Too Excited

Simone is only 4 years old and in preschool. When homeschooling at this stage, there is nothing really formal I can do. Even for classical and traditional homeschoolers. The thing to do is to just expose her to the world - the real world and not the virtual one on the TV or the computer.

Some moms might be excited about this because there's not much planning to do. I am relieved that we started researching homeschooling early and there's no panic in our engagement with it. But the addictive personality in me kind of wants to get all into schedules and buy curricula / unit studies! Because it's not necessary for preschoolers, I have this extra energy that I feel I need to dispel. That's why I'm blogging. As I'm finding out about the homeschooling community, reading reviews, interacting socially with local homeschoolers, I want to write about our experience.

I did start on a phonics program with Simone. She's into it - not enthusiastically so, but into it for a few minutes a day. I'm trying to not push her too much because I'm afraid of putting her off the entire learning process. We started out (2 weeks ago) at 3 minutes a day and I think we're now at 7 minutes. We did the short-vowel sounds, and are 1/3 through the consonants. We're doing about 2 consonants a lesson session. I'm using Ordinary Parents' Guide to Teaching Reading and am not following the script at all. I did for the first lesson. Halfway through the second, Simone was so over the having to learn a poem to remember the short-vowel sounds. Can't blame her - it isn't catchy at all. After each letter, we read from the BOB books. The BOB books are like the incentive for learning the phonics.

I still don't know Simone's learning style, but I'm glad I haven't squashed her interest in learning ... yet.

Decision One: To Include or Not To Include Jesus

Now that Michael and I were more or less on the same page regarding our kids’ education (or rather, we had started thinking concretely about it and were coincidentally happy to be on the same page), I was excited to start researching how I would homeschool them. I had never come across homeschoolers. The only time I remember seeing homeschoolers in the media were the two kids that Nicole Kidman taught in movie “The Others.” And it seemed as if that was the norm back in the early 20th century if you were affluent ... and British ghosts (kidding. :P ). It turns out that when people think of homeschoolers, they think of ultra-religious freaks who want to shelter their children from the sight of female ankles. Who knew? I didn’t!

I do know that I don’t want to talk about Jesus! I talked about him, his father and his holy spirit enough during my childhood. While my friend in public school was taking cool classes in hand-drawn animation, I had to learn about the 7 sacraments. Sacra-what is what I’d answer if you asked me today what the seven were. My philosophy on religion is that the only message I need to take from it is, “Be nice.” No need to kneel when the priest says “Hey” and no need to clap your hands when he says “A hi dee ho.”

My daughter Simone, now age 4, has asked me about Jesus. She likes going to church with my parents whenever we visit them. She even asks for it! She likes dressing up and seeing other people, I think. One Sunday mass, she saw a statue of a tired, bloody, young man whose hands and feet were nailed to a giant lowercase “t.” “Who’s that, Mommy?” she asked. Unprepared, I took a few seconds before uttering a few “umms” and a “let’s see how do I explain this …” I finally said, “That’s Jesus. He was a nice guy that some other people beat up.” Luckily she was quiet as she soaked in this information. And even luckier for me, the choir started singing and the priest and his entourage walked down the center aisle - enough entertainment to distract Simone.

I think that’s about 75% of what I want to tell Simone about Catholicism. The stories detailing Jesus’s kindness are the other 25% I wouldn’t mind telling her. Like his inclusion of the dregs of society and how he healed people. I want to ignore the whole “It’s harder for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle than to enter heaven” thing.

So decision one in our homeschooling curriculum. No Jesus or Mohammed or Buddha as revered authorities on how one should act.

Why Homeschooling?

Before I had kids, I imagined that my participation in their education would be my helping them with homework after a long day at school. I wouldn’t correct their homework as perfectly as my mom did, but I would be there to answer their questions and help them when they got stuck.
But life happens not in the way I intend it.

Soon after I gave birth to Simone, Michael entered the Coast Guard. I made the connection that Simone would become a military child who must move to a new school every few years. I worried more about her social situation. Will she be welcomed or bullied at her new school? How will she handle having to leave the friendships she’s established. Will she want to stay with her high school friends and thus prompt me to stay at a base longer than Michael (i.e. the family will be separated?) I didn’t yet think about what she would be learning. I soon did, however, when I realized we could be sent to the South!!!

I had heard a statistic about California’s education being ranked as low as Mississipi’s. Since this had been addressed on the news, I assumed that the reporter was trying to say the two states were not producing well-rounded academic kids. I then imagined that Simone might be stuck in a poor public school depending where we’re stationed! So after researching the No Child Left Behind test scores of each state, I found that it would be advantageous to be stationed north of the Mason Dixie line instead of south of it.

But Michael has long warned of the inability to predict the direction of your military life. We could put in a request for all yankee states and not get a single preference based on what the coordinator (called a “Detailer” in the Coast Guard) decides. When I started thinking seriously about how I would safeguard my kids from below-standard education, Simone was 3 and Max was a few months old.

I went to the Library for help and found a couple influential books. One called And the Skylark Sings With Me: Adventures in Homsechooling and Community-Based Education and the other was Hard Times in Paradise. I picked up the first one because the family who wrote about their daughters’ education were major travelers and they were still able to get a well-rounded, if not exceptional, education. The second one was actually not about education at all. It was about a family just merely trying to survive. The children in the book happened to be homeschooled and I thought it was a grand idea, but not one that Michael would like. Boy was I wrong! Instead of my just afterschooling the kids, Michael thought it might be great if we homeschooled them starting in middle school! Wow wow wee wow! We were envisioning a grand and ambitious schooling career for our kids and I was super-excited!