School in Springtime {Going to (Home) School, Installment 1}

March

A blue day

a blue jay

and a good beginning.

One crow,

melting snow-

spring's winning!

      

     Elizabeth Coatsworth

Elasa is doing a delightful lesson in her language arts this week that has us doing nothing but reading and talking about and illustrating children's poems for a whole five days! Today we had fun going through The Random House Book of Poetry for Children, and reading some poems by Walter De la Mare, and of course Elasa also wanted to look for some funny poems for us to take turns reading! It's enough to convince me to do this language arts curriculum next year, too, since children's poetry is one of my favorite things!

Spring Is

Spring is when

       the morning sputters like

bacon

           and

              your

                  sneakers

                      run

                          down

                                the

                                    stairs

so fast you can hardly keep up with them,

and 

spring is when

       your scrambled eggs

            jump

                off

                    the

                       plate

and turn into a million daffodils

trembling in the sunshine.

     Bobbi Katz 

Springtime may be celebrated by one and all, but if you would look into the eyes of the schoolmarm

and her pupils, I am sure you would see an added gleam as we count days and realize just how tantalizingly close the end really is!  

After this week, Elasa has just five more weeks of school, which has us finishing up second grade the very end of April, so I am pretty excited about that! It may be a common affliction, but I am reaching a point where I am just ready to be done, and I keep thinking how "free" my mornings will be for a couple months once we are no longer called to the school-table at the stroke of 8:30! 

Gavin will still need to finish up his learning-to-read program in May, as I am determined not to let that hang unfinished, and plus I want a fresh start with his first-grade curriculum when the new term begins, but even having Elasa finished and just one student to concentrate on will feel like the beginning of summer break for me! 

The end of the school year always feels like a good time to evaluate goals and curriculum for the next year, and I've been giving some thought to what I would like to use next year based on what I am familiar with and what I am hearing from other people.

This coming school term looks like it will be a year of firsts: first year that Elasa is actually registered (which will add to our workload) first year that I will have two full-time pupils (a third-grader and a first-grader) and first time teaching anything more than preschool while caring for a new baby (!!!) so, given the culmination of these facts, I am trying to be as realistic as I know how to be with choosing books that will actually work for us (you know, on a Monday morning!), instead of getting caught up in some fantastical and idealistic notion of what a super-homeschooling-mom would surely use!

Thankfully, springtime is also the time for curriculum fairs and home school conventions (and I am already signed up for one in May!), so while I've been giving thought to the whole subject, I am waiting to make my final choices until I can actually handle some books and get a better  idea of what I am getting into. Plus...who would want to forego the free shipping offered at these events?!!

Ode to Spring

O spring, o spring

You wonderful thing!

O spring, O spring, O spring!

O spring, O spring,

When the birdies sing

I feel like a king,

              O spring!

Walter R. Brooks

One time, before I was really into homeschooling myself, another young mother asked how one does this whole homeschooling business, especially with preschoolers and all, and I answered quite honestly that I didn't know!

Well, several years down the road I still don't have cut and dried answers for such questions, and quite frankly, there are days when I look around for the nearest exit, but if I am learning anything, it's this:

1) Try to figure out what works for you 

and do not become unduly alarmed by the brainchild someone else is producing with this or that particular curriculum.

2) Keep the day's to-do list as simple as possible

and take time out for a nap even if it means buying your bread and letting your house grow a second layer of skin in the form of dust.

3) Get advice from people who have lived in the trenches

and who will understand how unpredictable a school day can be with  potty-training- toddlers and pregnancy nausea thrown into the mix.

4) Accept that some things about homeschooling are going to be difficult and messy

and stop trying to find a way to live life on an easy little dotted line.

5) Give even your worst moments the chance to work themselves out

instead of thinking that all is lost when you're in the midst of a major drama.

6) Begin the school day with a read-aloud session from a good chapter book

and you will find that this becomes a bright spot in the day for you as well as your student!

Easter

The air is like a butterfly

    With frail blue wings.

The happy earth looks at the sky

     And sings.

Joyce Kilmer

Today I didn't do school with Gavin since we had some other activities to attend to, and shortly before supper was ready, he appeared at my elbow as Elasa and I finished her language arts assignment and said, "Mom, I just want to do school!"

You know, even though we still didn't do it- being out of time- and I didn't mind the break, it still did my heart good to hear him so anxious to do his school!

Despite the work involved in this process of learning how to read, and despite his mother's occasional impatience, and despite getting b's and d's mixed up over and over again, Gavin has been almost unfailingly excited about his schoolbooks, and when I see that, combined with how pleased he is to be reading his own stories from his very own reader, I realize that this, right here, is what I would be missing if I would forego homeschooling.

Teaching, for me, is a little like having the opportunity to reinvent the light bulb over and over again, and call it spring optimism if you like, but right now I am pretty excited to have this special position. 

But do me a favor will you?

On the first day that I forget just what a thrill inventing the light bulb is, find a children's poem for me!

And please, if you will, make it a funny one!!!