers. Then she leapt out of Serena’s hand and smacked Belle to the ground.

I don’t normally approve of either princesses or violence, but the two together are hard to argue with. If only because I don’t want Snow White coming after me next.

Sometimes you just have to jump in the leaves

Sierra — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:49:29 +0000

It’s been a great season for leaf jumping: dry, warm, mostly sunny. The leaves pile up in big gold drifts of fun. And the kids pile into them, like kids do. Love it!

Learning her letters

Sierra — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 05:46:26 +0000

Serena was running down the gallery above her sister’s swim class when she caught sight of something that stopped her cold: a plaster bust wearing a baseball cap.

She walked around it very carefully. She got down on all fours to examine it from below. She pointed and looked meaningfully at her mama, who is also her personal translator of Weird Stuff.

‘It’s a statue,’ I offered. ‘Of a guy. Wearing a hat. See, it had a letter on it.’

‘B!’ She shouted. ‘B!’

She may not understand the whole disembodied head as art thing any more than I do, but that girl knows a letter B when she sees one.

Further playtesting when we got home revealed that she knows quite a few letters. She can identify numerals, as well, but thinks they are all the number two.

Pattern blocks

Sierra — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:00:55 +0000

Serena and I are doing pattern blocks. She got them out and started putting the correct color block on the colored spaces to make a design.

I continue to be amazed at how different her brain is from Rio’s. I think Rio was four when she figured out the pattern blocks.

What surprised me a lot though is what Serena did when she drew an extra white block. She had already filled all the white spaces and there she was with a white block in her hand. I expected her to put it back, or replace one of the whites she had already placed. Instead she got out a second pattern card!

Playing Princesses

Play-based education in action

Sierra — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 21:47:57 +0000

Serena spent yesterday morning sitting on the floor playing with a baby toy she outgrew about a year ago. It’s a board with little movable colored pegs that you can push around a track. You’ve probably seen them in doctor’s offices.

She played with it for a long time, humming to herself. Then she looked up at me and shouted, “CIRCLE!”, pointing vigorously at a place where the track made a circle on the board.

A few hours later, she sat down and began scribbling with chalk, like she does almost every day. She drew a circle, almost by accident, and pointed at it. “CIRCLE! CIRCLE!”

Then she had to get a piece of paper and make circles for the rest of the afternoon.

Take that, Baby Einstein.

Flinch!

Sierra — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 05:22:51 +0000

Rio starts kindergarten on Monday. I’ve already told the story of our decision to send her to school here and on Babble. I’ve been alternately praised for listening to my daughter and castigated for my failures as a mom. Today I want to talk about what happened during that now-famous conversation when she asked me to call the kindergarten and ask if they had a spot for her.

I flinched.

If I’d been totally committed to homeschooling as a path, we’d be doing it today. Yes, I listened to my daughter’s heartfelt desire. But she has a lot of heartfelt desires I do not heed. We don’t watch Disney movies all day, or eat chocolate for breakfast.

We do a lot of wacky things as parents. We’re vegetarians. We don’t watch TV. We don’t buy Stuff. I have no trouble enforcing my will (or even my whims) in those areas. But Rio can smell when I’m not wholly committed to something, even if I think I have every intention of enforcing it. When she challenged me on homeschooling, I flinched and called the school.

Why? Homeschooling was never an end for me, the way being a vegetarian is. The goal, as I’ve said before, was to give my daughters the best possible education, and the best possible childhood. I want them to grow up self-possessed, confident and competent. Homeschooling looked like a good path to get there, but only if we were all going down it joyfully together.

Now, as the moment of kindergarten truth arrives, I find myself feeling a little relieved. Not because my kid will be out of the house for four hours a day. I’m sure I will miss her more than she misses me. I’m relieved because in a few days she will have a teacher who is not me who can take over responsibility for teaching her to share with her classmates, use an indoor voice, and write her letters properly. Passing that hat opens up space for me to have more fun with my daughter. I feel a little freer to take her side in an argument, to snuggle her out of a tantrum instead of teaching her more self-control, and to blow off “enrichment activities” in favor of cuddling on the couch with a movie or walking over to the bakery for cupcakes.

It’s nice, letting go of the teacher hat in her life. I’ll cheerfully pick it back up again, should school not work out as well as we’re all hoping it will. But in the meantime, I’m enjoying being a little more relaxed with my great big five-year-old girl.

Help Lia Grippo, a California mom punished for letting kids play

Sierra — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 18:46:23 +0000

I first read Lia’s story on Free Range Kids a few months ago.

In a nutshell, Lia ran a small, home-based childcare program not unlike the one I run. She lives in Santa Barbara, and took the kids on nature outings a couple times a week. One day, they were at the beach and she was closely supervising a few kids climbing a bluff. The lifeguard came over to “help” the kids get down and a bystander called the police. Subsequently, she lost her license to operate a home childcare.

Since I also run a nature-based childcare program, this story hit close to home for me. This morning, a friend passed me this link to a fundraising event to help her fight the system.

Let’s be clear. I don’t know Lia. She might be great with kids, or she might be a total flake. The bluffs she let her kids climb might have been dangerous cliffs or they might have been steep hills like the ones my kids scramble up at every opportunity. I’m not registering an opinion about her or her abilities as a parent or teacher.

But I know that what happened to her and her little school was wrong. Assuming she’s telling the truth (and I’ve no reason to doubt her), she lost her license and her livlihood, and these kids lost a wonderful, nature-based education, because of fear. None of the kids in her care were injured, and no charges were filed against her. But someone was afraid that her style of schooling – out in nature, trusting children to find their own limits, being a little wild – would lead to injury, so they shut her down over the protests of the happy families whose kids she cared for.

That’s not right.