Homeschooling Somewhere in Between

Sigh.    Part of it is the Winter doldrums that hit every year this year, and part of it is tax season (which hits every year also, of course) because my paid workload triples and just making it through my office work and keeping the house from caving in around me is more than I can manage most days.  And part of it is that we’re just all sick of our structured work but feel too dreary to think up anything creative to do with our time.   When I’m short on time, it is so much easier to tell everyone to do two pages in a workbook than to invent, create and then play some imaginative math game. 

My solution?   Jordan and Alex are going to Spring Break day camp.   They found a flyer for it when I was at the local parks and rec office signing Alex up for baseball.    They will get to go swimming, bowling, to a movie….   And they’ll get out of the house and I’ll get to experience a span of 5 minutes that doesn’t include the sound of bickering siblings and maybe I’ll momentarily be able to catch up with both my workload and my homeload. 

I’m also trying to make sure I attend/plan interesting field trips.  Even though the go, go, go gets tiresome, the field trips we’ve gone on lately have been the highlight of our homeschooling weeks.  We’ve been to a musical production of “The Phantom Tollbooth”,  a factory that makes a cashew based non-dairy “cheese” product, the controversial “Bodies Revealed” exhibit at our local science center, the planetarium and in a couple of weeks we’re going to an exotic cat sanctuary.   Add to that our “regulars” of library book club, homeschool swim at the indoor pool, indoor recess and we just may make it to Spring.

Ok, probably not your “stereotypical” homeschooler style.   I’m fairly liberal in my attitudes towards sex-education—but I’m actually much more squeamish in execution than I am philosophically.   One thing about strewing though–strew a book about sex and it is sure to be picked up!  That worked fine for my oldest, but I felt the younger two needed a bit more guidance, so we read a few books together and I answered questions.

Last weekend I took my daughters (9 and 15) to see “Juno”.  Wonderful movie.   Aubrey told me as we were walking out that she sure hoped most of it went over Jordan’s head because it was completely inappropriate for someone her age.  (Aren’t 15 year olds fun!!  Thanks for the parenting tip darling.)  So I guess that means none of it went over her head?

So, on the way home I thought I’d just see how much went over Jordan’s head.  I asked if she had any questions.  Nope.  Asked if she understood it.  Yup.  Care to elaborate?   And she proceeded to tell me a complete, accurate summary of the movie…”First the girl and boy had sex.  Then she peed on a stick and it said she was pregnant…..”    Alex asked if it showed them having sex and she said “Not really”.  He pushed her to define “not really” and she wouldn’t say much.

Finally he asks in exasperation “Did the screen go fuzzy and a big sign come across it saying ‘Please Stand By This is Too Gross to Show’?????”

Now whenever a romantic scene comes on tv (to which Alex generally claps his hands over his face and yells “My Eyes!!!”), we all say “Please Stand By….”