January 24, 2009

I can only offer up my misspelling, muddy thinking, poor wording, and general ineptitude as proof. Anyone can homeschool. And homeschool works really well. Even if your Mom can't spell her way out of a paper bag.

It works for two reasons. Well, maybe three.
a) love
b) humans learn
c) children at home have more time and more energy and more boredom.

In which we see I could have said, homeschool works for three reasons.
a) more time
b) more energy
c) more boredom

In which we extrapolate on boredom.
a) self motivation
b) shelter from over stimulation
c) route to satisfaction

Which becomes circular and we notice we have developed a curriculum to teach:
a) goal setting
b) accomplishment
c) productivity

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Last week one day I was sooo tired. But we had these cute workbooks about animals and the three youngest kids wanted to work on them, so we all sat on my bed and went page by page. The littlest two are 4 and 6, and the oldest of the trio, Lydia is 8.

I was sooo tired, and the sun was shining on the bed. Lydia was doing the reading and I was helping Tim. One page had photos of animals and then the names--draw a line from the photo to the name. I told Tim, "This one is the bobcat, so draw the line to that word that says bobcat." He did. Then I turned to help Julia and I overheard Lydia very quietly tell Tim, "Actually, THIS one is a cheetah. This other one is the bobcat. You're going to want to cross out what Mom wrote..." Dur. I laughed to myself. How could I be so dumb??

Then the next page had the top of animal heads from the eyebrows up. I continued helping Tim, spelling out camel for him to write on the line below a photo. As I was helping Julia I overheard Lydia again, "That's actually a giraffe's head, Tim." And she started quietly telling him the letter to spell giraffe. I looked at the photo more closely and of course she was right.

I laughed so hard I had to lie back on the pillows.

How could it be that the kids aren't getting dumber by the day with me helping them??? How do they know so much? Where did Tim learn to write all these letters this year? We've hardly worked on it.

Homeschool is some kind of miracle. Or maybe kids are? All I know for sure is that it works, and for that I'm beyond grateful.

love, V

Anonymous said...

Ha. That was great Katherine.