The Homeschooling Handbook_ From Preschool to High School - Mary Griffith [63]
Ethan reads a lot of books on his own and has always been a font of information, so I haven’t felt the need to get too concerned about “teaching.” He also absorbs a lot from educational TV shows. Much of the time I don’t even know where he’s learned things. I’ve always provided a lot of books and interesting materials around the house, and have always read to him.
When we started, I tried to have bit of a schedule, but it never worked. It took a while to let go of the school model—a few months at the most. I knew nothing about homeschooling at the time, except what I learned from the local public independent study program. We drifted into an unschooling mode over the years, but now that he’s thirteen we’ve become a little more concentrated. We worked with ISPs for three years, but now I don’t really know why, because we always gave them a lot more information than they gave us.
Ethan’s pretty easy and basically goes along with anything I suggest he should be studying, but there hasn’t been too much pressure on him that way. I support what he asks to learn.
Jill, Greg, and their three children (eighteen, sixteen, and thirteen) are also Californians. Greg owns a small business, and Jill works part-time out of the home. Cristie, the oldest child, attended kindergarten, but the kids have otherwise always homeschooled.
What do we do all day? An impossible question to answer!
Today, Curtis and I did some stuff together. He is working on these polyhedrons from a kit that is kind of fun, so he did some of that and did his piano and I helped him a little. Then we took the dog out with the bike for a mile or so (always a death-defying journey for me), and he went another mile by himself. He read some of James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small and a book on Pericles that he’s interested in, and a chapter from From Colonies to Country, a volume of Joy Hakim’s History of US series. We read a chapter together from Jim Lovell’s book, Lost Moon. Curtis and I saw him on his book tour, so now we are reading his book (autographed, of course) together. We want to do a little bit on our papier-mâché project when I get off the computer.
Paul today has done some math, some drivers’ ed (using a textbook), and some history. Cristie went to spend the day with a homeschooling mom who has small kids, because she wants more experience dealing with babies. She’ll probably write some tonight and fit in a little Latin. Paul and Curtis just went outside to play garage hockey, a game whose rules elude me.
So, you ask, is this a typical day? No! This is one of those rare days when we are home all day, no one has anything scheduled, including me, and we have an abundance of free time. Normal days for Curtis consist of play rehearsals, orthodontist appointments, writing, playing, minutes at the piano, learning the Greek alphabet, riding in the car, reading, doing wash, going to the grocery store. Normal days for Paul are hours on his computer working on programming, or playing the latest computer game to write a review, or writing. Both Cristie and Paul take physical science and dance at the local community college three days a week, and Cristie also works on Latin by herself and is writing a science fiction novel. She works for Greg doing computer input for billing, and she lifeguards when the pool is open. We all do tai chi and shao lin but seldom together except on Saturday mornings for our lesson.
Curtis, Cristie, and I volunteer weekly at the library, shelving books or doing whatever else is needed. Paul and Cristie work one