All things considered

All things considered, school is going very well this year. In fact, it looks more like I want it to look than it ever has before. Thanks to my reduced blogging inspiration and screen time, I’m much more focused and present as Madame Professor. The girls are reading more, writing more, and being read to more. I’m more organized (I’m even making a weekly plan in a lesson planner — a big change for me!) and more systematic about checking answers and reviewing concepts.

So two of those three sentences describing our improved year are in fact describing me. The article most in need of tweaking appears to have been Yours Truly. The girls? They’ve always been brilliant and beautiful and imaginative. But until this year, I haven’t felt like I’m really giving my best effort on the home education front. I’ve been distracted. It feels good not to be nagged by the sense that I’m holding myself back from really trying.

Older Daughter is following the reading list for 7th grade inThe Well-Trained Mind. She’s actually in 6th grade, but this is the list that coincides with the period of history we’re studying, so I’m using it and helping where needed. She’s read an abridged Don Quixote, Perrault’s Fairy Tales, Gulliver’s voyages to Lilliput and Brobdingnag (original, but I downloaded a reading from Librivox so that she had some assistance wading through Swift’s prose), and now she’s reading Pilgrim’s Progress (Gary Schmidt’s retelling). Younger Daughter joined in listening to Swift, and reread the Oliver Hunkin Pilgrim’s Progress we read a few years ago.

I was struck by the level of comprehension both girls had with Gulliver. The language is not exactly simple, yet the mind adjusts. They were able to respond to the story. I didn’t read the unabridged Gulliver’s Travels until graduate school, and I read it dutifully and studiously. They simply experienced it with enjoyment. Election season was a wonderful time to read that one — so much commentary on government! And I love the change in Gulliver’s perspective as he transitions from being a giant among Lilliputians to a Lilliputian himself once on Brobdingnag.

Younger Daughter is reading up a storm on her own, captivated by everything from Encyclopedia Brown to Andrew Lang. Our current read-aloud is Anne of Green Gables, and I am enjoying it so much — the girls love Anne and Younger Daughter in particular frequently explodes in exclamations and giggles when we’re reading.

We’re officially doing earth science and astronomy in science this year, but our nature study continues and sometimes intersects with our science encyclopedias and Earth Science for Every Kid experiments. Lately the girls have had a rock fascination, so we pulled out the Handbook of Nature Study and went rock hunting. My kitchen is about to be buried under debris, transformed into a true blue archaeological site.

Our bird watching and photography continue to be deep interests, and the girls are going to be participating in 4H this year — Older Daughter in a horse club, Younger Daughter in a rabbit club, with additional projects in robotics and incubation/embryology as the year goes on. One way I feel I’ve really failed as a home schooler is in finding lots of social opportunities for the girls; our co-op got to where it required too much commitment, and until now I haven’t found a replacement for it. I really value the flexibility and freedom of our lives! I’m hoping 4H will provide that missing dimension of what I term “passion-centric socialization” — time with others that’s centered around our natural interests and pursuits (rather than mere busyness or extra stuff).

For several months starting last spring, I considered seriously the possibility of applying for a full-time teaching position that seemed like my dream job. If I’d gotten it, we would have moved, and the girls would have had to go to brick-and-mortar school. I wrestled over it and prayed about it, and had almost all my application materials assembled before I felt like I got my answer. It was my own feelings, expressed in this post, but given back to me in the words of Jessie Wise in The Well-Trained Mind:

I was often tired and sometimes felt overwhelmed by what I had undertaken — that is, home-educating my children. And if I’d had a perfect school available, I would have enrolled my children in it. But I looked at the academic and social options, and concluded that, in spite of my failures, my children were doing better under my tutoring than they would have done in a group situation.

Personally, I decided to put on hold some of my goals. But I held on to the wise counsel given me when my children were toddlers: “Live your life in chapters. You don’t have to do everything you want to do in life during this chapter of rearing children.”

It’s funny. Ten years ago I wouldn’t have thought twice about applying for that job. But despite my failures and frustrations and occasional longings to accomplish something beyond what I’m doing now, my desires have changed. I have a different, and perhaps a more complex, calling on my life than I did ten years ago. I have different worries, too — about future security and retirement and braces and college for the girls. But in all previous chapters, we have found what I take to be God’s provision. It’s given me courage going into this year, and I think I’ve given myself more fully to this enterprise because of the clarification of goals.