this woman’s work

Madison is sick now

Feb 16, 2007 Homeschooling, Parenting, The Story of My Life

I wanted to write all the funny things she’s been doing lately but I’m not sure if she’ll let me since she’s using my right arm as a snot rag despite having a full box of kleenex at her side. Ok, I’ll try while her attention is on her orange juice.

• She is heart-breaking in her sunflower girlness (this is totally like Jessica). The other day I had to leave her at my sister’s while I went for an interview with a placement agency. She was very very very sad about this beforehand and tried to get me to stay. But when she was there was no way out, she channeled her inner-Shirley Temple (brave little soldier!) and said with a shaky grin, “When you say good-bye to me I will giggle!” And she forced a stilted “ha-ha!” as proof. I could learn from this child.
• She remembers things from when she was one and she remembers them correctly. She remembers Florida, she remembers hotels, she remembers visitors who came over a long time ago. She remembers the name of a little girl we met once last fall for about ten minutes. (Noah still remembers things from when he was two — he was describing the apartment we lived in then and he got it right.)
• TIVO is teaching her to read. Ok, so she can’t read but she knows how to find Max & Ruby on the screen listings. (It’s the show we watch while we do her hair every morning. We love Max & Ruby.) She also keeps asking “what says” certain words, which is how she asks what letter starts a word. She’ll say, “What says snow?”
• She’s into getting herself dressed now and she will go someplace where she can do it without an interfering audience so most of the time her pants and shirt are on backwards. Her underwear, too, which looks uncomfortable. (She called Jessica the other day and announced first thing, “My tushie is having a wedgie.”) And she also likes to swipe Noah’s underwear and wear it instead because then she is a Noah.
• She drew on the window this weekend (hint: great kid activity — markers wipe right off and if you have a picture window, there’s a lot of scope for creativity). She drew a bathtub for Jessica (because Jessica gave her a bath before and it was a lot of fun) and she drew “lots of knobs” and “lots of bubble bath and lotions.” Then she called Jessica to tell her about it (she had to leave a message). This was her first time drawing something and saying it was something. She said, “Here is a knob and here is another knob” while drawing said knobs. She’s never done that before.

Noah is finally all better and he’s being really patient with now-sick Madison. Yesterday she started falling apart and he’s taking good care of her since he knows how she’s feeling. Right now they’re cuddled-up under the same blanket on the couch talking. They are very sweet.

We’ve been thinking of going to the dark side of homeschooling and setting him up with a virtual school next year. Since we don’t know what’s happening with us work-wise and it may be that both parents get quite a bit busier, we’re worried about keeping him on any kind of track. Also he’s so not a joiner and so a lot of the enriched activities going on around town don’t appeal to him. Finally he does really well with being accountable if he’s given a list of things to do. Brett is doing a math curriculum with him (Math-U-See, which of the three or four he’s tried, they both like the best. We also tried Miquon and Singapore.) and he assigns him a chapter each week. Noah also has Hebrew homework every week and things to do for his Junior Great Books discussion group. He has been very responsible and is clearly the kind of person who enjoys staying on top of his to-do list. When we talked to him about the school, he first made sure he wouldn’t have to go to a building to do it and then said he was game.

Virtual schools are charter schools and they usually give the family a computer and then send assignments over the internet. A teacher stays in touch with the family via phone and sometimes visits. Some schools are hard-core — they want you at the keyboard by 9am and doing X hours a day. I hear the one we’re looking into (k12 is much more laid-back. One mom said she felt like it was a lot of work but someone else said they get their work done in about three hours a week and were finished with the school year by February. I also hear the school is good at handling different learning styles.. (

I have mixed feelings about it. I still think unschooling is fabulous but I also realize it takes a lot of involvement on the parents’ part and I have to face up to not having the time to do it and not having a kid who wants me that involved. He’s learning — he’s testing grades ahead in reading comprehension and his spelling is much improved and he’s blowing through his math beautifully — but I feel like he’s ready for more. He also isn’t a child with grand passions that drive him to discover more and more on his own. He’s always kept his passions to himself and too much interest in our part seems like an invasion of privacy to him. This makes it hard to turn his love of animals into a learning tool; that’s a sure fire way to dampen his love of animals. I thought this kind of independence would make him a better unschooler but it’s made it hard for me. This feels like a decent compromise and if it’s not working we’ll reassess.

I really want to opt out of the testing but Brett says why not try it and see how it goes (the school uses the same No Child Left Behind tests that every other school uses). Noah wants to do the tests. Brett tests him on his math every Friday and Noah goes back through and corrects the ones he got wrong even though Brett doesn’t ask him to. This makes me feel good about keeping him out of regular school because I think he’d be a grade whore and I think — like his father — that bad grades would make him fall apart. But — like his mother — he also usually argues with Brett that Brett graded it wrong and then redoes the problems to prove it. I have no idea what testing through the virtual school will be like to him but at least he won’t be competing against anyone but himself.

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