Ok, it’s time for a homeschooling update! I mean, it’s right there in my profile, the whole Charlotte Mason/Waldorf thing. And I’m sick of talking about the block stuff right now. I’m sure you’re sick of reading it, too. Although I keep getting hits from weird places. Hmm.
We’re in week 6 of the school year. Last week was kind of a break, though, since Sophia went to camp each day from 9 to 3 and came home thoroughly exhausted. Plus, she probably learned something while she was away, right? So this week we’re playing a little catch up and double up. Right now Sophia’s downstairs doing her yoga tape, and Maeve is up here with me wrecking the library. Which happens with amazing speed.
So we’ve tweaked a few things, for a number of reasons. I was starting to worry about shortchanging Maeve (visions of me with a chair in a lion tamer’s outfit, pushing her away while I tried to teach subtraction to Sophia were starting to bug me). So we’ve signed Sophia up for “kindergarten.”
City Garden Montessori, in Forest Park Southeast, is a small preschool run in a basic Montessori style, which is a method that I like but have no tolerance for as a teacher (there are several philosophies like that for me). The people who run it have started a kindergarten, three days a week plus a field trip on Friday. Well, they are looking for more participants, from an economies of scale point of view, and reached out to the homeschool community. I know of them already because my good friend Peggy worked there and her daughter, a friend of Sophia’s, went there for preschool. I seriously think Maeve will go there for preschool, since in the end, St. Stephens was kind of a disaster for Sophia and me. More me than Sophia. Anyhow, the schedule is loose—we aren’t attending every day. Sophia will go for Tuesday afternoons, which is when they teach science, Spanish, ecology, and some other non-traditional subjects, and then on Friday, when they go on a field trip.
This way, on Tuesday afternoons, maybe Maeve and I can do something together, just us.
So as it stands now…Tuesday afternoons and Friday mornings at City Garden, Thursday mornings at Atrium, and the rest of the time with me. Oh, and soccer and girl scouts and dance and piano.
She took her Monet quiz today. We’ve been studying Monet for 5 weeks at breakfast. I am so sick of water lilies and haystacks. I just want to yell “Focus!” at the canvases. But she could name 5 things about Monet’s style, and then did an identification quiz (three portraits, only one is Monet; three outdoor settings, again one Monet; three random paintings, one Monet). Got it all right. Next up: Van Gogh.
Yoga is over. Now there is whining. Maeve wants to play near her. And Sophia wants to institute playpen use.
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2 comments:
Ah, yes, playpens. Sophia is rather young to see the advantages. I'm sure she would have balked at their use, say, 3 years ago. Interesting.
It sounds like you're making a good plan -- covering all the bases. Congratulations -- again! And I'll bet Sophia will know more about art than I will (if she doesn't already). :)
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