Homeschooling Somewhere in Between

My homeschooling group occasionally has organized “forums” on different topics so the kids can have a chance to do schooly projects and present them to other people.  This time it was on habitats.  Aubrey did wetlands and Jordan and Alex did deciduous forests.   They did the typical dioramas and tri-fold presentation boards.   Since I had hit that section in our Noeo science, we’re ending up doing a bit of a unit study on habitats in general.   Other than just getting all the books on various biomes from the library, I’ve checked out the Planet Earth series and we’re cuddling up with popcorn after lunch and watching an episode.   We’re also going through the virtual field trips in the digital frog wetlands/rainforest/desert program.

Here are shots from their projects.

Wetlands:

And our deciduous forest:

I remember from public school that projects such as these were generally high managed by parents and I was always at a disadvantage because I had no interest or artistic talent and so the kids produced their own creations.    It was very refreshing to see the broad range of projects that the kids did—and that it was clearly all their own work.

This has been somewhat of a pivotal year in homeschooling Aubrey.   She is technically a “freshman” in high school, so it is all “real” now.  I have to start thinking college, ACT and creating a productive, independent citizen.  Well, ok, I thought about a few of those things before this year.

So, of course it has been a year lacking in ambition or purpose for Aubrey.   She remained “young” for just long enough for me to start worrying that homeschooling was creating a lag in her development and then suddenly **WHAM** with the texting, boys, friends…

We’ve kind of reverted to a sort of unschooling due to necessity.  The necessity of preserving the peace and our relationship.   She has always requested a schedule, deadlines, etc.   Now she requests them so that she can dawdle as they wander by, lol.   Exasperating, seemingly endlessly “lazy” (is this the child who taught herself to read at 3 and multiplication at 5???).     It is time for me to trust.  Trust that she can be independent and decide what needs to be done.  Time for her to learn to trust herself.  Late in the game, she is deschooling a bit and starting to plan for next year.

She elected to take 3 courses from the state sponsored online virtual school (I know, it is public school at home, not homeschooling, but she is happy with it).  She’ll take Chemistry, Web Design and Marine Science with them.  She plans on finishing Algebra 2 and then possibly looking ahead in math.  We are looking at typical high school graduation requirements and starting a transcript.    This summer she is taking (eeek!) Drivers Ed at the local high school.   And going on a mission trip with church (to another state, without me!!!).

For now, she is reading reading reading and playing soccer (and I’m driving driving driving so that she can play soccer!).   She is doing well in her online writing course.  She has finished math for the year but is still making very slow progress on her biology.    And in between it all she is texting her friends.

And playing on the computer.  She bought a computer and adobe photo shop.  This is hi-tech sibling torment.  She turned her brother into an alien.

Creepy!

And she gets a little muddy.

She’s playing for a homeschool soccer team that plays other small private schools in the area.   She plays hard, and her skills as an athlete have really grown this year.

And occasionally she even dresses up…. Like for the hs group’s dance…

It is all changing and I’m finding myself needing more and more to step out of the way so she can step up to the plate (agh, what a cliche!).  It is scary—what if she doesn’t!!  She’ll live with me forever and tell me when she’s 25 that I ruined her life!!! No college will accept her!  She’s neither taken the typical path nor done something extraordinary!   Deep breaths.   She’ll find her way.  And one day I won’t be driving her to it.

Ok, here I am to post about all the things going right in our homeschooling world right now, because rehashing the chaos and uncooperativeness that forms our days would just be too discouraging.

I recently planned a field trip to a local exotic cat sanctuary.  You know how homeschoolers love to sign up for field trips, but then when it comes to the day of, only 1/2 the people show up?   I was worried–and since I planned it and there was supposed to be a 25 person minimum I was sweating it.  Well, 74 people showed up.  And everyone said it was a great, informative, fun field trip and after it was over the trainers said we were one of the best groups they’d ever had.  Not that I had anything to do with any of that—but planning things always makes me feel like I’m on the hotseat for the outcome.

I’m trying to do some fun stuff in Science and I borrowed from an activity in the book “Secret Formulas”.  First the kids drank some sips of Sprite (You mean we get to drink pop?  For school work???).  Then they took sips of unsweetened club soda (blech!).  Then, 1/4 tsp at a time they added sugar and lime juice until they felt they were close to matching the sprite.  They made tally marks (math!), measured (science! math!), wrote their recipe (writing!) and once they felt they had the “secret formula” they had to calculate how many full tsp. they needed of all of their ingredients (super math!).  And then they drank both glasses.   Let’s just say it was a hit, and actually ended up being much more educational than I anticipated.  We do fractions with cooking, but manipulating them in this way was a challenge and made them really start to understand them better.   Or maybe it was just the sugar rush.

Ok, enough positive energy is flowing through this post for me to make it another day.

Get a little muddy!

Yes, my mother taught me this.  And yes, I haven’t been saying much lately.  Not because I necessarily want this blog to be all sunshine and perkiness, but it is just hard to get motivated to write another post about how lame things are and that I threatened to send my kids to school again.    I’ve just encountered nothing but snarliness, uncooperativeness, lack of motivation, laziness, and combativeness lately.  Oh, and that’s just me, lol.

But, we are climbing out.  We had a family meeting and discussed how we wanted things to go.  Things have been fairly unstructured and I’m only doing the bare minimum—so you’d think what would there be to argue about???   But, it seems like structure really helps organize our days. 

But, I’m not going to post a lot about the miserable time we’ve been having.  I think it would get me in a better state of mind to focus on the small successes and fun moments we’ve had over the last month–you know, the sunshine and perkiness.