Well, my plans for the pool got a little side tracked over the last three days. I will try again next week to meet my goal. However, I may still try to go rollerblading later. It depends on how my date with the laundry goes. At the moment, it has me pretty much tied down for the day.

My oldest little person has resolved to finish up his second grade curriculum quickly so that we can move on with our lives. He even mentioned working through the weekend. He is very excited by the prospect of being able to call himself a "third grader" before public school is finished for the year. I am trying to wean him from a lot of the compulsory school thinking. I want him to not think of himself as a certain grade level. Even the school district no longer thinks of him as a grade level. If I were to take him back to enroll him in public school he would have to take a placement test. I don’t think it is going to really hit us until there is no graduation. That, for me, will be odd. Chances are he will complete “high school” much earlier at home than he would in public school.

We have discussed the different methods of home schooling with him over the last week and much to my amazement, he wants to try a variation of the Unschooling method. I am going to read as much as I can on the subject over the next few months so that I can make an educated choice at the end of this “year”.

I think that it is pointless to take the three months of traditional summer vacation off when we are already in the learning routine. Summer would indeed be a complete bore if we tried not to learn at all. Besides, the summer here is wretchedly hot. I would much prefer to sit in the comfort of air conditioning and read books and surf the Internet for interesting topics and watch Discovery Channel and the Cooking Network during those months. Then we could spend the mild “winter” outdoors while other children are confined to their desks.

Posted by gwendolyn on February 16, 2001 at 08:45 AM