Rooting

Our month off from lessons is half over.  When I mentioned that fact to the boys yesterday they groaned but I'm looking forward to getting back to it soon.  Due to our weird homeschooling year, they've already completed one 10-week 'quarter', before we took our July break.  I have yet to do my paperwork for the coming year, but that's par for the course-- I always send it in sometime in August.  I don't know why I'm so looking forward to going back to lessons-- because we started back in May, there is nothing new to the work they'll be doing.  For now, I'm happy with all the materials we're using (and beyond happy with History Odyssey, but that's a separate blog entry, or will be soon).  Next year I'm going to look into Discovery K-12, a free online comprehensive curriculum that I just heard about from Ariel, homeschooling mama extraordinaire.

Homeschooling and staying home with babies is like living on a glacier.  Everything is slow, out of step with the rest of the world and their hurry, but at the same time there is constant change and we never return to where we were before.  It's funny to look at my last post from a month ago and see that I was concerned with not giving Snorzy enough enrichment on a daily basis unless I planned for it.  The weeks between then and now have been a kind of a renaissance for him, his language has grown exponentially and he's gotten more clear and firm in his will too-- I could never go a day without reading to him now, when he brings his favorite "boo" to me over & over throughout the day (the favorites evolve every few days, he isn't loyal to one the way Primo was to Dinosaur's Binkit or Radish to both The Pudgy Where is Your Nose? Book and Quack Quack by Claire Henley).  I can't make it through a day without taking him " 'side" either-- he insists on being taken out on the front porch or into the backyard many times each day, aside from any outings we might go on in the car to shop or swim or whatever the day holds.

I drove myself crazy for a week at the beginning of the month, the way I do periodically-- I get too much time on my hands and end up somehow thinking that I can single-handedly solve the whole 'work-life balance' thing that has plagued mothers since the dawn of time.  I nearly convinced myself that it made sense to spend an enormous amount of time and money taking a graduate class that would throw the whole family's schedule into chaos twice a week for the fall semester, and then lead nowhere (it is the only evening class available in that department, so I wouldn't have been able to follow up with any more classes in that field without quitting homeschooling).  Out of the blue, one evening, inspiration hit and by the next day I was over at a local community college, jumping through hoops to register to take an (inexpensive, conveniently placed in the week) night class in writing fiction this fall.  I literally had not written a word of fiction since I was ten years old (a poignant, one-page tale about a bunny, if I remember correctly), so this is scary good fun to look forward to.  In preparation, I've been working through a free online mini course from Open University's OpenLearn portal, called Start Writing Fiction.

I've been spending more time on GoodReads this month than on any other social media, and getting almost depressed by the exposure to all the things that I don't have time to read.  My appetite for books, like my appetite for sweets, makes me feel like life is too short.  If I did nothing each day but read novels and eat cake & cookies, there still wouldn't be time to consume everything that I want.  What's the answer to this?  Is it to have a taste of something exquisite each day, and try not to think about all the rest?

Their Own Thirst for Knowledge

When I started reading about homeschooling years ago ( when Primo was a toddler) I gravitated right away toward eclectic, middle of the road methods, and definitely *not* unschooling.  Over the years that hasn't changed-- though some of our friends and many of our friendly acquaintances would describe themselves as unschoolers, the idea of 'child-led learning' just doesn't work for me.
But.
Even though I'm happy with so many things about the way we do 'education' in our home, I wish the boys would get more excited about learning.  They tend to be cheerful and compliant when it comes time for lessons, and they are sometimes enthusiastic about particular parts of our routine (science experiments, history and science lessons that one of them reads and then teaches to the other, taking turns reading Latin stories aloud).
But.
We are avid readers in our family, and we spend a lot of time at our local library.  I make good use of the 'interlibrary loan' service offered by our region's libraries, and yesterday was not unusual-- there were 10 books waiting for us at the check-out counter.  Said each of the boys in turn, "Are there any fun books waiting for us?"-- meaning novels, recently published middle-grade novels about fantasy or funny situations.  8 of the 10 books were about Christopher Columbus and other explorers, and I had taken great care to choose interesting, high-quality, and in some cases beautiful books.  I felt a little crushed when the boys asked about 'fun' books.  After nearly 6 years of homeschooling, don't picture and activity books about explorers count as fun?  What can I do to awaken in them their own thirst for knowledge?
There are glimmers of light at the end of this tunnel.  Several months ago the boys chose a book called Stronger Than Steel about scientists looking to replicate the properties of  spider silk.  On this recent trip to the library I brought home two science-themed books, one of them called One Minute Mysteries: 65 More Short Mysteries You Solve With Science and I found Primo reading it over his dessert later that night.  It wouldn't have to be science, I'd be happy with either of them taking an interest in anything that has to do with the real world-- really, almost anything at all (I'm sure there are exceptions, I just can't think of them at the moment).