First Day, Second Time

It was our annual First Day celebration today! Our first official day of semi-structured home learning....sorta-school. You may remember last year, our first big recognition of the occasion.

I want the boys to feel special, for learning to be ardently celebrated and yet to avoid the pale, cheesy, chasing after "normal," pretend about making a xerox-of-a-public-school here in the living room. Walking that line. I was going for warm tradition capped with a little buzz and hoping to avoid wanna-be mimicry. We had warm apple dumplings for breakfast...apples because they are a modern symbol of teaching and dumplings because they are a once a year treat that goes down delightfully sweet and fallish. Each boy came down to a special congratulatory sign on his plate, welcoming him to his new grade level. And then I put a candle in each boy's dumpling and A and I sang to them "Happy First Day to you, Happy First Day to you, Happy First Day, happy first day of schoooool, Happy First Day to you!" So fun to see big sparkling eyes and happy grins, over the top of the flickering flames.

Then we hopped in the van for our 2nd annual drive around the block to the street in front of the neighborhood school where we hooted and hollered and honked the horn and then wheeled back around and took Daddy A to the train station for work. Once we were home we had a big dance party in the kitchen and commenced the formal learnin'.

Mondays we will studying My Place In This World which is a self-composed course about micro-geography. Our street, our neighborhood, our city, and eventually our state and then a sketch of how that connects to the country and the world. Right now we are going to focus small and work from the concrete things they can easily grasp: What is an address? Where are N S E W in relation to my front door? What is a neighborhood? And move outward.

Tuesdays we will be studying Science, right we will be talking about Fungi, Molds and Their Kin. Lots of hikes and experiments in our future. Hopefully a lot of mushroom picking!

Wednesday will be Art day. We'll be mixing together some big art projects (weaving! beading! drawing in perspective!) and sometimes field trips or artist studies with our new basic piano instruction plan. I am not a piano professional but this a bite sized nobler book about beginner theory on reading and counting music and even I can hack it.

Thursday we will have another mama-hatched ideas, a Social Skills class. This will be like a modern manners course mixed with Life Skills for kids: how to make a friend, how to tell a joke smoothly, how to read body language, cultivating empathy, good listening tips, appropriate greetings, how to read expressively etc. Am excited about this concept and about the many field trips required to make sure my boys get a lot of practice building these skills into instincts.

And we 'll round out the week.with History. We are still going to be in the ancient world moving on past the Mesopotamians, Sumerians and Baylonians to Greece, Egypt and Rome. So much good stuff to read, experiment with and go see together! Very exciting.

Reading, writing and math all happen every day in addition to the daily topic.

Here's to the next learning season! Happy First Day, y'all!

School Year Leap

I am typing furiously tonight. All is in flux. Its time for a new season! I have decided to scrap all the ideas I had for how everything normally goes and start over from ground zero in every way. Home schooling starts in earnest this year...we have a genuine first grader in the house. In order to maintain some level of sanity, make sure the laundry gets done and assure ourselves that said first grader learns to read his Dick and Jane we need new rules.

Henceforth, starting not this week but the next....if you try to call me in the morning you will go straight to voicemail. If you knock on the door and are not bleeding from an orifice I won't answer and if you are waiting for an email from me, rest assured it won't arrive before noon. I am blocking off all morning hours for housework, reading together and school lessons, such as they are. All our social engagements, museum ventures, errands and other jaunts will be shifted to afternoons. Life will become ironclad and organized.

 

Tell me its smart.

And clever.

And so soothingly arranged.

Will you? 

 

I'm pretty sure its the right thing to do and yet...its a big leap.

This involves letting go of my current art fellowship group and every single other thing we've been involved in.....besides our homeschool co-op. And no...we're not going to become one of THOSE families...I think social involvement for Mommy and kids is extremely key. It just means we're starting completely over. Everything I had in place is gone so we're on the hunt for all new, afternoon events. I'm feeling alternately optimistic and lost.