Total homeschool post – almost – well, never mind

It’s been a while since I’ve checked out homeschool blogging circles but I was in a couple several years ago and eventually dropped out of them as most were indeed homeschooling for religious purposes, and then those that were not tended to be either suburban or nearly rural and very do it yourself kind of people and very curriculum oriented and the few that were urban tended to be far more ambitious than we are and again pretty curriculum oriented and utilized tutors and many outside classes.

Plus I didn’t want to blog regularly about the homeschooling. Though I wish I did blog more about the science projects and art things and museum and puppetry excursions.

This will be a here’s-what’s-working-for-us-at-the-moment post because though lots of the Google hits I get are scum bucket googles, this blog fairly regularly get hits on the homeschool science posts, and maybe if I post what we’re up to then a likewise progressive-minded, arts-oriented, flexible type homeschooler who maybe doesn’t live in a rural area will one day stop by and leave a comment directing to their blog and I’ll get ambitious or interested and go over and look. Couldn’t hurt.

Hopefully their child will like to draw. A lot.

I say hopefully a blogger who maybe doesn’t live in a rural area because you can’t imagine how successively inspiring, then deflating and then annoying it is to read the blogs of ambitious and spirited homeschoolers who keep huge gardens so their children can learn about growing food and who keep goats and sheep and card wool and make their own sweaters and raise chickens and the kids play down by the river and up on the mountain top and trips to Europe for the summer are in the planning with discussions on what will be educational and there are frequent weekend trips to D.C. and Disneyland and places where one’s child can be a pilgrim for a day. I have nothing against these people. What can I say but that we don’t have goats and cows, we have pigeons and puppets and taxidermy at Fernbank, and I just don’t have that much in common with people who blog about the educational project of building a big pond and stocking it with fish. I can be enthusiastic for them for several months of successive grand educational projects but it starts to wear thin. Especially when it is like that day in and day out, every science project enhanced by the ever-growing selection of livestock, every history project commanding a costume and period meals and a basement devoted to the castle being constructed of rock that came from the hole into which went the pond.

What can I say. I see no good reason to do projects like making a “scroll TV” in order to teach about the Black Death, even though the Scroll TV will satisfy the following standards:

1.5 comprehend & evaluate written, visual, & oral presentations and works
o 1.9 identify, analyze, & compare the institutions, traditions, & art forms of past and present societies
o 2.1 plan/make written, oral, & visual presentations for a variety of purposes & audiences
o 2.3 exchange info, questions, & ideas regarding works of the arts, humanities, & sciences
o FA1 process and techniques for production, exhibition, or performance of one or more of the visual or performed arts
o SCI3 characteristics and interactions of living organisms
o HPE3 diseases and methods for prevention, treatment, & control

Now, I may be entertained to see what standards are being satisfied, like how putting a couple of paragraphs on a “scroll TV” teaches characteristcs and interactions of living organisms, diseases and methods for prevention etc., and also gets an art check mark. It even makes me giddy. They provide sheets like these at the website for the Puppetry Arts Center and for the first year, after each show we attended, I printed out those standards satisfied sheets because I got such a kick out of seeing a show sliced into academic ribbons of goodness. But the novelty one day went poof like smoke and I forget about it entirely thereafter.

I see no reason to fashion paperclips into chain mail when reading on knights. I see no reason for lessons on invertebrates demanding a party with gummy worms peeking out of chocolate cakes.

There must be something wrong with me, because I see no point in a hell of a lot of the study “activitiies” I read about. My eyes quite often have glazed over by the time I’m done reading the study text, which usually has to do with war and more war, everthing that ever happend in the world a matter of conquerors and kings and swords and shields. And all civilization of course flowing from Roman fountains. By the time I hit the activity portions any fire H.o.p.’s mom had for the idea of learning is considerably diminished. I read the list of materials wanted and how with glue gun and cardboard and meringue we’re supposed to construct a Greek temple.

I have, as an adult, made a series of Marie Antionette coat hangers out of plaster and marbles and found objects that glittered merriliy when hung from the light switches of lamps.

But, I’m sorry, I’d really rather read myths aloud to H.o.p. and look at pictures of temples than spend a day making a meringue one.

Well…actually I made up the meringue temple just now, though it’s close to the kind of thing one would read about doing as a lesson activity when learning about Greek gods. But must not be quite like them because the more I think about it the more entertained I am. The more I’m liking the idea of making a meringue temple.

Pink meringue.

We could do a stop animation of the final scene of Nashville.

Never mind the here’s-what’s-working-for-us-at-the-moment post. On that note, I’m going to end this. Because all I have on my mind right now is a pink meringue temple on the table with cut-out cardboard puppets of Barbara Jean and the other Nashville characters standing on the steps, and I really do need to scrub my brain of that thought. I didn’t expect this post to go there. I expected it to be sensible and stick to the point.


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2 responses to “Total homeschool post – almost – well, never mind”

  1. Nina Avatar
    Nina

    Well, this isn’t going to sound like much of a response to homeschooling and what you wrote. I especially enjoy reading the things you write about H.O.P. and enjoy them, am reminded of when I was home with my own two children who are now 16 and 18. I remember at the time that though my life with them seemed very important to me, it was hard for me to believe it would be of interest to anyone else. And yet, I read the things you write, your day to day life with H.O.P. and I remember my own children even if all the particulars of your life with him are different, the rhythms of your days seem familiar, the pleasure in the questions he has, the things you talk about, the way life opens up and expands for you and for him. And then I think about my own blog which you so very kindly helped set up and which I thought I’d have time to write on regularly because I’d had so much time to write and enjoyed finding that writing voice in myself. And then my parents began to age and suddenly I was confronting a whole lot of much too grown up issues, complicated things, angry things, difficult things. So not only was there not so much time to write but also the topics that seemed natural to speak about seemed and still seem so limited, so much about the difficulty of life winding down, of options closing, of dealing with everything internally and externally that is, as I’m finding, a part of dealing with aging parents. So in reading your post today about homeschool blogs it made me wonder if there are blogs about dealing with aging parents. And maybe I didn’t put in the right search words because I seemed not to come up with much. I suppose there’s no real point to what I’ve written here. I do keep composing another post off and on in my own mind, to post to my blog, something about taking care of elderly parents and what that’s like for me. Which as I said, has nothing at all to do with homeschooling blogs. Oh well. You’ll probably forgive me.

  2. Idyllopus Avatar

    I haven’t looked into it but I imagine there are blog loops for those dealing with aging parents. I’d be surprised if there weren’t. Hmmm. I just did a search for a blog ring for it and I wasn’t coming up with anything, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there. If you were interested I suppose you could always create your own blog ring at some place like webring.
    http://dir.webring.com/h?create_ring.html

    But then you’d have to manage the thing and that’s probably not a very attractive responsibility o take on right now.

    It is so damn tough everything you’re currently dealing with.

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