Panic… the ebb and flow

I’ve just sent a letter to Annie’s teacher explaining that she won’t be coming back to her school. Each of the steps in the process of setting up our home school has brought me closer to a kind of resolve that this is the right choice for our family for now. At the same time, there are all kinds of anxieties surrounding that decision: What did I sign us up for? Can I really do this? Am i going to be spending all my time in the car? I know that it’s the best choice for her. To a certain degree, I think that she’ll grow faster and more confidently in her learning. However, in my eagerness to prevent Annie from feeling isolated, I signed her up for afternoon Pre-Kindergarten. It’s a unique 4+ class which is geared toward those students with late birthdays who don’t meet the date cut-off for school. Three of the students in her class were also in her nursery school class, so I feel pretty confident that she won’t feel as though the students are too young for her. However, the class runs only 2 1/2 hours in the afternoon. Pippi’s class, which begins at 9:15 goes until 11:45. As a result, I’m about to spend much more time in the car driving from one place to another than I had ever really thought about. It’s not the driving that bothers me so much (except for the environmental concern, the waste of gas, and the waste of money) as it is the loss of time for Annie’s instruction. For the past 3 weeks I’ve been reading about various approaches to homeschooling. Between school-at-home and “unschooling” and hyper-scheduling and unscheduling, I think our natural family rhythm falls somewhere in between. I want much of what we explore and learn to come from self-directed and guided questions. At the same time, I feel that Annie needs structure to learn basic concepts, not to mention to learn how to follow a schedule so that she can become a productive student and adult as she grows in her education. So, all the interruptions on a daily basis are worrisome…

Hence the panic. I’ve worked out on paper when we can set aside instructional time. I know that at some point I’ll have some materials to work with from the school where we hope she’ll attend. In the meantime, I’m on my own. I feel a certain amount of pressure that when we start on day one that it not be rushed or disorganized. I want to portray for Annie the sense that we have it under control, that there is a plan, and that we are going to achieve short-term and long-term goals right from the start. Still, I don’t *have* the materials yet. Also, I want to make the goals reasonable, challenging and yet achievable. I don’t want each day to become a series of workbook pages. Sure, a few at a time are fine, but page after page of busy work is something that she and we reacted against at her old school.

So, where do we begin? Many of the books on homeschooling that I’ve skimmed through or read suggest starting with a kind of learning style assessment. There are quite a few books out there about assessing your child’s learning style. From Judy Willis’s How Your Child Learns Best to 100 Top Picks for Homeschooling Curriculum by Cathy Duffy, there are plenty of books dedicated to this topic. I have to, sheepishly, admit that I ordered Talkers, Watchers, and Doers by Cheri Fuller–and not necessarily for the most admirable of reasons. It was only $8 on my Kindle. Anyway, it makes sense to start here. I know that I talk about Annie as if I already know what her “learning style” is, but my goal is to be genuine in my attempts… and I don’t just want to borrow from my parenting baggage and proceed based on my own, sometimes shaded, preconceptions. On the other hand, and in the interest of full disclosure, I’m also a little concerned about the idea of labeling any one child’s learning “style” so early on in life. It seems to me, in my not-so-expert opinion, that learning styles would change, develop and grow along with the socio-emotional-cognitive growth of the child. So, lest I put too much stock in one “style,” I still need to have some “plan” for getting the basics down.

It occurs to me, though, that one place where Annie has really been struggling is with her handwriting. It’s one of my biggest complaints about how kindergarten was going for her, and perhaps one of the areas that need the most support. I believe that good handwriting is important. The ability to make well-formed letters seems tied to one’s ability to think, to parse, and to organize language and ideas. Again, that’s just my own assumption… I’m not an expert. But, since this is “Mommy School” anyway, I get to base my own curriculum on my own assumptions and discovery, right?

Handwriting, then, will be a second area of emphasis for us. I know that Annie’s new school uses the Handwriting Without Tears instructional method. In fact, they used it for her nursery school classes, so potentially, I could use some of the materials that were unused and try to improve on it. I’ve discovered that there are online you tube videos, as well. Since I don’t have a copy of the materials yet, I’ll begin with a general premise of the curriculum, then work from there depending on whether or not I can get the materials myself. I’ve been watching youTube videos, and will start with some of the songs and with reaquainting Annie with the language of big lines, little lines, curvy lines, diagonals, and frog jump letters.

Annie wants very much to wear her Cinderella watch more frequently. I had explained at one point that when she could tell time to the half hour, that I’d let her wear the watch on a more regular basis. We do have flash cards for telling time, and she eagerly learned how to tell time to the hour… so perhaps this would be a good week for working on telling time to the 1/2 hour. That covers math.

Last week we went to Philadelphia and visited several museums. When we left, I created a “writing journal” for her. She’s eagerly writing words and sentences whenever and however she can, but I wanted some way to capture her ideas in one place so that she could see her own growth as a writer and have a record of her own musings about what she sees and does, from the mundane to the adventurous. This week, then, it makes sense to start the notebook. It has three lines at the bottom of each page for handwriting and space at the top of each page for pictures. We can start with one or two sentences each day with a picture. This week’s topic can be “What we did in Philadelphia.”

Finally, I just got off the phone with Jason, who has taken the girls with him to visit his parents and to retrieve our dog whom Jason’s parents have so thoughtfully and generously been taking care of for the past week. They went to Barnes and Noble last night, and Annie bought a new Felicity book from the American Girl collection. For social studies, I think we’ll make it a goal to buy a map, to read the book, and to learn about what life was like for children during the Revolutionary Era. I have the loosest ideas here, not exactly sure what the learning outcomes “should” be, but perhaps this is the purpose behind leaving some area of our schooling unscripted. There should be at least one part that is open-ended exploration. Felicity will provide that for us this week.

The panic has begun to ebb. As I list out possible goals for the week, I am beginning to believe again that this may be possible and that it may all get done… maybe.