Homeschool Report, Not even close to daily

Whenever I feel like writing but am too frozen up by EVERYONE IS STUPID AND WRONG SO WHERE CAN I EVEN START…

…I take a deep breath and write about what’s going on in the homeschool.

(And get off of Twitter)

I won’t assume anyone reading this has our lives memorized – in fact it would be super-creepy if you did, so stop. Quick background:

Two kids left at home, one about to finish his junior year in the brick-n-mortar Catholic high school, the other – how shall we say it – “finishing” “7th grade” at home.

Sometimes I think about what we’re up to now and I think…what? How can I justify this? But then my other son comes home from school and reports on his day, for which I am paying thousands every year and I think…nah…we’re good. 

This year has been a good one, if odd. For just a bit more background: 13-year old is very, very smart and fairly self-motivated, and Mom is 57-years old and not motivated to do much at this point. It’s weird. I really like talking and doing what little teaching I’m doing but I’m also very content to just let him do whatever.

Education right now is a combination of “Do your math” and “do your Spanish” and “go read some history for a few minutes.”

 

There’s also a lot of music happening. He has been studying piano at a pretty intense level for three years, and a couple of months ago, we complicated things by adding:  a) pipe organ and b)jazz piano.

The odd thing about the music is that we’d added the latter two for different reasons. First, he is pretty sure that once he attains the skills (perhaps in a couple of years), he’d like to play fill-in in churches to make money. He sees his brother bagging groceries, and he thinks, “I’d rather play organ at Mass for an hour.”  I suggested the jazz because he really is interested in learning more theory and improvisation  – so jazz.

That’s a lot, right? It is, but he’s homeschooling, and not all the lessons are weekly. Plus, summer’s coming.

Oh – the odd thing? Well, we got the news last week that his main piano teacher is heading out of town to graduate school in the fall, and while we are going to continue study with him long-distance for as long as it works out for all of us, this gives space for the organ and jazz to find their place in his life a little more organically, with less pressure.

Weird how that worked out.

Then there’s school-school. He is heading to 8th grade in the fall, at the very good Catholic school where his brother went to 8th grade (after grades 1-5 in another Catholic school and homeschooling for 6/7) and where he went in 6th grade. I have to admit that we are certainly taking it a little bit easy right now, not just because he has worked hard this year (see this summary post from January – and he’s done more since then), but also because I know that he’ll be getting more structured work in things like writing next year. Eh. Let them do it. 

I think the present state of, er, relaxation started right before the Mexico trip. That was a huge educational experience on every level, and so I suppose my subconscious has been telling me, That’s good enough for now. 

Come to think of it, my brain probably entered wrap-up mode a month or so earlier when I took my 13-year old to a freaking academic conference on the Mayan at Tulane. 

Duty. Done. 

All of this is to say that at this point – since Holy Week, which was the time of our trip –  and for the rest of the school year (which will end mid-May, when his brother’s done – we finish early Down South – but start early too. First day of school is the absurd date of August 8) this has been the homeschooling scene around here:

• “Assigned” reading: some poetry (cynical poems about Spring, like this one), a couple of Sherlock Holmes stories, Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde, a couple of Jeeves stories and The Lost World by Doyle, which he liked quite a bit. He’s going to get some Father Brown stories next.
• His independent self-selected reading since then has been True Grit, The Shining (did my research, it probably was not 100% appropriate, but in the end, he had interesting things to say comparing the book and the movie – he preferred the latter and I think the novel has satisfied his curiosity about King, and he has no interest in reading anything else by him), and now the Eragon series. 
• Math: We are just about finished with the Art of Problem Solving Pre-Algebra. I’m sort of amazed. After that – we should finish next week – we’ll just do some review from one of the Pre-Algebra workbooks we have around here. If the school he’s going to operates on the same system they did on our last 8th grade go-around, he’ll have summer math to do in preparation for Algebra – probably Khan Academy, unless they’ve changed it.
• Spanish: He, of course, wants to learn Spanish, but we also knew that he needed to be prepared for 8th grade – they have a Spanish program there in which they teach Spanish I over the course of 7th and 8th grade – so he’s worked through more than half of the curriculum at this point – although with a different book, about which I have a whole other post – and the teacher very kindly sent us summary vocabulary and grammar from the 7th grade year, so he can review that over the summer before he goes back.
• Of course, there is no lack of supplementary materials out there to help with Spanish – or any language. We could sit here all day watching music videos and Univision if we wanted to, but…we’re not. I have found a couple of the many web series out there helpful – we all watched some before we went to Mexico, and have continued: Butterfly Spanish (she’s kind of quirky and I like her, but the boys think she’s “weird”) and Why Not Spanish? Both are very helpful and not painful. But really, since Mexico, we’ve not watched any of them.
• We’ve done some science videos here and there. Not with any kind of plan, just “Hey, Mom, can we watch some of those Deeper Look  or Kids Should See This videos?”
• (He does not have unrestricted Internet access – you have to ask me before you can get online)
• I have a frog and a cow’s eye in a box from Carolina Supply that have been here for a couple of months. I keep forgetting about them. Do they go bad? Probably not. We’ll try to dissect those next week. Come back and keep me accountable?
• There is obviously a lot of music going on. He practices, but he also plays around, we play duets. He listens to a lot of music – both on recordings and via Spotify and YouTube. His tastes are his own, with current obsessions being a) 20’s-30’s novelty songs that have been on Jeeves and Wooster   b) Ennio Morricone’s soundtracks for Clint Eastwood movies    c) Metallica  and d) the Russian National Anthem.
• This is fine.
• He draws a lot, drawings that are usually epic in some way.
• And then once a day, I say, “Go read some history or science” – and he goes off for thirty minutes or an hour to read one of his magazines – National Geographic History, BBC History or library books, and he comes back and we talk about it.
• He’s qualified for the National History Bee (he competed last year in Nationals in Atlanta) but I am not sure if he’s going or not.  It’s the same weekend as a piano thing he might qualify for – we’ll find out in a week or so which one we’ll do.
• He’s finishing a keyboarding course – typing, as we used to call it back in the day.
• A couple of trips besides Tulane and Mexico – a weekend in Pensacola and then a day in Old Cahawba, the site of Alabama’s first capitol. 

The one huge fail of this year involves Shakespeare. There’s been no Shakespeare read or watched this year. In the past I’ve tied our study to productions in either Atlanta or down in Montgomery – but everything produced this year has either been something we’ve already seen or don’t have a lot of interest in or we’ve been hamstrung by the older son’s work schedule. So I’ve let it slide. I feel pretty lousy about that, considering that was one of the speeches I used to give others and myself all the time about this homeschooling thing: All they do is worksheets when they COULD BE READING SHAKESPEARE!

Well, maybe Fortnite has a Shakespearean angle to it? Maybe?

Redemption awaits – they’re doing As You Like It at the Atlanta Shakespeare Tavern in May and early June – so perhaps we can get over there. We’ve never seen it. Phew. Homeschool Creds possibly retained.