“Sissy, it’s so annoying that you have to go to school now.” This was Ezra’s declaration this morning as N. was heading out the door to go to school. N., you might remember, is staying with us during the week while she attends school in town. But “N.” is less than warm and familial as a pseudonym, so I’ll refer to her here as the boys do, as Sissy. Whenever they call her Sissy, I think of the eldest sister,... Read more
Throat hurts, body hurts, head hurts. Could be the flu. Could just be exhaustion from our first week back to homeschool and fall activities, a house full of guest’s, getting N. into and ready for school, our tenth anniversary, my job, and preparing for the largest garage sale we’ve ever done. Which makes this conversation between me and Ezra three nights ago all the more remarkable: “Ezra, can you go into the kitchen and get me a pair of scissors?”... Read more
Today is our ten year anniversary. People keep asking us what we’re going to do to celebrate. The part that most people would consider a celebration is that we are going out for dinner tonight. But the real celebration went like this: 3:30 am – Jeff took Marnie to the airport so she could return home to California. Marnie was living here when Ezra was born, and I still miss having her around. 7:00 am – Jeff got up with... Read more
Have you ever felt like you were the lady or lord of an English manor in the mid-1800s? Yeah, me too. It happened today as Maia, our modern-day governess, was upstairs working with the boys on reading, writing, and arithmetic. She drove up from Texas last week to kick-start the new year. She’s an expert in the new curriculum we are starting, and she is working with the boys on the early parts of the program for five hours each... Read more
The Eastern European drill sergeant threw a seven-year-old boy out in the first ten minutes. Welcome to ballet class. It was Ezra’s first day of ballet and it was a whole new culture. I figured it would be. I just didn’t count on it being like this. This man, ballet man, had just come from Hungary, where he taught in the state-sponsored boarding academy for ballet. Ballet man was not going to tolerate the shenanigans of a badly behaved American... Read more
Marbles have been around since ancient Egyptian times. And as long as there have been marbles, there have been people playing games with marbles. One version of the game, which began in America in the mid-1800s, is called keepies or for keeps. As the name suggests, whoever wins the game keeps the marbles. Unlike Monoply, where you put all of the money back in the box at the end of the game, or basketball, where regardless of who won you give the ball... Read more
I’m quitting my job. Not today. Possibly not until a year from now. But Jeff and I decided this week that I should quit working. After months of feeling torn between work and home, weighing the pros and cons of each, and trying to discern where I was called to spend my time, it was decided on bike ride with a word from God. Just like that. I had been reading The Boy Who Loved Windows and wondering if it was... Read more
Oh my gosh, I forgot to plan for school this year. We’ve been having such a good summer, tossing in a little “schoolwork” here and there, that I just forgot to plan for this upcoming year. Last year, I spent months preparing – choosing curricula, buying supplies, reading about how to homeschool, making schedules, and identifying objectives. This year, squat. As I sit in bed trying to decide what to do about this lapse, I’m torn between two powerful and... Read more
The No Child Left Behind policy attempts to hold teachers and schools, rather than children, responsible for student achievement. Luckily, it doesn’t apply to home schoolers. As I sat down to think about the schedule and objectives for this year, I thought I would do one final review of last year’s objectives. Bad idea. As you can see from the list below, we did not do very well. Or rather, I should say that I did not do very well.... Read more
I just finished Patricia Stacey’s memoir, The Boy Who Loved Windows, about her journey to heal her son of autism. In the process, she nearly wrecks her marriage, her family’s finances, her relationship with her daughter, and her sanity. She obsessively works to understand her son and fights to find him the best care possible. Ultimately, she is that care, spending hours and hours a day with him, much of it doing “floor time,” an intensive, interactive therapy meant to... Read more
The Homeschool Chronicles
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