The Birds and the Bees (and the Bikes)

It’s been six months since the last day of public school. It’s been quite a learning experience. A wonderful learning experience. Literally.

Every month Anna learns a lot, and she always surprises us with what she is capable of. She is quite amazing. But Kathy and I learn how to work with Anna, and what works well and what does not work for us. Our style of learning seems to change at least once a month. We started with a summer of informal lessons on drawing and astronomy. In September we started a more formal program through Connections Academy. After a few weeks of following the standard schedule, we added more science and technology lessons to our weekly schedule. And after a while we realized that doing a 10-15 minute lesson of science or technology every day made no sense, and we changed to a block schedule. Now we are still using the inflexible scheduler as a rough guide, but we are running the school day based on what works for us.

Balancing a busy work schedule and school is not easy, but I try.

When we started we were not so sure if this was something we wanted to do, and there was always the option of going back to public school. After 6 months, I don’t feel that it is an option anymore. Homeschooling has become a focus of our family life. Our individual activities during the day and during the week are supporting the learning activities. It is hard to describe, but it is not simply something that Anna does, and we help. It is something that is a key activity of all the family.

Now that we are no longer looking back at the possibility of public school, the time has come to start looking forward. Not just at this school year, but at what the next few years could be like. A couple of days ago, there was a post on one of the mailing lists that I subscribe to that made me think. It was from the admission officer from a college that has a program for gifted girls, as young as 12, who attend college. I am not saying that this is something Anna will be interested in. What I am saying is that in a few more years it will be time to move on to learning high school, or perhaps even college. And we may want to have some rough idea of where we are going to go with this homeschooling. After all, it is much easier to get somewhere if you know where you are going.