Today was a hard day.  It was rainy and we didn’t get outside. Our Au Pair was leaving for DC so the boys had to come to work with me.  And I was exhausted. But I soldiered on and we got through most of their work.  Near the end of the day, I tried to do a more traditional lesson on capitalization, and the boys were having a hard time. They were wiggling, and squiggling and bouncing out of their... Read more

Are you bored with this blog yet?  The posts are not as funny.  I’m not as nervous.  And it’s hard to think of something to say every day or so.  It turns out that I am finding homeschooling to be a blast (when I don’t hate being with my kids), and blogging to be far more difficult than I thought – It seems I have nothing to say when I’m not miserable. That can’t be good. Read more

Despite my claims of being cool a few posts back, in many ways I’m a freak.  Planes, bats, and lightening turn me into a raving lunatic – hence the Lorazepam stash I considered breaking in to a few weeks back.  Breaching whales, high thread count sheets, and Pecan Sandies have all given me spasms of delight. Even math can get me going.  Especially the base-10 system.  That’s right, I just love thinking about how magnificently our little number system works... Read more

Wednesday’s nature class was an all-boy affair.  Friday’s park day the same.  I haven’t been doing this long, and we’re in Cambridge, so my dataset is inadequate and any conclusions I might draw would not pass what researchers call a significance test.  But I’ve been wondering if more boys are homeschooled than girls. Is all of the recent bad news about boys prompting people to pull them out of school? It definitely had an effect on me.  “Maybe my boys... Read more

There is a theory among some homeschoolers that everything a child needs to know can be taught by the parent.  If you don’t know how to play the piano, you learn while you are teaching your kid.  If you are afraid of math, get over it.  You were probably afraid of dropping your newborn on her head when you brought her home, but you didn’t leave her in the hospital, did you? I admire the spunk, but that’s not me.... Read more

Are you hoping this post is going to be about some lyrical sense in which homeschooling is costly? Well, it’s not.  Instead, I’m gonna run the numbers.  (Note: all prices rounded to the nearest ten) Lakeshore Learning (furniture, materials, pocket charts): almost $2000 Home Depot (pvc pipe and glue to make pocket chart stand): $10 Desks (Zach said that ALL second graders had desks, so I ordered them.): $160 SitSolution Ball Chairs (one for each boy and mommy): $100 Handwriting... Read more

Before my kids could walk, they would pull themselves up, gripping with one hand the metal track in the “Ramps” exhibit at the Boston Children’s Museum and with the other a golf ball.  They would reach as high as they could, drop the ball on the ramp, and watch it circle round and round as it made its way down the track to floor below, all the while flapping their arms in delight.  When they could talk, they asked me... Read more

No home school today.  Not unless you are one of the unschoolers.  The unschoolers reject the whole idea of school.  We are all teachers and all students all of the time.  Life is about teaching and learning.  Cool. For the unschoolers, today would have been just another day.  But not for me.  I’m neurotically goal oriented.  How will I know I am successful at teaching them if I don’t have a 20-page document of learning objectives? (Sadly, that was not... Read more